What if the MLB had promotion and relegation?

[Bowski]

1 hour ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

Its not. 

 

I mean, it is technically due to DH rule. 

 

 

I'm done talking in circles about this; some real mental gymnastics are taking place to justify lack of parity. 

[SFGiants58]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

 

Additionally, I will offer the view that parity is not such a good thing. While each team having hope seems desirable, the truth is that a league's identity is derived from its dominant teams. 

 

Major League Baseball in the 1970s is defined by the A's, Reds, Yankees; the NFL of the 1970s is defined by the Steelers, Dolphins, Cowboys, Raiders; the NBA of the 1980s is defined by the Celtics, Lakers, Pistons. These periods have a feel to them, almost a taste. By contrast, a period during which any team can win is a period that is nondescript and featureless.

 

Tell that to a fan of any small-market team that is in the pits more often than not. Parity is good.

[The_Admiral]

49 minutes ago, Bowski said:

 

I mean, it is technically due to DH rule. 

 

No, the leagues no longer exist as separate corporate entities. They did until 1997, 1998, somewhere around then.

[Gary]

5 minutes ago, the admiral said:

 

No, the leagues no longer exist as separate corporate entities. They did until 1997, 1998, somewhere around then.

Because after all it is called Major League Baseball. Not the National Pitchers Association And the Designated Hitters League...

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

7 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

Tell that to a fan of any small-market team that is in the pits more often than not. Parity is good.

 

Please note that team does not have to be from a small city in order to be out of contention for long stretches of time, examples being the Cubs and the White Sox.

 

Also, in the 1970s, both the Giants and the Jets were strictly nowheresville.

 

Every fan wants his/her team to win, of course. But most of the championships go to the elite teams; and this is not a bad thing, as just about every team will have the occasional championship or finals appearance that will become part of the team's lore and will keep the team's fans warm for decades  

 

Sometimes it's not even necessary to get all the way to the finals. The 1983 White Sox are a beloved team despite not having reached the World Series. And the Nets' first-round victory over the defending champion Sixers in 1984 will always be a cherished moment for the (few) fans who care about that team. The point is that even those teams that don't win titles invariably have rich histories.

 

To me it seems obvious that the presige of a league is enhanced when elite teams emerge. No one would deny that the NBA was transformed by the Lakers and Celtics from a low-status entity whose finals were shown in late-night tape delay to a very big deal comparable to Major League Baseball and the NFL. The best state of being for any league is to have a small set of elite Celtics/Lakers-type teams, a handful of teams in the next tier who are striving to enter the elite class, and then a large mass of longshot teams. 

 

For a fan looking for interesting and memorable stories, that sort of arrangement is a lot better than parity, in which each season offers a new set of dominant teams.

[BBTV]

6 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

about every team will have the occasional championship or finals appearance that will become part of the team's lore and will keep the team's fans warm for decades  

 

Lol. That’s not how it works. 

[Gothamite]

9 hours ago, Bowski said:

 

I mean, it is technically due to DH rule. 

 

 

I'm done talking in circles about this; some real mental gymnastics are taking place to justify lack of parity. 

 

That’s a pretty funny way of saying “I’m getting ratioed.”  

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

1 hour ago, BringBackTheVet said:

7 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

about every team will have the occasional championship or finals appearance that will become part of the team's lore and will keep the team's fans warm for decades  

 

Lol. That’s not how it works. 

 

It sure is. The Jets' lone Super Bowl appearance after the 1968 season remained the team's primary identity for a good four decades, fading only recently. The impact of the Knicks' 1970 championship lasted even longer.

 

Fans of the Royals dined out on the team's 1985 World Championship until their recent pennant, 30 years later. And two pennants in the last 20 years has done nothing to dim the impact of the Mets' 1986 World Championship.

 

The vast majority of fans would welcome dynastic runs for their teams; but in order to keep a fanbase engaged, all that is required is that the team win once a generation or so.

[Bowski]

42 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

 

That’s a pretty funny way of saying “I’m getting ratioed.”  

 

Or its a way of saying; I was looking at pro/rel from hypothetical way (it is an interesting concept) and everyone else was taking it as me stating that I fully desired it in our leagues. 

 

Not to mention, some of you stated very clearly that you believed that parity wasn't good. So, knowing we'd never reach an agreement on that so I peaced out on the argument. 

[Cosmic]

Back in the 70s, team owners were more interested in paying players as little as possible than truly competing with each other. There's no point in comparing parity now or in a hypothetical future with a pre-free-agency world.

[SFGiants58]

3 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

Lol. That’s not how it works. 

 

Bitter, angry, and desperately clinging on to the past is a better summation. 

 

I firmly believe a lot of the NFL/AFL’s rise in the 1960s has to do with baseball spending the 1950s/early-60s sending the message of “if your team doesn’t play in the New York metro area, your team doesn’t matter.” 

 

Dynasties may may be important for some, but parity is better for fan engagement. Having a few juggernauts discourages fans from getting invested in their local teams.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

1 hour ago, Cosmic said:

Back in the 70s, team owners were more interested in paying players as little as possible than truly competing with each other. There's no point in comparing parity now or in a hypothetical future with a pre-free-agency world. 

 

This is my understanding of the modern MLB, unless I'm missing something.

[OnWis97]

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

 

Bitter, angry, and desperately clinging on to the past is a better summation. 

 

I firmly believe a lot of the NFL/AFL’s rise in the 1960s has to do with baseball spending the 1950s/early-60s sending the message of “if your team doesn’t play in the New York metro area, your team doesn’t matter.” 

 

Dynasties may may be important for some, but parity is better for fan engagement. Having a few juggernauts discourages fans from getting invested in their local teams.

I'm not as sure...in the late 1990s, I thought Yankee dominance was going to kill MLB...it didn't. Yankee haters wanted to watch the Yankees almost as much as Yankee lovers.  And look and how the NBA does with dynasties.  Their worst days were the weird 1970s when Milwaukee, Portland and Seattle were winning titles.

 

I think TV is the main reason football overtook baseball.

[Gothamite]

6 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

I firmly believe a lot of the NFL/AFL’s rise in the 1960s has to do with baseball spending the 1950s/early-60s sending the message of “if your team doesn’t play in the New York metro area, your team doesn’t matter.” 

 

That doesn’t make any sense, considering that baseball spent the 1950s moving two of the three New York teams out of town. 

[SFGiants58]

15 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

 

That doesn’t make any sense, considering that baseball spent the 1950s moving two of the three New York teams out of town. 

 

True, but it’s the same clubs. My wording was iffy there.

 

Still, that sentiment of the rest of the majors either coming up just short/being tomato cans for the Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants must have hurt fan engagement somewhat. It may have been a golden age in New York/California, but it would have been painful for the rest of the majors.

 

These other sports would look a bit more attractive once fans realized that they had no realistic way to contend long-term and just had to settle for a fluke title here and there. Adding playoffs made this less of a problem.

[Gothamite]

I dunno.  The Milwaukee Braves won a World Series during that time, went to a second and narrowly missed a third.  They didn’t seem to have much of a problem competing in the 1950s.

[IceCap]

16 hours ago, Bowski said:

 

Or its a way of saying; I was looking at pro/rel from hypothetical way (it is an interesting concept) and everyone else was taking it as me stating that I fully desired it in our leagues. 

You were also suggesting that the North American system is lacking. Which, combined with a hypothetical look at the merits of pro/reg, make it seem like you're romanticizing/advocating for pro/reg. I'm not even going to get into the parity issue, because parity or a lack of parity can be engineered in either system. It's irreverent.

 

What is relevant, however, is the fact the pro/reg is pretty much a historical accident. That the English Premier League was formed with being a closed league in mind shows that it's not just our side of the Atlantic that is adverse to it. The clubs that formed the Premier League would have closed the league off if they could. For many of the same reasons owners in the US and Canada will never agree to it- why agree to a system where your club- the one you paid billions for- can be devalued by being knocked down to a second tier league? Yes, compensation payments exist. I'm aware. Still? There are soccer clubs across Europe that have never fully recovered after getting knocked down, and compensation or not? Prestige is a thing, man. Owner egos are a thing. admiral's teeth are probably itching at my overuse of the word "thing," but I hope I'm making my point.

 

Now factor in publicly funded stadiums in the US and Canada. I'm unaware of the situation in the UK, but I have to imagine public funding of stadiums isn't on the level as it is over here. Hennepinn County paid $350 million towards the construction of Target Field- over half of the stadium's cost. Will the people and elected leadership of Hennepinn County be happy if the Minnesota Twins got knocked down to AAA ball? No! They paid hundreds of millions of dollars for a major league ballpark. Publicly funded stadiums- to that extent at least- are pretty disgusting. At the very least though? People ought to get what they pay for. Poor purchase or not.

 

I could go on. The travesty of disrupting league history by knocking out long-standing members. The logistical problems in nations as large as Canada and the United States. The fact that most cities in most leagues are their only city's team in said league, meaning pro/reg could mean eliminating valuable tv markets from the top flight. And I know man, I know. You said you're discussing hypotheticals, but come on. The only way pro/reg works in North America is if it's set up that way from the start- ie it develops as a historical quirk like it did in Europe (which even top flight European club owners would get out of if they could). It's such an out-there concept that even thinking what if is entirely, 100%, academic.

 

The real issue references something @Gothamite mentioned earlier. About pro/reg supporters being a minority amplified by social media. Why is pro/reg so romanticized? Why is it such a dewy-eyed fantasy that even someone admitting it's untenable in North America is still ruminating over how it could work while trashing the system we have in place?

The fact is...it's exotic. That's all. It's different, and the grass is always greener. We're used to the way things are in North America and so this weird way of doing things seems appealing. Add in the novelty of seeing the Montgomery Biscuits playing for the World Series or the Chicago Wolves playing the Chicago Blackhawks in NHL action and you have an easy mix of variables that leads to people romanticizing the practice.

 

Thing is..."wouldn't it be cool if....?" is hardly a good reason to suggest North American pro sports consider implementing a system that will never work anyway. Yes, European soccer leagues are neat. Yes, they're exotic. Yes, it's nifty that sometimes (very rarely) you see a team climb the ladder and win the top flight's biggest prize.

It's just a quirky system though, one that wouldn't even exist if the owners of the top flight teams could go back and do it all over again. It's fine for Europe, because that's how it developed. That's not how it developed here though. It's not going to work in North America.

[Bowski]

3 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

You were also suggesting that the North American system is lacking. Which, combined with a hypothetical look at the merits of pro/reg, make it seem like you're romanticizing/advocating for pro/reg. I'm not even going to get into the parity issue, because parity or a lack of parity can be engineered in either system. It's irreverent.

 

Ya'll need to chill, never romanticized or advocated for it, literally just thought it was interesting. Having an interest in something doesn't mean you advocate it.

 

I have an interest in alternate history, especially explorations of different outcomes of war. Saying a world where say the Nazis won is an interesting concept to explore, doesn't mean I advocate or endorse Nazism, just that as an avid historian I enjoy exploring alternate paths to their fullest.

 

Same concept applies here, just because I enjoy exploring the potential of a different system for a sport doesn't mean I want it implemented. The only thing I said about it was that it could hypothetically address the parity issues in the US.

 

Chill, peace out 

[Gothamite]

That’s all fine and good, but alternate histories can and some do glorify the losing sides.

 

And it sure seemed like you were advocating pro/rel here, which is why people extended you the courtesy and respect of a discussion.  

[BBTV]

23 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

It sure is. The Jets' lone Super Bowl appearance after the 1968 season remained the team's primary identity for a good four decades, fading only recently. The impact of the Knicks' 1970 championship lasted even longer.

 

Fans of the Royals dined out on the team's 1985 World Championship until their recent pennant, 30 years later. And two pennants in the last 20 years has done nothing to dim the impact of the Mets' 1986 World Championship.

 

The vast majority of fans would welcome dynastic runs for their teams; but in order to keep a fanbase engaged, all that is required is that the team win once a generation or so.

 

I'm not if we live in the same world.  Phillies won the WS in '08.  The first Philadelphia championship that I remember in my lifetime (i was very early 30s at the time.)  In your view, the fans shoudl just be happy and passive that they got to see a championship 11 years ago?  AYFKM?  That run ended after the '11 season, and they faded into oblivion.  I don't know anyone that's like "well, at least we got to see good baseball 11 years ago".  No - people are pissed that they're spending $100 to go to a game to watch subpar baseball by a team that (for several of those years) didn't seem to care about the product they put on the field.  That's aggrivating, and the memories of 11 years ago don't make it any better.  The only thing that made it worth going to games was the *ahem* "distractions" - great park, drinking, having social outings, getting drunk, and starting fires*.

 

It's silly and arrogant to think that the Royals fans should jsut be grateful that they got what they got, and while I get that the sports-market is different in the midwest, I highly doubt that anyone was 'dining out' on the team's 30-year-old championship.  Remember - if you're 35 years old, you never saw any pennant-winning baseball there.  If you're 35, you don't give a rat's ass about what they did when you were 5.

 

You do have a point if you want to say that expectations are lower - of course they are.  If a team simply wins a division, or even just plays winning baseball after years of horrific play, then that's almost like winning something (relative to how they've been.)  But come on - to say that fans still happy about a 30 year old championship is beyond absurd.  It's... super absurd.

 

 

*not literally.