Dropping the Ball: Baseball's Troubles and How We Can and Must Solve Them - Hardcover

Winfield, Dave

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9781416534488: Dropping the Ball: Baseball's Troubles and How We Can and Must Solve Them

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416534482 ISBN 13: 9781416534488

Publisher: Scribner, 2007

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A Hall of Famer and former Yankee star athlete presents recommendations for how to reclaim the popular national pastime from steroid scandals, labor disputes, and other challenges, in a strategic report that addresses such areas as making the game more fan-friendly, developing community-based programs, and diversifying front offices. 100,000 first printing.

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About the Author:

Dave Winfield is best known as a New York Yankee and won a World Series ring with Toronto in 1992. Currently an executive with the San Diego Padres, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Levin writes and ghostwrites in Orange County, California, where he runs www.Business Ghost.com.

PROLOGUE

The Game I Love Is Hurting

Opening day, 2012.

A group of kids, fresh from a morning of pickup games at their neighborhood baseball complex (built by a partnership of sports, local business, and government interests), arrives at the major league ballpark early enough to sit in the box seats and watch batting practice. The stars of the game take time to give them some baseball cards, sign a few autographs, offer encouragement and some tips about how to make it to the majors, and even toss a few balls the kids' way. The kids -- and their parents -- also meet some MLB alumni who serve as team ambassadors and who answer questions and share memories (and some autographs, too) with the fans.

As batting practice gives way to fielding practice, the stands begin to fill with fans of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, as culturally diverse as the players on the field, thanks to Major League Baseball's outreach and marketing programs aimed at minority communities. A few of those fans are enjoying their choice of hot dogs, sushi, and other ethnically diverse foods from the food stands, which now also offer healthy and vegetarian alternatives. In the upper deck, parents are teaching their kids how to score the game between innings at the park's interactive game areas and museums. The parents are also thinking back to that period in baseball history when the game on the field kept giving way to strikes, lockouts, ownership collusion, and owners deliberately fielding weak (and inexpensive) teams, maximizing revenue by minimizing salaries. Thanks to the commissioner and Major League Baseball working in cooperation with the Players Association, all that divisiveness is a thing of the past. The commissioner's office and Players Association have a feeling for the game, and its players are on the same page.

The owners and the Players Association worked out a mechanism that rewards top players and free agents for working within the baseball campaign as well as for performing community work -- even after they've gotten their huge, multiyear contracts. Of course, players still change teams, but the system now provides incentives for players to remain in one city for many years, long enough for fans to get to know and relate to their team and players -- or even for their entire careers, like a Tony Gwynn, a Kirby Puckett, or a George Brett. And Major League Baseball, MLB.com, marketing, international business groups, and the Players Association made an agreement to promote individual players and not just teams or the overall game, so the fans know much more about the new arrivals to their favorite teams.

The chasm between players and fans has vanished, as players demonstrate a newfound respect for their fans and for the game, and take a much more active role in their communities, visiting schools, hospitals, and service clubs like never before. As a result, players have regained respect and adoration from their fans. The players and their union have become much more aware of the players' responsibilities as role models in society (for which players now receive recognition and distinction) and, to that end, have crafted a successful drug-prevention program that includes drug testing and has all but eliminated steroids, amphetamines, and other performance-enhancing drugs from the game. Thanks to the cooperation between Major League Baseball and the Players Trust (an arm of the Players Association), the perception -- and the reality -- is that the game has truly been cleaned up, and the baseball players' ratings have skyrocketed as a result. The ballpark is using its boardrooms and facilities to assist community-based programs and partnerships that further baseball, the youth, and the community in general.

The World Baseball Classic has become an unqualified success as a platform to embrace worldwide baseball enthusiasts from Africa, China, and beyond. The ethnic, cultural, and racial diversity on the field is also reflected in the fan base. Baseball has become aware that diversity is a business imperative, and has acted accordingly. While continuing their avid pursuit of baseball players in Latin America, Australia, Japan, and China, the owners have created a system that makes it economically, socially, and politically intelligent to develop homegrown baseball players, of all races and socioeconomic levels, through such initiatives as the Urban Youth Academy, which began in Compton, California, in 2006, and has expanded and begun to bear fruit.

In 2012, kids of all backgrounds have access to the same high-quality tryouts, baseball camps, travel leagues, tournaments, showcase games, scout games, trainers, coaches, and even sports psychologists. No longer do kids who are potential five-tool ballplayers (those with all of the abilities that baseball prizes: hit for average, hit for power, run, throw, and field) fall way behind because they lack access to the training facilities, big league exposure, and coaching that gives other kids knowledge of the nuances of the game vital to career success. Coaching clinics, provided by each ball club in Major League Baseball and conducted by dedicated people with a renewed love, understanding, and respect for the game, are held nationwide. How far you can go is no longer dictated by where you come from or what kind of resources your family has.

As a result, it has become just as economically rewarding to develop prospects in the inner cities of the United States as it is in the villages of the Dominican Republic. In 2012, when any young player enters the clubhouse of his first major league team, he is likely to see others of his racial or ethnic background.

Baseball is enjoying such a great resurgence that kids in their teens continue to play on high school and college campuses, where the girls are just as interested in the baseball players as they are in the football players, basketball players, and skateboarders. And the casual fan can name as many noted college programs and coaches in baseball as he can in basketball.

Sounds farfetched? It shouldn't.

In this book, I want to share my observations about the current state of baseball, why the game appears, by most standards, to be in robust health but is in fact subtly declining in importance to Americans, especially African Americans, and share my ideas for turning the trend around. This book will tell you how baseball can go from good to great, and how the game's industry can be all it can be.

I love the game of baseball and I revere its place in both American history and modern society as a teacher of values and life skills and outdoor fun and exercise, as well as its place in the history of race relations. I come from a time when there was respect for the records we hold dear and when role models were plentiful. As baseball combs the world, from Latin America to Europe to Japan and Australia for new prospects, new audiences, and new sources of revenue, the game cannot afford to forget the fans and the prospects here at home. The path to the top is much different than it once was. I will explore the connections among the social and economic issues, the people side and the business side of baseball, and discuss how baseball can reach its full potential.

Despite the record attendance figures and huge labor contracts, the game has diminished in popularity over the last thirty years due to many factors, some subtle and others quite obvious. Each of its many constituencies, from the commissioner's office to the owners to the players and even the fans, have lost sight of what makes baseball unique. I want this book to serve as a critique of baseball, and to provide a guiding light for those who have the fondest love for the game. I've applied some vision, suggesting some bold strokes and initiatives to produce major change.

These thoughts are coming from the heart of an insider, one who played and loved the game as a seven-time Gold Glove winner, with over three thousand hits, a World Series winner, and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. I've been asked: Why risk being shot down or criticized? I say, "Why not me, why not now? No one else is offering solutions -- we have entered an awareness phase of our plight, but action is next." My objective is to move beyond criticism to offer well-founded and well-researched answers, directions, and advice. I'd like to provide an introspective guide to the present and the future of the game, and offer a manifesto for change.

A lot has to change in the way baseball is marketed, played, and appreciated in order for the game to regain its luster. I will take issue with many of the practices employed by the various constituencies described in the book. I'll discuss simple timeworn practices that have been lost or forgotten. But I will always remain positive, upbeat, and hopeful that once those responsible for baseball's success realize what needs to be done, they will act quickly to preserve our true national pastime and bring it into the twenty-first century.

Baseball has lost its central position in the hearts and minds of sports fans in America, and I want to explain what this decline in baseball's importance, particularly to African American fans and young people, means to me. Then I will focus on each of baseball's constituencies to address the issues everyone in and around the game needs to consider. I will suggest ways in which each of those groups can bring baseball back to the fore. My final chapter, "Baseball in the Twenty-first Century," will offer my vision for how the game can resume that rightful place at the center of our sporting life, but only if all the constituencies pull their weight.

I remember a sign that George Steinbrenner had on his desk in New York: LEAD, FOLLOW, OR GET OUT OF THE WAY. Take your choice. I've made my decision to lead, and I'm hoping to ignite some action and perhaps bring baseball back to its former glory.

As a retired player who has loved the game since I was eight years old, and as a baseball executive for the San Diego Padres, I have the...

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