Los Angeles Dodgers’ Opening Day at Dodger Statidum | Photo by abrowncoat on Wikimedia Media Commons
Part LIII of the “Back-to-Basics Governance” Series
The people of Oakland and its public, corporate, and community leaders, especially baseball fans, can help financially-strapped universities and colleges generate more income to support their mission of providing affordable education. How? By also organizing a North American Cooperative Baseball League. The teams in the league can be owned by stakeholders — from the baseball players themselves, team management and employees, universities and colleges, students, alumni, other fans, and their kin.
Eventually, baseball can return to its early days when the sport was not a big business dominated by billionaire owners and their cronies and former players. Some players got filthy rich due to bidding done by major-league teams for their services. Teams generated millions more greenbacks from corporate sponsors that sell even soda drinks, beer, hotdog sandwiches, and other items at prices ordinary fans can no longer afford. Stadiums were retrofitted to permit the construction of “corporate boxes” where the rich, influential, and famous personalities could rent (or be invited) to see games. And party even after the baseball game has ended.
The Mexican Baseball League will probably join this “baseball-cooperative movement” so that everybody involved is motivated by a love of baseball. Canadian baseball fans, their community, and government entities may participate in it sooner than later.
As this column said in its original story how the Oakland Athletics team jilted the City of Oakland and its baseball fans by announcing its decision to move after the 2024 season to Las Vegas, Nevada. The announcement was made on May 15, 2023. It fell on the same day that Holy Names University closed its doors.
This columnist and his friends are dedicated fans of America’s summer pastime, its so-called “Baseball Cathedrals,” and other aspects of the game. Baseball has to be rescued from the clutches of greedy owners and the nouveau-riche baseball players, their agents, and business managers that have recently acquired wealth. Most are typically perceived as ostentatious or lacking in good taste and manners. Once these players and characters get their millions, they acquire expensive sports cars and trophy wives. These sports celebrities violate anti-monopoly laws, ignore traffic regulations, and cause accidents, injuries, or deaths to other motorists and pedestrians.
Baseball has to be rescued from the clutches of greedy owners and the nouveau-riche baseball players, their agents, and business managers that have recently acquired wealth. Most are typically perceived as ostentatious or lacking in good taste and manners.
This columnist achieved a modest feat in major-league history. He engineered the first-ever Filipino-American Community Night at the Dodgers Stadium in July 2006. And followed it up by a second similar event the next year. The 2006-and-2007 baseball events in Los Angeles, CA, were also mentioned in the first article about Oakland’s Baseball Cathedral being turned into a “Cathedral of Learning” at this link.
But our baseball group ended its ties with the Dodgers as it protested the hiring of a former Boston Red Sox player who was repeatedly warned of his illegal substance-abuse violations. Eventually, the Dodgers waived that player after he was suspended twice (for a total of 150 games) for drug use. Our group was right.
Years before Frank McCourt, the owner then of the Dodgers, announced that he might sell the organization and its stadium, we floated the idea of a cooperative-owned sports team. We requested our friends at the Dodgers head office about the feasibility of selling even a minority team stake to the fans that could be organized as cooperatives. Then every year, more and more team shares would be sold to the fans. The Dodgers ignored our plea to include fans in the coming new ownership.
On March 27, 2012, embattled owner Frank McCourt agreed to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers franchise to Guggenheim Baseball Management for a record $2 billion. It ended a months-long process as it was in November of 2011 that Mr. McCourt signed off on selling the team, Dodger Stadium, and the surrounding real estate.
Later, our group also protested the ending of the Dodgers TV coverage by a channel that broadcast baseball games accessible to the public. It carried, of course, commercials to answer for coverage expenses and air time. The new owners of the Dodgers set up their own Pay-TV channel. This resulted in our group creating a Facebook Page called Boycott Dodgers TV & Advertisers, which is also a part of this Group.
Perhaps the City of Oakland and Alameda County, to which it belongs, may want to lead the “reinvention” of baseball. And return it to its beginning as a national pastime, as the American people know it. And not as a cartel that is ignoring the purity of the sport, as it chooses profit over public propriety.
