were at their highest levels in ten years. There were players challenging some of baseball’s biggest records and the Pennant races were very competitive even in small market towns like Montreal and Seattle. In the 1950’s, before free agency, there were 16 teams in Major League Baseball, but by the mid 1990’s the Major Leagues had grown to include 30 teams. Having so many teams has made it increasingly difficult for the owners to agree on a homogenous agenda. The inability of the owners to agree on an agenda resulted in the sports labor movement being able to shift the balance of power decidedly in the favor of the players. The owners had gone to war to get the players to agree to a hard salary cap, but by the time the owners had come to an agreement about what should be done to address the financial problems facing baseball, the players had already reached a level of combined wealth that allowed them to hold out indefinitely against the new economic system the owners wanted to put into place in 1994. Because of the bargaining power of the players the owners were unable to get the salary cap they wanted, instead they were forced to accept a watered-down luxury tax that penalized the teams with the highest payrolls and modestly subsidized baseball’s poorest teams. The tax has had some deterrent effect on the spending of some teams. There have been some clubs that have chosen not to sign some high-priced players to avoid paying into the revenue-sharing pool set up by the luxury tax. But, the plan has done nothing to close the gap between the richest and poorest clubs in the Major Leagues. The New York Yankees generate $60 million dollars in local television broadcast revenue, and they have not blinked at paying $5 million extra to field the best team in baseball. Also, teams like the Braves and Orioles, with their new high-revenue ballparks, have not hesitated to run up the tab to stay in contention year after year...
