Balance of Power in Baseball; Rich Team, Poor Team
The Invisible Hand of Baseball—
What Baseball Has to Say About Adam Smith’s Theory of Free Market Competition
When I was a kid growing up as a Senators’ fan in Washington, D.C. no one ever talked about the business of baseball. It wasn’t fashionable anywhere, but it certainly was the least fashionable in Washington. It was not a big baseball town by today’s standards, too many transient highly educated people. But even among baseball fans, the subject of baseball as business was never discussed, taboo even, because in fact baseball had no business in Washington. It was a patriotic gesture! The price of a baseball team was like the “cost of freedom;” All Americans should be willing to lay down our lives so that we can have baseball in the Nation’s Capitol. Like Democracy and the right to representation in Congress, there are certain inalienable rights. Since D.C. didn’t have either of these, it stands to reason they should at least have baseball, at any price. We were very warped in our values back then.
Then Nixon came, and our Constitutional right to baseball disappeared. It was part of the Watergate Scandal, in fact. Did you hear that E. Howard Hunt was seen in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, selling tickets months before the move of the team was announced? That rumor has never been confirmed or denied. But it was all very suspicious. We didn’t realize that the team could be bought and sold like..like a company or something! It seemed like slavery in those naïve by-gone days! Curt Flood, Don Lock, Ed Brinkman, Del Unser, on the trading block like slaves! Now we don’t think twice about it.
Today, the business of baseball is all people talk about. How many wins can 100 million dollars buy? Someone has a computer program to figure it out. If money buys wins, tell me why some teams pay a million dollars per win, some a half a million?
The principles mentioned in Adam Smith’s philosophical writings, especially the “invisible hand,” work in baseball regardless of economics. This is because there are many kinds of competition in baseball, and the kind we find on the field overrides all others.
While owners are busy competing with each others’ wallets, snipping off this player’s bonus, and that player’s raise, raising the price of parking, of cable TV, throwing money into pitching based on some formula for post-season success, the players themselves are busy competing on the field, where supposedly, money can’t buy wins, theoretically not even umpires. Games are still won by sweat, hard work and determination.
As long as players are free to compete in their hearts for the adoration of their fans, money will never guarantee success. Like happiness and love, there are certain things that money is always on the verge of being able to buy; but it never works out. Adam Smith wrote about the “Invisible Hand,” which, in my personal interpretation says that if all the different parties in a certain field are all free to compete with one another, there will be a healthy balance, and the strongest companies with the best products will thrive, to the benefit of all, whereas inefficient companies will do less well. Obviously, having a millionaire “backer” gives some companies the edge to get established; but according to Smith, that isn’t the most important factor.
The Smithian universe is not one of blind probability, but one of probability based on each human beings desire to succeed. Therefore, the standings in baseball should stay within a statistical boundary not likely according to blind probability. It should reflect a great overarching mythic principle of balance which Plato called Dikaion, or Universal Justice. In the early Vedas it is called Rta (pronounced err-tah) the underlying geometric blueprint behind all universal phenomenon, which evolved over time into the concept of Dharma, now a popular TV show. Then there were the Philadelphia teams of the early 20th Century, which were all over the map. Their results really did seem random.
Theoretically, if the invisible hand is allowed to move the players around by natural selection, there will never be a monopoly, and everyone will have a fair share. In a sense, baseball proves this principle. Even though the amount of money spent on teams has always varied greatly, with some teams (ie The Yankees) often spend three or four times the money other teams do (ie The Senators) the gap between wins and losses is never that great. Between 1910 and 1990, the gap between champions and last place teams in either league was seldom greater than .33% of the games played. This means that the best team seldom won more than 2/3 of their games, and the worst seldom lost more than 2/3. In another way of putting it, the best and worst in a league often were approximately the inverse of each other, but not more than a 2 to 1 ratio. In other words, season winners often average a win a three game series, but sweeps are balanced out by series match losses. This does not apply to football. There are too few games played; perhaps the checks and balances in football are less delicate. Baseball on the other hand, was forged long ago in Greek proportions.
For example, baseball writers now and then comment on the incredible beauty of the 90 foot distance to first base, truly a decision of genius. Given the diamond shape of the infield (with fielders stationed in an arc around the bases, roughly equidistant from the batter) most ground balls in the infield reach the fielder at about half or less the total time it takes the average professional athlete to run to first, which leaves the fielder the same amount of time to throw to first. That means that almost all plays are close at first. Even bunts can be picked up in that same amount of time by the pitcher or catcher. Only a few players in baseball history have been fast enough to upset this geometric balance between offense and defense, namely George Sisler, Ty Cobb, and for a while, Mickey Mantle. There have been few others who have overcome the principle of inertia which slows the runner coming out of the batter’s box as well, a principle baseball is designed to play with. Money can’t do that, only will power and determination.
There is a similar balance in most ballparks today between home runs and fly outs. Probably one ball out of four intended for the seats (or bullpen) actually makes it, the rest are caught on the warning track. During an average game at least twelve long balls (just to throw out a rough figure) out of an approximate 72 at bats, land in a narrow band between the front of the warning track and a space ten feet behind the wall, most of them in front of the wall. Therefore, most fly balls are unpredictable; with the bases loaded, and two out, will that fly be an out or four runs on the board? No one can tell, but the “invisible hand” principle says that sometimes it will be a grand slam, and for any given team. Again, only a few players have the muscle, the focus and will power to break through the laws of ballistics, in which the possible trajectories limit the distance of a hurled or batted object; Babe Ruth, Frank Howard, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, and Mark McGwire, for example, and now Barry Bonds. It’s harder than it looks, because the laws of gravity are very exact. What’s fun about baseball is that it plays with those laws. It is equally hard to throw from the warning track to home plate without a bounce, which is what makes the “tag up” rule so much fun. A good arm in the outfield versus an average runner, an average arm versus a slow runner, a great arm versus an excellent runner; it’s always going to be close, and therefore unpredictable.
This is one of the reasons why there is seldom a monopoly on wins: There are too many ways to lose. In a game of inches, even the best team in history will blow more than sixty games on their way to the pennant. When baseball teams played 156 games, seldom would a team win less than 52 games, 1/3 of the games, (.333) or more than 104, or 2/3rds. (.666). There have been occasional “losing” teams who for various reasons, threw the numbers out of whack for a few years, notably the Browns, (Boston and then St. Louis) and any team from Philadelphia. But overall the numbers are impressive. Let’s take a look.
National League: 1910
1911: Boston Braves .291, 44 wins
1913: St. Louis Cardinals .340, 51 wins (above .333; 150 games played)
1917: Pittsburgh Pirates .331, 41 wins
(In 1918, only 130 games were played, in 1919 only 137)
American League: 1910
1910: St. Louis Browns: .305 47 wins
1911: St. Louis Browns: .296 45 wins
1912: Boston Red Sox .691 105 wins (they won the Series)
New York Yankees .329 50 wins (borderline)
1914 Cleveland .333, 51 wins (borderline)
1915 Philadelphia .283 43 wins (the team had won the pennant the year before but ran into debt and sold off the entire team, leaving rookies)
1916 Philadelphia .235 36 wins (see above)
1919 Philadelphia .257 36 wins (see above)
National League: 1920s
(The Phils had a bad streak, throwing off the numbers, but they were generally close to .333)
1921: Philadelphia Phils . .331 51 wins
1923 Philadelphia Phils .325 50 wins
1927 Philadelphia Phils .331 51 wins
1928 Philadelphia Phils .283 43 wins
American League: 1920s
(The Red Sox owner traded away a number of their best players in order to invest in Broadway. It was a famous scandal at the time)
1920: Philadelphia A’s .312 48 wins (see above)
1925 Boston Red Sox .309 47 wins (see above)
1926 Boston Red Sox .301 46 wins (see above)
1927 Boston Red Sox .331 51 wins (see above)
National League: 1930s
1935 Boston Braves .248 38 wins
1938 Philadelphia Phils .300 45 wins
1939 Philadelphia Phils .298 45 wins
American League: 1930s
1931 Philadelphia A’s .704 107 wins
1932 New York Yankees .695 107 wins
1937 St. Louis Browns .299 46 wins
1939 New York Yankees .702 106 wins
St. Louis Browns .279 43 wins (one of the greatest discrepancies between losers and winners in the same league; the Browns lost five more games than the Yankees won, which was a lot of games!)
National League: 1940’s
1940 Philadelphia Phils .327 50 wins
1941 Philadelphia Phils .279 43 wins
1942 St. Louis Cardinals .688 106 wins
Philadelphia Phils .278 42 wins
1943 St. Louis Cardinals .682 105 wins
1944 St. Louis Cardinals .682 105 wins
1945 Philadelphia Phils .299 46 wins
American League 1940s
1942 New York Yankees .669 103 wins (154 games played)
1943 Philadelphia A’s .318 49 wins
1946 Philadelphia A’s .318 49 wins
1949 Washington Senators .325 50 wins (This was the only season the Senators fell back of the 1/3 mark)
National League 1950s
1952 Pittsburgh Pirates .273 42 wins
1953 Brooklyn Dodgers .682 105 wins
Pittsburgh Pirates .325 50 wins
American League 1950s
1952 Detroit Tigers .325 50 wins
1954 Cleveland Indians .721 111 wins
Philadelphia A’s .331 51 wins (borderline)
National League 1960s
1961 Philadelphia Phillies .305, 47 wins
1962 New York Mets .250 40 wins (120 losses, 160 games played; no one had ever lost that many before in a single seaon. But the Mets were famous for that!)
1963 New York Mets .315 50 wins
1964 New York Mets .327 53 wins
1965 New York Mets .309 50 wins
1969 Montreal Expos .321 52 wins
San Diego Padres .321 52 wins
American League 1960s
1961 New York Yankees .673, 109 wins
1969 Baltimore Orioles .673, 109 wins
National League 1970s
1975 Cincinnati .667 108 wins (borderline)
American League 1970s
1970 Baltimore .667, 108 wins
1979 Toronto Blue Jays .327 53 wins (the only team in the 1970s or 80s to end the season below .333, although the Oakland As bombed out at .333 and 54 wins in that same year.)
National League 1980s
1986 New York Mets .667 108 wins
American League 1980s
Detroit had 104 wins in 1984, as did the A’s in 1988, but that comes out to .642, not quite 2/3rds. In 1988 Baltimore had only 54 wins, which gave them a .335 win average. Very close!
56 “anomalies” in eighty seasons, 160 standings; both high and low. Ten of these involved New York teams, eighteen involved teams from Philadelphia. Including all teams, any league standings of any given year had a 35% chance of experiencing an anomaly, just over 1/3. In addition, no team has ever lost more than ¾ of their games, except the 1916 Athletics. (The Mets lost exact that fraction in 1962, but not more), and no team has ever won more than .721% of their games during that period, in other words, better than the Cleveland Indians of 1954. No team has ever reached the ¾ win mark either, the baseball equivalent of a monopoly.
What is remarkable is how New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, all cities with both American and National League teams most of this era, produce by far the most anomalies, both for most single season wins and losses.
Here’s how it stacks up:
New York Yankees: 1 losing 4 winning seasons out of the mean.
New York Mets: 1 winning 4 losing seasons out of the mean
Philadelphia Phils 0 winning, 11 losing seasons out of the mean
Philadelphia A’s 1 winning 7 losing seasons out of the mean
St. Louis Cardinals: 3 winning 1 losing season out of the mean
St. Louis Browns: 4 losing, 0 winning seasons out of the mean.
In most cases, the super-winners were well established organizations in major markets, the super-losers were newcomers to those markets, who may have experienced unfair competition in several ways. The story with Philadelphia is different; it seems that there were two established teams in a market big enough for only one, and they both suffered. The Philadelphia A’s left, and have never been replaced.
This means that other than these three bi-league cities, which account for 37 of the 56 anomalies, only 19 out of 160 finishes have experienced anomalies, outside of the 1/3 to 2/3 win range. That is a percentage of .118, which is certainly low indeed, lower than one in five finishes. Please also note that two of these involved expansion year teams other than the Mets, whose struggles were expected. That brings the number down to .106! Then factor in that the owner of the Boston Red Sox stripped the team of all serious players in 1920 to create three disastrous seasons, and the number reaches .0875%, 14 season finishes out of the norm during an 80 year period, or one anomaly in eleven finishes.
What we might conclude here, if anything, is that Smith’s “invisible hand” does work in baseball, most of the time, except when thrown out of whack by overwhelming cross-town competition, or by intentional self-destruction. This illustrates that in baseball, as in the world, as long as everyone gets a fair shake, things stay in balance, and that it is possible for a few powerful individuals to throw the numbers off once in a while.
But you knew that!
What Baseball Has to Say About Adam Smith’s Theory of Free Market Competition
When I was a kid growing up as a Senators’ fan in Washington, D.C. no one ever talked about the business of baseball. It wasn’t fashionable anywhere, but it certainly was the least fashionable in Washington. It was not a big baseball town by today’s standards, too many transient highly educated people. But even among baseball fans, the subject of baseball as business was never discussed, taboo even, because in fact baseball had no business in Washington. It was a patriotic gesture! The price of a baseball team was like the “cost of freedom;” All Americans should be willing to lay down our lives so that we can have baseball in the Nation’s Capitol. Like Democracy and the right to representation in Congress, there are certain inalienable rights. Since D.C. didn’t have either of these, it stands to reason they should at least have baseball, at any price. We were very warped in our values back then.
Then Nixon came, and our Constitutional right to baseball disappeared. It was part of the Watergate Scandal, in fact. Did you hear that E. Howard Hunt was seen in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, selling tickets months before the move of the team was announced? That rumor has never been confirmed or denied. But it was all very suspicious. We didn’t realize that the team could be bought and sold like..like a company or something! It seemed like slavery in those naïve by-gone days! Curt Flood, Don Lock, Ed Brinkman, Del Unser, on the trading block like slaves! Now we don’t think twice about it.
Today, the business of baseball is all people talk about. How many wins can 100 million dollars buy? Someone has a computer program to figure it out. If money buys wins, tell me why some teams pay a million dollars per win, some a half a million?
The principles mentioned in Adam Smith’s philosophical writings, especially the “invisible hand,” work in baseball regardless of economics. This is because there are many kinds of competition in baseball, and the kind we find on the field overrides all others.
While owners are busy competing with each others’ wallets, snipping off this player’s bonus, and that player’s raise, raising the price of parking, of cable TV, throwing money into pitching based on some formula for post-season success, the players themselves are busy competing on the field, where supposedly, money can’t buy wins, theoretically not even umpires. Games are still won by sweat, hard work and determination.
As long as players are free to compete in their hearts for the adoration of their fans, money will never guarantee success. Like happiness and love, there are certain things that money is always on the verge of being able to buy; but it never works out. Adam Smith wrote about the “Invisible Hand,” which, in my personal interpretation says that if all the different parties in a certain field are all free to compete with one another, there will be a healthy balance, and the strongest companies with the best products will thrive, to the benefit of all, whereas inefficient companies will do less well. Obviously, having a millionaire “backer” gives some companies the edge to get established; but according to Smith, that isn’t the most important factor.
The Smithian universe is not one of blind probability, but one of probability based on each human beings desire to succeed. Therefore, the standings in baseball should stay within a statistical boundary not likely according to blind probability. It should reflect a great overarching mythic principle of balance which Plato called Dikaion, or Universal Justice. In the early Vedas it is called Rta (pronounced err-tah) the underlying geometric blueprint behind all universal phenomenon, which evolved over time into the concept of Dharma, now a popular TV show. Then there were the Philadelphia teams of the early 20th Century, which were all over the map. Their results really did seem random.
Theoretically, if the invisible hand is allowed to move the players around by natural selection, there will never be a monopoly, and everyone will have a fair share. In a sense, baseball proves this principle. Even though the amount of money spent on teams has always varied greatly, with some teams (ie The Yankees) often spend three or four times the money other teams do (ie The Senators) the gap between wins and losses is never that great. Between 1910 and 1990, the gap between champions and last place teams in either league was seldom greater than .33% of the games played. This means that the best team seldom won more than 2/3 of their games, and the worst seldom lost more than 2/3. In another way of putting it, the best and worst in a league often were approximately the inverse of each other, but not more than a 2 to 1 ratio. In other words, season winners often average a win a three game series, but sweeps are balanced out by series match losses. This does not apply to football. There are too few games played; perhaps the checks and balances in football are less delicate. Baseball on the other hand, was forged long ago in Greek proportions.
For example, baseball writers now and then comment on the incredible beauty of the 90 foot distance to first base, truly a decision of genius. Given the diamond shape of the infield (with fielders stationed in an arc around the bases, roughly equidistant from the batter) most ground balls in the infield reach the fielder at about half or less the total time it takes the average professional athlete to run to first, which leaves the fielder the same amount of time to throw to first. That means that almost all plays are close at first. Even bunts can be picked up in that same amount of time by the pitcher or catcher. Only a few players in baseball history have been fast enough to upset this geometric balance between offense and defense, namely George Sisler, Ty Cobb, and for a while, Mickey Mantle. There have been few others who have overcome the principle of inertia which slows the runner coming out of the batter’s box as well, a principle baseball is designed to play with. Money can’t do that, only will power and determination.
There is a similar balance in most ballparks today between home runs and fly outs. Probably one ball out of four intended for the seats (or bullpen) actually makes it, the rest are caught on the warning track. During an average game at least twelve long balls (just to throw out a rough figure) out of an approximate 72 at bats, land in a narrow band between the front of the warning track and a space ten feet behind the wall, most of them in front of the wall. Therefore, most fly balls are unpredictable; with the bases loaded, and two out, will that fly be an out or four runs on the board? No one can tell, but the “invisible hand” principle says that sometimes it will be a grand slam, and for any given team. Again, only a few players have the muscle, the focus and will power to break through the laws of ballistics, in which the possible trajectories limit the distance of a hurled or batted object; Babe Ruth, Frank Howard, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, and Mark McGwire, for example, and now Barry Bonds. It’s harder than it looks, because the laws of gravity are very exact. What’s fun about baseball is that it plays with those laws. It is equally hard to throw from the warning track to home plate without a bounce, which is what makes the “tag up” rule so much fun. A good arm in the outfield versus an average runner, an average arm versus a slow runner, a great arm versus an excellent runner; it’s always going to be close, and therefore unpredictable.
This is one of the reasons why there is seldom a monopoly on wins: There are too many ways to lose. In a game of inches, even the best team in history will blow more than sixty games on their way to the pennant. When baseball teams played 156 games, seldom would a team win less than 52 games, 1/3 of the games, (.333) or more than 104, or 2/3rds. (.666). There have been occasional “losing” teams who for various reasons, threw the numbers out of whack for a few years, notably the Browns, (Boston and then St. Louis) and any team from Philadelphia. But overall the numbers are impressive. Let’s take a look.
National League: 1910
1911: Boston Braves .291, 44 wins
1913: St. Louis Cardinals .340, 51 wins (above .333; 150 games played)
1917: Pittsburgh Pirates .331, 41 wins
(In 1918, only 130 games were played, in 1919 only 137)
American League: 1910
1910: St. Louis Browns: .305 47 wins
1911: St. Louis Browns: .296 45 wins
1912: Boston Red Sox .691 105 wins (they won the Series)
New York Yankees .329 50 wins (borderline)
1914 Cleveland .333, 51 wins (borderline)
1915 Philadelphia .283 43 wins (the team had won the pennant the year before but ran into debt and sold off the entire team, leaving rookies)
1916 Philadelphia .235 36 wins (see above)
1919 Philadelphia .257 36 wins (see above)
National League: 1920s
(The Phils had a bad streak, throwing off the numbers, but they were generally close to .333)
1921: Philadelphia Phils . .331 51 wins
1923 Philadelphia Phils .325 50 wins
1927 Philadelphia Phils .331 51 wins
1928 Philadelphia Phils .283 43 wins
American League: 1920s
(The Red Sox owner traded away a number of their best players in order to invest in Broadway. It was a famous scandal at the time)
1920: Philadelphia A’s .312 48 wins (see above)
1925 Boston Red Sox .309 47 wins (see above)
1926 Boston Red Sox .301 46 wins (see above)
1927 Boston Red Sox .331 51 wins (see above)
National League: 1930s
1935 Boston Braves .248 38 wins
1938 Philadelphia Phils .300 45 wins
1939 Philadelphia Phils .298 45 wins
American League: 1930s
1931 Philadelphia A’s .704 107 wins
1932 New York Yankees .695 107 wins
1937 St. Louis Browns .299 46 wins
1939 New York Yankees .702 106 wins
St. Louis Browns .279 43 wins (one of the greatest discrepancies between losers and winners in the same league; the Browns lost five more games than the Yankees won, which was a lot of games!)
National League: 1940’s
1940 Philadelphia Phils .327 50 wins
1941 Philadelphia Phils .279 43 wins
1942 St. Louis Cardinals .688 106 wins
Philadelphia Phils .278 42 wins
1943 St. Louis Cardinals .682 105 wins
1944 St. Louis Cardinals .682 105 wins
1945 Philadelphia Phils .299 46 wins
American League 1940s
1942 New York Yankees .669 103 wins (154 games played)
1943 Philadelphia A’s .318 49 wins
1946 Philadelphia A’s .318 49 wins
1949 Washington Senators .325 50 wins (This was the only season the Senators fell back of the 1/3 mark)
National League 1950s
1952 Pittsburgh Pirates .273 42 wins
1953 Brooklyn Dodgers .682 105 wins
Pittsburgh Pirates .325 50 wins
American League 1950s
1952 Detroit Tigers .325 50 wins
1954 Cleveland Indians .721 111 wins
Philadelphia A’s .331 51 wins (borderline)
National League 1960s
1961 Philadelphia Phillies .305, 47 wins
1962 New York Mets .250 40 wins (120 losses, 160 games played; no one had ever lost that many before in a single seaon. But the Mets were famous for that!)
1963 New York Mets .315 50 wins
1964 New York Mets .327 53 wins
1965 New York Mets .309 50 wins
1969 Montreal Expos .321 52 wins
San Diego Padres .321 52 wins
American League 1960s
1961 New York Yankees .673, 109 wins
1969 Baltimore Orioles .673, 109 wins
National League 1970s
1975 Cincinnati .667 108 wins (borderline)
American League 1970s
1970 Baltimore .667, 108 wins
1979 Toronto Blue Jays .327 53 wins (the only team in the 1970s or 80s to end the season below .333, although the Oakland As bombed out at .333 and 54 wins in that same year.)
National League 1980s
1986 New York Mets .667 108 wins
American League 1980s
Detroit had 104 wins in 1984, as did the A’s in 1988, but that comes out to .642, not quite 2/3rds. In 1988 Baltimore had only 54 wins, which gave them a .335 win average. Very close!
56 “anomalies” in eighty seasons, 160 standings; both high and low. Ten of these involved New York teams, eighteen involved teams from Philadelphia. Including all teams, any league standings of any given year had a 35% chance of experiencing an anomaly, just over 1/3. In addition, no team has ever lost more than ¾ of their games, except the 1916 Athletics. (The Mets lost exact that fraction in 1962, but not more), and no team has ever won more than .721% of their games during that period, in other words, better than the Cleveland Indians of 1954. No team has ever reached the ¾ win mark either, the baseball equivalent of a monopoly.
What is remarkable is how New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, all cities with both American and National League teams most of this era, produce by far the most anomalies, both for most single season wins and losses.
Here’s how it stacks up:
New York Yankees: 1 losing 4 winning seasons out of the mean.
New York Mets: 1 winning 4 losing seasons out of the mean
Philadelphia Phils 0 winning, 11 losing seasons out of the mean
Philadelphia A’s 1 winning 7 losing seasons out of the mean
St. Louis Cardinals: 3 winning 1 losing season out of the mean
St. Louis Browns: 4 losing, 0 winning seasons out of the mean.
In most cases, the super-winners were well established organizations in major markets, the super-losers were newcomers to those markets, who may have experienced unfair competition in several ways. The story with Philadelphia is different; it seems that there were two established teams in a market big enough for only one, and they both suffered. The Philadelphia A’s left, and have never been replaced.
This means that other than these three bi-league cities, which account for 37 of the 56 anomalies, only 19 out of 160 finishes have experienced anomalies, outside of the 1/3 to 2/3 win range. That is a percentage of .118, which is certainly low indeed, lower than one in five finishes. Please also note that two of these involved expansion year teams other than the Mets, whose struggles were expected. That brings the number down to .106! Then factor in that the owner of the Boston Red Sox stripped the team of all serious players in 1920 to create three disastrous seasons, and the number reaches .0875%, 14 season finishes out of the norm during an 80 year period, or one anomaly in eleven finishes.
What we might conclude here, if anything, is that Smith’s “invisible hand” does work in baseball, most of the time, except when thrown out of whack by overwhelming cross-town competition, or by intentional self-destruction. This illustrates that in baseball, as in the world, as long as everyone gets a fair shake, things stay in balance, and that it is possible for a few powerful individuals to throw the numbers off once in a while.
But you knew that!
posted by evan pritchard | 3:28 PM
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