Cap In Hand : How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports and Why the Free Market Could Save Them

Iconic baseball writer Bill James, in 1987, frustrated with MLB's labour stoppages and the decline of the minor leagues, wrote that the minors 'were an abomination... if you're selling a sport and the players don't care about winning, that's not a sport. That's a fraud... an exhibition masquerading as a contest.' Bill imagined a better model and proposed that, as opposed to limiting the number of teams in MLB to protect parity, a free market was capable of sustaining many more franchises - hundreds, even - if we would just allow it to sort out the level at which those cities might best compete. Cap in Hand goes a step further, arguing that a free market in sports teams and athletes once existed and could work again if the monopolists of MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL would simply relent from salary-restraint schemes and reserve-clause models that result in elite talent being spread as thinly as possible and mediocrity being rewarded via amateur drafts and equalisation payments. Cap In Hand a

Iconic baseball writer Bill James, in 1987, frustrated with MLB's labour stoppages and the decline of the minor leagues, wrote that the minors 'were an abomination... if you're selling a sport and the players don't care about winning, that's not a sport. That's a fraud... an exhibition masquerading as a contest.' Bill imagined a better model and proposed that, as opposed to limiting the number of teams in MLB to protect parity, a free market was capable of sustaining many more franchises - hundreds, even - if we would just allow it to sort out the level at which those cities might best compete. Cap in Hand goes a step further, arguing that a free market in sports teams and athletes once existed and could work again if the monopolists of MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL would simply relent from salary-restraint schemes and reserve-clause models that result in elite talent being spread as thinly as possible and mediocrity being rewarded via amateur drafts and equalisation payments. Cap In Hand a