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This article examines the impact of hometown market size on competitive balance in Major League Baseball. We use a four-equation simultaneous model of win percent, team payroll, team total revenue, and team local revenue in order to avoid simultaneity bias in the estimates. Using two-stage least squares, our results show that consolidated metropolitan statistical area population does have a statistically significant positive impact on local revenue. This leads to increased payroll, which has a significantly positive, but small, impact on win percent. Specifically, the estimated impact of an additional one million in population ranges from 0.233 to 1.126 additional wins per season.
As early as the 1880s, baseball owners and sportswriters were decrying the greediness of players as the leading threat to the national pastime. Nearly a century later in 1976, the Player's Association was able to finally tear down baseball's permanent reserve clause--the contract language that essentially bound a player to a single team until he was released or traded--and owners and sportswriters again insisted that the competitive balance of the game was threatened by player greed. The rhetoric from the baseball establishment did not match the on-field reality. From 1981 to 1993, the first significant era of free agency in the sport's history, all 12 of the National League's teams finished first at least once, as did 11 American League teams. From 1994 through 2001, however, there was a pronounced separation in strength between the haves and have-nots, as the local revenue streams of major markets such as New York and Boston overwhelmed the capabilities of small market franchises in such cities as Tampa, Montreal, and Milwaukee. This work examines how the sport has prospered and suffered during the free agency era, based in large part on how the game's various revenue streams are allocated. It further examines the revenue sharing plan in baseball's current collective bargaining agreement, identifying flaws that may well undermine its long-term effectiveness. It also explores how the baseball expertise of some organizations has allowed them to flourish despite the lack of revenue.
Major League Baseball, like so many other professional sports, is not free of the unequal distribution of wealth, talent and other factors that allow for a continued David and Goliath scenario between the teams. The competitive balance between teams is a major factor in determining which teams will make it to the World Series and which will not. This problem of balance has grown ever larger as Major League Baseball has grown. As more money for teams, higher salaries for players, longer seasons with many more games played, free agency, farm league training, and other aspects of the game developed, the issue of competitive balance has become more pronounced. It deserves attention when discussing past and future World Series champions and the current reigning teams of Major League Baseball. This history covers competitive balance in Major League Baseball from 1900 through 1999. It is organized into four parts: statistics, dynasties, anti-dynasties, and factors of imbalance. The last part pays special attention to three primary factors: Cinderella status, player development, and economics. Several possible solutions to these problematic factors are analyzed and critiqued.