CLEARWATER, Fla. -- Only 3,535 people showed up to watch the Kansas City Royals and the Philadelphia Phillies do their inimitable Grapefruit League thing Friday afternoon. Little did those people know they were watching the future of baseball dangling before their eyes.
Oh, we don't know what the future holds for these two teams on the field. Sorry. This isn't the American Fortune Tellers' web site.
But we do know that these two teams sum up what the future of this entire sport is about off the field.
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The
Royals haven't had a winning season since 1994.
The Phillies haven't had a winning season since
1993. ... The Royals will have a
payroll under $40 million this year. The Phillies
will have a payroll in the neighborhood of $43
million. So they are two teams stuck in baseball's
cavernous no-fly zone. Not enough money coming
in to win. Not enough disdain for their towns and
their traditions to quit trying
altogether. |
That future, as you may have noticed, is leading us closer and closer to the next labor war. And the more we contemplate that war, the more we've come to conclude that this is exactly what it's all about:
The Royals and the Phillies.
Why? Because of what they were. Because of what they are. Because of what they could be.
Once upon a time, just a couple of decades ago, Royals-Phillies was a matchup worthy of any ballpark's marquee.
Twenty years ago, Royals-Phillies was to this sport what Braves-Yankees is today: Two perennial playoff teams that were practically destined to meet in a World Series. Which they did, in 1980.
But that was then. This is now.
And this just in: Now hasn't been going too hot for these two franchises.
The Royals haven't had a winning season since 1994. The Phillies haven't had a winning season since 1993.
The Royals are 100 games under .500 since the strike. The Phillies are 112 games under .500 since the strike.
The Royals haven't drawn 2 million customers since 1991. The Phillies haven't drawn 2 million since 1995.
The Royals will have a payroll under $40 million this year. The Phillies will have a payroll in the neighborhood of $43 million.
So they are two teams stuck in baseball's cavernous no-fly zone. Not enough money coming in to win. Not enough disdain for their towns and their traditions to quit trying altogether.
"They're trying to do it with home-grown teams and a (modest) budget, just like we've been doing," said Phillies special advisor Dallas Green, as he watched this action from row six, seat two, of Jack Russell Stadium on Friday. "But as you can see, that doesn't work too good."
Oh, it kind of does -- to a point. How large a point just depends on your standard for "work."
In Kansas City, it has worked to the point that it has produced the likes of Mike Sweeney and Jermaine Dye and Mark Quinn. In Philadelphia, it has worked to the point that it has produced the likes of Scott Rolen and Bobby Abreu and Mike Lieberthal.
And all that's great. But if your standard for "work" is pennant races and magic-number countdowns and baseball in the October shadows, then it would be hard to argue it has worked in any shape, size or quantity.
"Oh, it's worked to the point that you can smell the roses a little bit," said Green. "But you can't taste 'em."
|  | | Scott Rolen gives the Phillies much more than a big bat. |
You can make the argument, obviously, that that's their fault -- not baseball's fault, not the system's fault. And you wouldn't be all wrong.
Both of these clubs made their mistakes. They've both been notorious fiscal conservatives. The Phillies have even managed to turn themselves into a "low-revenue team" in the sixth-largest market in the country.
But if the system worked better, would the Royals have had to trade Johnny Damon? If the system worked better, would the Phillies be sweating out whether they'll need to make that same decision on Scott Rolen in a year or so?
Probably not. But all these two teams can do is deal with the realities of today. What other choice is there? They can't see tomorrow. And they sure can't bring back yesterday.
"We've got a team here with good young talent, and they play hard," said Royals manager Tony Muser. "We just haven't been able to be consistent enough to win. But that's my job -- to get us on the right track. So I'm not focused on what could be or what might have been or what we want to have happen. Yesterday's gone. We can't worry about what used to be here. We've got to focus on the task at hand."
In Kansas City these days, they like to talk about how their current core of young talent reminds them of the official Good Old Days in the '70s, when George Brett and Willie Wilson and Hal McRae were gelling into the nucleus of a club that would visit the postseason five times in six years, from 1976-81.
In Philadelphia these days, Larry Bowa tries selling the Phillies on the resemblance between their young nucleus and the days when he and Mike Schmidt and Greg Luzinski were figuring out how to win in the mid-'70s.
If you stand back, it's easy to see the similarities. And when you come back to reality, it's impossible not to get conked on the head by the differences.
And the differences, in a nutshell, are as basic as this: Back then, those nucleuses stayed together for close to a decade. These nucleuses will be lucky to stay together for another year or two.
"We were in a situation last year," said Brett, "where we had Johnny Damon and we asked: What do we do with him? Do we pay him the type of money he'd demand as a free agent? Or do we trade him and get something for him? So what did we do? We traded him before he could reach free agency.
"Now is that what the labor talks will be all about? I have no idea. I'm not really management. I'm not a player anymore, either. Don Fehr doesn't come and ask me questions about this. Bud Selig doesn't come and ask me questions about this. I'm just like Joe Fan looking at it now."
But when the true Joe Fan looks at this now, how much hope can he have in either of these two towns that these players he's watching in 2001 will still be wearing these same caps in, say, 2005?
"Those teams in the '70s were products of a different system," said Phillies GM Ed Wade. "You can't really look back at 1974 or '75 now, because the reality is, your time frame has been constricted as far as how long you have a chance to realistically expect to keep a club together. What we have to do is have a system in place that gives you the opportunity to widen that time frame."
In Philadelphia, Rolen is two years from free agency. Abreu and Lieberthal are still three years away. Pat Burrell is six years away. A new ballpark, meanwhile, is three years from opening its gates.
So Wade says continually that it's "our stated objective to do everything we possibly can do" to keep their best young players from bolting. Who knows, though, if that will be enough to keep Rolen from looking for someplace he can win? Who knows if that will be enough to convince all of them to stay and recreate the glory days?
"The way the system works now," said Green, who once managed in a World Series between these two teams, "you may pick one or two guys who you can come up with $10-15 million for. But you can't do it to keep four or five or six of those guys.
"People compare this to basketball, but this ain't basketball. In basketball, there are only 12-man squads, so you can give four or five of those guys pretty good money. But you sure can't give it to 25 guys."
Meanwhile in Kansas City, Dye and Sweeney are both two years away from free agency. Carlos Beltran is four years away. Quinn is five years away.
The ballpark, on the other hand, is what it is: pretty and charming, but also remote and dated. And not going anywhere. Premium seating has been added. There is talk of selling naming rights and building restaurants and retail attractions around it. But unlike the Phillies, this is a team with no financial windfalls over the immediate horizon.
Still, the Royals say they're just as intent on keeping their own group together.
"I'm fairly close to Mr. Glass (Royals CEO David Glass)," Muser said. "And I know what he wants. All he wants is to win. He understands the structure of baseball as well as anyone. But he also knows how good Dye is. And he knows how good Sweeney is.
"We just ran into a situation with (Damon) where it was going to take $90 million to $100 million to sign him. So we came to the conclusion we probably couldn't afford him. What we did was, we used the system as it exists now and tried to upgrade our team by trading him. We did what we had to do within that structure. And that's what you have to do in baseball now: Do the best you can possibly do."
The best the Royals could possibly do brought them a bona fide closer, in Roberto Hernandez, plus a promising young shortstop (Mark Ellis) and a shot to be a dark horse's chance, if everything else goes right.
But how do they figure out a way to be more than just a dark horse? How do they build on this foundation to become the year-in, year-out threats to win they were a quarter-century ago?
That's where these labor talks come in.
It isn't our intention here to make proposals or talk luxury-tax details. That's for the negotiators to do.
What is our intention is to suggest there is a reason to look for a real compromise -- one that will make this game better from top to bottom, one that will make it possible for these teams to keep moving forward if they keep doing things right.
In Philadelphia, though, Green is skeptical.
"I think a deal will get done," he said. "But that doesn't mean the deal is going to solve the ills of baseball. The deal will keep us from having a work stoppage. But it won't be a deal everybody will be happy with. I guarantee that."
In Kansas City, however, Muser is philosophical.
"Union-management is always going to be a part of the infrastructure of the game," he said. "That's the history of mankind. But I have a lot of faith in the game that things will work out. ...
"This isn't about us. It's about our game, about the passion we have for our game. Anything that would be positive, to make our game better, I'm in favor of."
He's right, of course. It isn't about the Royals. It isn't about the Phillies. It isn't about any one team and its problems. It's about the game itself.
But then Scott Rolen pounds a home run into the palm trees in the first inning of spring training. And Mike Sweeney unfurls his sweet swing on a postcard Florida afternoon. And we can't help but wonder:
Where will they be spending their spring trainings in two years? In three years? In five years?
When the smoke clears after the Great Baseball Labor War of 2001, we might even be able to answer those questions.
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com.
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