Welcome to Snyder’s Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it’s free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you’ll get smarter, though. That’s a money-back guarantee. Let’s get to it.
Any time an owner of one of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams speaks publicly, I’m probably going to get some pretty easy Soapbox material. I might get a good pitch. I might get a meatball. Sometimes, though, they just bring out the tee and let me take a serious hack.
Arte Moreno of the Angels, come on down! Via the O.C. Register:
“The number one thing fans want is affordability. They want affordability. They want safety and they want a good experience when they come to the ballpark. Believe it or not, winning is not in their top five.”
He was so close, wasn’t he? Fans definitely want everything Moreno stated before the last seven words. But then he dropped the hammer with, basically, winning isn’t really that important.
This is just all kinds of dumb.
First of all, think about the aspect of Moreno being one of the owners less than a year from the expiration of the CBA. Even hinting that you aren’t trying to win is ammo for the player side and, sure enough, new MLBPA boss Bruce Meyer told The Athletic, “Let’s just say players took notice of it and we took notice of it too. The bottom line is players are competitors. They grew up competing every day. They go out and they try their hardest to win every game. And players want to see owners doing the same thing.”
Oops, Arte. Very oops.
How about the optics of a statement like this coming from an owner of the Los Angeles Angels? You know, the team with the longest playoff drought in the majors. They haven’t been to the now-expanded playoffs since 2014. They don’t appear close to snapping stated drought, either. In fact, they’re likely to be picked to finish in last place by the overwhelming majority of prognosticators for this coming season.
For me, there’s always concern when a billionaire tries to act like he knows how we normal folk feel. Maybe you don’t think I, as a member of the media, count as a baseball fan. Fine, but I’m not rich and I’m a die-hard Bears, Pacers and Indiana University fan. I know what being a “normal” fan is like. I’m not sure Moreno does. Also, is he projecting? That is, does he think fans don’t care that much about winning, maybe, because deep down winning is much less important to him than other stuff like making money?
There’s always that worry when it comes to a billionaire owner. We’re going to suspect there’s a disconnect there, even if it’s subconscious.
Perhaps this is a misunderstanding? It’s possible Moreno means well and is just trying to point out that, when attending a single game, fans can deal with a loss — especially just for one game — as long as it’s a great experience. I don’t doubt that affordability, safety, convenience and stuff in that range are incredibly important for a non-rich family attending one game per year and, sure, in this specific instance, that stuff can all matter more than seeing a win in the grand scheme of things.
He just did a really poor job in his delivery. In the big picture, nothing to fans is more important than winning.
No true sports fan needs evidence. We know it. Even if we get priced out. I generally go to one Bears game per season — sometimes two, sometimes zero. If the Bears end up getting like dynasty-level awesome and I get priced out and can’t attend a game in person for the next 10 years, I’d be happy for that outcome. Gimme all the winning on TV. I just want to cheer for a winner!
I suspect the overwhelming majority of die-hard sports fans — notably non-fair-weather fans (and remember, we don’t let them bother us) — would agree with me there.
If we need evidence on the “winning trumps all” front, though, we could look at the attendance numbers for a few teams to illustrate the point.
Look at Arte’s Angels. The franchise had never topped two million fans in attendance in a season until 1979, their first trip to the playoffs. That was the franchise record until 1982, or the next time they made the playoffs. They didn’t top three million fans until 2003, which just happened to be the year after their first World Series championship.
Are these all just the seasons that the Angels did the best job at affordability and safety? Nah, ticket prices were rising because demand was rising. It was the winning.
We could do this with other teams. The Brewers first drew over two million in 1983, the year after their lone pennant. They first hit three million in 2008, the next time they made the playoffs. The Cubs first hit three million in 2004, set new attendance records in both 2007 and 2008 and then broke that mark in 2016, which remains their high mark. On and on we could go. That’s just how it works.
Look, I understand the bottom line might not be as healthy as Moreno would like it to be. Their TV situation, as it is with so many teams right now, is wretched. The Angels have also been burned by a good number of bad contracts, like Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton, Anthony Rendon and a few others this past decade. I’m sure this has an impact on Moreno deep down in his brain when he’s discussing spending and he thinks fans want a good ballpark experience instead of just throwing money at guys in a desperate attempt to turn the team around.
Then again, if the Angels did a better job at fielding a competitive team — and it’s so much more than just spending on free agents — winning on the field would put more butts in the seats and help mitigate any of those perceived shortfalls in revenue.
As always, the most important thing is winning. Saying otherwise is ignorance, delusion or a combination thereof.
