Matt Provenzano – Beyond the Box Score: Major League Baseball is planning to open up minority stakes in MLB teams to investment funds. Those in charge at MLB are positioning this as great for the health of baseball, yet another way for the league to grow and everyone to make more money. In reality, it’s a path towards the league shrinking and ownership continuing to make more money while everyone else suffers in one way or another. I look forward to the day when the Chicago Cubs are no more because the team couldn’t make enough money to pay off the debt included in their sale to some investment fund. That’s the sort of end that is very fitting for the path MLB has been on for some years now.
Stephanie Apstein – Sports Illustrated: The Wall Street goons that have been occupying MLB front offices for a few years now are trash, who would have thought? I don’t like to paint in broad strokes, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it’s a duck. MLB and team owners knew what they were getting when they started hiring more and more dudebros from a culture where women aren’t just excluded but are hated. Add that culture to the pre-existing MLB culture that was quite hostile towards women and you have incidents like the one involving now-former Houston Astros Assistant General Manager Brandon Taubman.
Daniel Brim – Dodgers Digest: We all parse out our baseball fandom in many different ways. I won’t deny that my Cubs fandom makes up a huge part of my relationship with baseball. I’m not about to tell anyone else how to parse out their baseball fandom. However, I will say that a few years ago I realized that I didn’t love MLB and that there was baseball being played, that was worth watching, the globe over by leagues that have nothing to do with MLB. That baseball is fun and high quality and though it can have issues akin to those found in MLB (both Liga Mexicana de Béisbol and Liga Mexicana del Pacífico have no problem employing and promoting convicted child molester Luke Heimlich) it is a different outlet for my fandom. I love baseball, the Cubs are a part of that, but baseball is bigger than the Cubs and it’s certainly bigger than MLB. Once I learned to love the game of baseball and not just one organization, league, or team I knew my fandom would never die. That is a path worth exploring for anyone becoming jaded by the way MLB conducts business.
Lead photo courtesy of Michael Ciaglo – Houston Chronicle
