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If you had a “say the quiet part out loud” slogan campaign fan poll, my contribution would be:
Major League Baseball: Come Celebrate Our Mediocrity
Please note while your collective antennae rise, I fully appreciate the fact these athletes actually have some of the sporting world’s most difficult challenges in reflex, sharp vision, and microsecond decision-making.
I’m not completely nuts here.
Dead fish almost always begin rotting at the head, so I’ll focus on MLB’s collective organizational mediocrity instead.
Baseball has spent the better part of the last decade trying to convince us 84 wins is success.
It isn't.
Here are two examples why what seems to be my cynical take on the tag line (formerly named) “America’s Game” deserves in my make-believe slogan contest.
Fans, we’re truly celebrating mediocrity on the latter of the two examples I furnished.
Let’s focus on the outlier among a small group of outliers instead of celebrating MLB’s mediocrity.
Enter the Los Angeles Dodgers, even when they have not recently played well.
While much of baseball spends the winter looking for bargain bins and hoping somebody else's discarded relief pitcher has a career year, Los Angeles goes shopping for another ace.
This time it's a two-time Cy Young Award winner, Tarik Skubal.
Some fans complain the Dodgers are ruining baseball, but I have the opposite opinion.
Is it fair to ask if the Dodgers, instead, are exposing baseball?
Every commissioner talks about competitive balance. That's become baseball's favorite phrase. If everyone is balanced between average and slightly above average, who exactly is chasing greatness?
Financially, it is a sport where there are no salary limits, where local television’s season-long coverage results in dump tracks backing into the franchises banks with lucrative television packages.
But let’s face it. MLB has its ownership groups – I’m talking to you, Tom Ricketts, et al!
Is it fair to say “Team Ricketts” has arguably made at least a handful of decisions compromising building a title-worthy team in exchange for net earnings?
It’s fair to commend them for, on the other hand, the trade landing Pete Crow-Armstrong (nicknamed PCA) to the joy of North Siders.
The Dodgers aren't apologizing for wanting Hall of Fame talent. They're acting like championships are supposed to be difficult to win. They’ve put together, via the benefits of baseball’s deepest ownership pockets, a product compelling to watch that goes beyond the enviable three-batter murderer’s row.
The Dodgers’ lot is not unfair. When has excellence ever been considered unfair aside from when someone is cheating to attain it, or if somebody else – a rival pro sports side - achieves it?
With this said, baseball's biggest problem isn't the Dodgers. The problem is among ownership groups that have convinced their fans that mediocrity is a business model.
MLB gets away with a lot compared to other professional sports when it comes to its overt celebration of mediocrity
Championships have always required risk. The Dodgers take risks while most clubs take attendance. Each offseason, this particular Los Angeles Dodgers’ front office asks one question:
"How can we become harder to beat?"
On the other hand, most MLB organizations ask, "How little can we spend and still keep fans interested until July?"
The Dodgers’ philosophy attains and celebrates excellence while most of the other franchises unapologetically – you guessed it - celebrate mediocrity while surviving by unloading rosters then reloading less expensive rosters (skillfully enough) to maintain satisfactory levels of gate attendance.
MLB’s parity stinks on ice.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers haven't lowered the standard. They've reminded everyone, instead, what the standard used to be.
The Cubs are proof deep pockets might get fans excited about potential for excitement, but fans and observers can begin with looking where most of the teams rest in their standings (pay close attention to the barely-above .500 teams) to see the results of the MLB collective’s organizational ambition.
