Fairball

Rating:
Summary: Costas hits the marks on Baseball's problems
Review: When I first saw this book I thought it was going to be another "Baseball should never change book." The usual dump the DH, turf, wild card games etc. Once I started reading it I soon realized it was much more. Baseball has serious problems that are keeping it from being a completive league. Costas describes clearly how the income differences between teams is hurting the game. Both the owners and the players are at fault. Each side is portrayed as caring mainly about their own interests vice the overall health of the game. Even though this book is 2-3 years old, baseball has not addressed any of the major issues in the book, so it is still current. If you want an educated debate on baseball beyond the 30 second ESPN analysis, check out this book

Rating:
Summary: Fair Ball; Good or Bad
Review: In Bob Costas' book Fair Ball Costas takes an educational angle towards the reader. Costas talks a lot about the ups and the downs of basebal history. Some of the history that Costas explains is the 93' strike which was the only hardship I was aware of until reading this book. Baseball fanatics who love the game of baseball for how games were won or lost are targeted in this book by Costas so he can educate us fanatics on financial and other hardships of the game of baseball. Costas wrote a book on the ups and the downs of the game of baseball and possibly could have taken a different angle towards the reader and might have gotten more customers. Costas took the angle he took because not to many people know about the hardships baseball has endured and need to in order to call themselves true baseball fanatics. Costas could have wrote the book on many things such as the Yankees yearly income and yearly success in major league baseball. This angle would have been boring and would have been a long book because of the constant success of the Yankees. Costas instead choose to write a book on the revenues of all teams, the success of the game of baseball, and the hardships teams and major league baseball all together has endured. Costas explains to the reader in an educational way how the teams of the major league came close to perfection or close damnation of major league baseball. Costas shows moves that were made to improve income for baseball that actually brought them one step closer to the demise of baseball, or moves that were made to remove faults in the game that actually made it worse. Costas shows how baseball was and is not always the exciting sport it happens to appear to be in present day baseball. Costas gets the point across that baseball is and will not always be an exhilarating world series like this year and stacked teams that dominate, rather it will come across hardships and it will come close or even come to total damnation of the game of baseball, either we will get tired of it or it will not get enough income to survive. For a total baseball fanatic who loves the game for its exhilarating wins and losses, and its nail-biting world series', and who wants to learn the history of baseball from creation to present day; those are the people targeted in this book and I recommend checking out this book and reading it from front to back

Rating:
Summary: Move over Bud Selig, Bob Costas is best for baseball
Review: Every single employee, player, executive, and fan who is in any way related to the game of baseball should have to read this book. Costas has some great ideas for improving not only fan interest in the game but the overall viability of the game itself.

Bob Costas for commish!

Rating:
Summary: Baseball needs to respond
Review: This is undoubtedly the best baseball book I've ever read (and I've ready many).

Costas lays out, in simple language, how, where and when baseball went wrong and makes a strong proposal for what must be done to correct the sport.

Number one is the sport must have a salary cap (and floor). This season, he was proved right again - with the exception of Oakland, the playoff teams all came from the teams with the highest payrolls in the sport. In fact, the only team in the top ten spenders not to finish in the 'first division' is the haphazard big-spending Rangers.

If a group of people were to set up a rotisserie league, the first thing they would do is set a spending limit on players. MLB should do the same. Whether Costas' proposal for a salary cap is the 'best' way to set one up is not relevant, but institution of a salary cap is a 'must' for the sport to survive. The chances of a team reaching post-season must come back to depend upon competition, rather than ability to spend!

Costas proposes baseball move to a set up of six five-team divisions with no wild card. Consider: Houston and St. Louis came down to where the winner of the last game of the 2001 season would play Atlanta in the first-round playoffs, the loser would play Arizona. What if Houston or St. Louis (either or both) decided, for whatever reason, that they'd fare better against Arizona than Atlanta in the first round playoffs. Would they then be tempted to 'throw' the game so that they could become the wild card team and face the opponent of their choice? This is but one of many reasons the wild card compromises integrity and sets up opportunity for major, major bad in baseball.

Costas is right; the wild card is bad, bad, bad for baseball. I really miss the pennant races such as we had with the '78 Bosox-Yanks. We could have had similar excitement this year with Houston-St. Louis.

I am really disappointed that I haven't heard a response from MLB on Costas' proposals. He provides a great starting point for discussion on how to save baseball. MLB has made so many wrong turns in the past decade and there is discussion about an even more monumental mistake: 'eliminating' teams. How will that solve anything at all??? I see it as just 'raising the bar'. Enough rash decisions!!

Any and every baseball fan should read this book. Then listen to it on cd or read it again. And think about what Costas is saying.

In short, if I could have anyone over for dinner this weekend, I'd love to have Bob Costas, so we could talk baseball and talk hope for it's future.

Rating:
Summary: Every single player, agent, and owner NEEDS to read this
Review: When will Bud Selig go away so Bob Costas can become Commish?

Rating:
Summary: Foul
Review: I've always respected Costas' baseball opinions - he was one of the few with the insight and chutzpa to side with the players in 1994, and he seems to have a genuine love for the game. Unfortunately, most of his ideas in this little tome (more of a long essay, really) are, well, juuuuust a bit outside. Take, for example, his proposal for a salary cap (of $80 mil., or double the average broadcasting revenue)and a salary floor ($40 mil, or average broadcasting revenue). Sounds like a pretty decent idea, especially if his revenue sharing proposals were to be implemented, right? And the "superstar cap," limiting the most a player can be paid to 1/4 the minimum payroll - in this example, $10 million - that'll keep those ridiculous salaries down, right? In a perfect world, yes. But lets say we put them in place next year. Even if we allow players with existing contracts to be "grandfathered" in, the new crop of free agents will be royally and utterly screwed. Sorry, Jason Giambi - not only will you be limited to 40% of A-Rod's salary, but only slightly over half of all MLB teams will be able to add that much to their payroll - and it goes nearly without saying that the many of those teams aren't going to be competitive with or without Giambi. At the same time, teams like the Red Sox will have to cut over $30 million in payroll. This proposal is unpalatable to both the players AND the owners. Now, a few of Bob's ideas here make sense (a return to sharing some ticket revenues with the visiting team, for example), but in large part, this book is utter hogwash. He goes on for about a quarter of the book about his dislike for the wildcard playoff system. His proposal: reduce the number of playoff teams in each league to 3, and the team with the best record gets a bye. Again, bleagh - fewer teams in the hunt, less exciting playoffs, less TV revenue for baseball; a true lose-lose situation. Nice try, Bob. This book doesn't receive a low rating simply because I don't agree with Mr. Costas. The writing isn't terribly strong, and dry recitations of figures don't exactly help. If his ideas held some water that might be forgivable, though. Well, at least it's only 174 pages.

Rating:
Summary: Yep, this makes sense, so there is no way it can happen
Review: Reading this book sure makes me angry because we all know that neither the Commissioner nor the head of the Major League Players Association is every going to debate the merits of the plan for saving baseball that Bob Costas outlines in this book. The main purpose of "Fair Ball" is to engender a debate, to get these idiots to sit down and argue out what should be done to save the sport of baseball. Costas lays out on paper the argument he has advanced in bits and pieces while broadcasting baseball games on television. The basic plan boils down to the following: redistribute money from attendance and broadcast rights so that the top team (the Yankees) will only be spending TWICE as much on salaries as the bottom team (the Expos). By increasing the minimum salary for not only players but for teams, there would be movement towards restoring the competitive balance of the league. The goal is for fans in Tampa Bay to have a team that can reasonably compete.

But since this makes sense, it is never ever going to happen. Baseball lives in its own world and the sport refuses to learn any lessons from the NFL or NBA. Even the ludicrous contract signed by Alex Rodriguez does not constitute the final nail in the coffin, since it could end up being comparable to Kevin Garnett's N.B.A. contract. But this would require the superstars in the game to accept the premise that less for them would mean more for everybody else. In the end, it is going to take some sort of catastrophe, comparable to the Black Sox scandal that created the office of the Commissioner in the first place.

The last five chapters deal with realignment, wild cards, and a few other issues. This is where you will probably find yourself disagreeing with some of Costas' proposals (Houston moving to the A.L.? Okay. Three divisions but no wild card? Don't think so). Throughout "Fair Ball" it is clear that Costas is a true baseball fan and his love for the game comes through big time. Perhaps the most upsetting part of this book is that as we pass it around the office and all the baseball fans read it, we have nobody who wants to argue the other side. Everybody agrees that something like this should be done. Hey, I am a Yankee fan and I am for these changes. Bottom Line: Every baseball fan should read this book and get involved in the debate.

Rating:
Summary: Costas Pitches Relief For Pastime's Future In "Fair Ball"
Review: In "Fair Ball," longtime NBC-TV sports journalist Bob Costas has written a succint, numbers-soggy, yet unsentimental look at how far baseball's on and above-field stewards let its image and financial management slip.

But unlike Mike Lupica's mad, mindless manure spreading in "Mad As Hell," Costas aims facts and proposed solutions at baseball's hard numbers: on the schedule (his criticism of interleague play) at the gate (everything from a proposed revenue sharing plan to the constant between inning noise; he cites the Montreal Expos' and Texas Rangers' star-crossed, strike-shortened seasons as examples), on TV (the disastrous "Baseball Network," wild card folly destroying September pennant game-by-game tension), World Series games starting too late for younger fans and peppered with commercial messages. His description of 1997's Marlins-Indians World Series accurately descibes how interminable and unapproachable the game had become in less than a decade.

Costas outlines his plan to address baseball's large and small, money and image issues: Pete Rose's Hall of Fame induction (he favors it while strongly opposing that gambling that got Rose suspended) the DH (he opposes it despite its extending the careers of stars like Eddie Murray) radical, georgaphical realignment (a disaster still discussed but earlier dismissed).

Costas' book is welcome because, unlike more emotional stories like David Halberstam's "October 1964" or Lupica's "Summer of 98" (both chronicling World Series which changed baseball's image) you don't smell the green grass and hear the bat crack. "Fair Ball" is the work not of a baseball poet (Costas' writing is broadcast-tight, although more charts and graphs would have made his revenue sharing plan more accessible ). Costas here is a baseball doctor diagnosing a decade's baseball owner obesity and union player gluttony, prescribing diet and weight redistribution.

Bob Costas' book is recommended reading for fans, those they cheer for (everyone should read Chapter Three, "The Nature of Sports Leagues," among the most accurate descriptions of player perks and pressures), and all deriving employment, profit or pleasure from the national pastime.

Rating:
Summary: Silent Lucidity... or... Ideas So Good That No One Listens
Review: Contrary to some of the opinions listed in reviews here at Amazon, Costas is NOT stuck in the 70s, 60s, or 50s. He asks the reader to remember what baseball was like in 1993, just before The Strike. No wild-cards, no mini-divisions. Now, much of the book is devoted to the financial aspects of baseball. Costas' point here is that nothing about the game on the field matters much if these off-the-field problems continue. His views here are so straightforward, and so close to the NFL model (the most successful and popular sport in the U.S.), that baseball owners should be embarrassed by having to have it explained to them.

However, since I am a baseball fan, not an accountant, the sections on realignment and the wild-card system are what compelled me most. Costas makes lucid arguments for a simple 15-15 alignment of teams. Yes, you'd have an interleague game every day (or more precisely, every weekend day), but so what? I am ambivalent to interleague play, and there are bigger things wrong with baseball than whether a team plays six of its 50-52 series each year against the opposite league. The upside of a 15-15 split is no mini-divisions. One of these days a team is going to win the four-team AL West (not this year, but sometime) with a 78-84 mark. Or worse. Texas was leading the division at 10 games under when The Strike hit. The unbalanced schedule for 2001 was actually a good move by the owners, as it reduces the chances of this happening. However, it makes the wild-card even more of a joke than it already was. Before 2001, the wild-card team played pretty close to the same schedule as the other second-place clubs. However, now that teams play so many games within their own division, it means the wild-card is more likely to come from a weaker division. If you are in a division with several good teams, your record is likely to be worse than if you are in a division with only two good teams. The best argument Costas makes in his book is for the elimination of the wild-card. Yes, the wild-card has given us some close races, but in the end, who cares? We are rewarded with "races" pitting also-rans together. Other sports have conditioned us to accept the legitimacy of the best teams not winning. Anytime someone points this out they are rejected out of hand as traditionalist. Most fans are of the opinion that more teams "deserve" to be in the playoffs because they were good teams. However, good teams do not "deserve" to be champions; only great ones are accorded that distinction. Drawing a parallel from another sport, I remember a 1981 post-Super Bowl interview with a member of the Philadelphia Eagles. After his team lost, he said: (I am quoting from memory, so I may fudge it a bit) "It's too bad there can only be one world champion. I wish there could be two or three." Right.

Attitudes like that are what drive wild-card proponents. Nothing wrong with Florida beating Atlanta in the 1997 NLCS, since the Marlins were a "good team." Never mind that they had their chance to prove they were good, and still lost their division by nine games. It comes down to a fundamental truth: If you are not good enough to win your division, you are not good enough to be called World Champion. It's not that they aren't good teams, it is that they haven't earned the right to be there. They had the chance to prove themselves over 162 games, and they couldn't get the job done.

For those who say the wild-card creates interest, Costas counters that wild-cards merely create the illusion of a chance, and that it destroys the pennant races. What kind of races do wild-cards create? Races between two mediocre teams, with around 86-90 wins. The owners love the wild-card; that should be a warning sign right there. The reason they love it? They are able to dangle false hope to the fans of also-rans that they might still be able to win. Another illusion is that it allows small-market teams a chance. However, every single wild-card qualifier has been in the top ten in payroll.

After they failed to catch the Braves last season, Mets players made numerous comments on how they didn't care about winning the division; the wild-card was good enough for them. Is "second-place is fine with us" the kind of attitude we want in baseball? For each year since the wild-card's inception, Costas provides examples of how it killed that season's pennant races. Baseball fans have had dramatic, nail-biting, winner-take-all races between two excellent teams replaced by 1) lukewarm "races" between mediocre clubs, and 2) non-races between good teams that don't care. As long as the wild-card exists we will never have another GREAT pennant race. Sure, we will have races, but they won't be ones between two championship-caliber teams, and no one will remember them years later. Remembers the great 1996 NL West race? The Padres and Dodgers, tied for first, played each other on the final weekend. You don't remember? That's because they knew whomever finished second was going to the playoffs as the wild-card anyway, so they both benched they regulars. Who cares? Second place is fine with us.

Costas has a painfully simple solution to the problem: keep the three divisions but eliminate the wild-card. Give the team with the best overall record a first-round bye, much like teams in the NFL. Costas makes many great points about this (and other issues), more than enough to justify the (admittedly too high) price of the book. If you hate the wild-card, buy the book and get some fresh ammunition for your next bar argument. If you like wild-cards, buy it and perhaps you will come to understand the error of your ways.

Rating:
Summary: The Ideas Make Sense, So It Will Never Happen
Review: I have listened to Bob Costas announce sports for probably over 20 years. When he isn't trying to wax poetic about sports, he is a knowledgeable and entertaining broadcaster. With that in mind, I decided to read his book "Fair Ball" which is his manifesto as to how the game of major league baseball can be improved in the future.

Much of his book concentrates on the issue of revenue sharing, which has been a bone of contention among owners for years. His plans for sharing local broadcasting money and for sharing ticket money are solid ideas, but they've been suggested before and little has been done over the years because the teams that rake in the most money through these are not likely to want to part with them. Costas says that the big-market teams need to look at the long-term impact that revenue sharing will bring to the entire league, but doesn't really address that it will be very hard for owners of those teams to do that.

His arguments for realignment, interleague play and scheduling are great ideas. I liked the concept of interleague play when it was adopted in 1997, but did not know that the same divisions were always going to play each other each year. Major league basball has agreed to follow one of his suggestions as it is following an unbalanced schedule this year (where teams within a division play more games against each other than against the rest of the league). So maybe they will look at the bigger picture someday.

I agree with his positions on mostly everything else, including allowing Pete Rose to be eligible to enter the Hall of Fame, the elimination of the designated hitter and a day World Series game (the latter will never happen, however, because of the money that will be lost from advertisers).

Costas has written a concise argument for baseball. I hope the powers that represent the owners and players read it before the end of the collective bargaining agreement at the end of this season!