Call me Old School. I don’t mind. Actually, you can just call me old. That’s OK. I am.
Rick Cleveland
And it seems the older I get, the more I hate how much the almighty dollar defines sports, especially at the college and professional levels. The teams that spend the most usually win the most. Its true on the college level, just as it has nearly always been true in the pros.
Seven teams in the Top 10 in the Associated Press college football poll this week are also among the top 10 spenders on their rosters, according to a report in The Athletic. That includes the Ole Miss Rebels, who ranked eighth in roster spending and rank ninth in the AP poll. Only three teams that are not in the top 10 in spending are actually in the AP Top 10. So let’s raise a glass to Indiana (No. 5), BYU (No. 8) and Texas Tech (No. 10), which crack the top 10 without spending top 10 money. Don’t raise it too high for Texas Tech, however. The Red Raiders do have all that backing from Permian Basin oil money and they do rank No. 11 on The Athletic’s list of big spenders.
Major League Baseball? The Los Angeles Dodgers have by far the highest payroll in the big leagues. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Dodgers are the two-time defending World Series champions. They spend big bucks. They win big, too.
Case in point: The Dodgers faced a (for them) severe pitching shortage back in August. So they just went out and traded three top prospects to the Detroit Tigers for two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, despite the fact Skubal will become a free agent after this season and thus will command a salary that would pretty much buy Tupelo or Meridian or maybe both.
Don’t bet against Dodger Blue as a permanent home for Skubal, who, seriously, is expected to command a contract of somewhere between $400 million or $500 million over nine or 10 years. Of course, the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and Phillies, all large market teams, will be bidding, too.
Brewers spend less but still win
One franchise that most likely will not be bidding for Skubal’s services is the Milwaukee Brewers, the primary reason I write what I write today. These are the Brewers, a small market team that has never, ever won a World Series. These are the Brewers who currently defy all baseball odds. These are the Brewers who spend about $146 million on player salaries, far less than half of the roughly $340 million the Dodgers spend.
And, yes, these are the Milwaukee Brewers who now lead the Dodgers two victories to none in the best of seven series to determine the National League pennant winner. These are the Brewers who are fighting the almighty dollar by playing Old School baseball.
The modern game of baseball has morphed into something far different from the sport I dearly loved as a child and am still trying to love today. Today’s game is defined by two factors: home run power and power pitching. That’s where the Dodgers have spent so many of those millions: on guys who can hit the ball out of the yard and guys such as Skubal, who can throw a sinking fastball at 97 miles per hour.
In fact, the Dodgers spent a king’s ransom on one player who, when healthy, can do both. Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese version of Babe Ruth, throws 100 mph fastballs and has also averaged 51 home runs per season over the previous three. The Dodgers are paying Ohtani $700 million over 10 years. That’s $70 million per year, which is roughly what the entire Washington Nationals team makes this year.
So how can the Brewers compete against all that money? Well, they play Old School baseball. They bunt. They steal bases. They take the extra base. They hit behind the runner. They play clean defense. They always hit the cut-off man. Their manager, Pat Murphy, came up through the college ranks, stresses fundamentals and looks like he just walked out of central casting for a 1950s black and white baseball movie, square jaw and all. He has made all the right calls.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, a solid and likable baseball guy, may have said it best about Murphy’s team.
“They play baseball the way it was intended,” Roberts told reporters. “They value 90 feet. They take extra bases. They defend well. They’re athletic. They prevent runs with really good pitching and then with the defense layered in. They don’t give pitches away.”
The Brewers do sometimes hit home runs. But they are more likely to score with an opposite field single, a stolen base, a grounder to the right side to move the runner to third and then a sacrifice fly. They manufacture runs. This old school baseball guy loves it.
A rookie from Mississippi
I also love it that they have a 22-year-old rookie shortstop named Cooper Pratt from Magnolia Heights School in Senatobia. Pratt had two hits in the Brewers’ 7-4 victory Monday night. He hit .280 as a rookie. His on-base percentage for the National League Championship series is .500.
True story. I grew up a New York Yankees fan, mostly because my folks were Yankee fans. I ditched the Yankees during the George Steinbrenner years when pulling for the Pinstripes seemed too much like pulling for Chase Manhattan.
I switched my Major League allegiances years ago to the Atlanta Braves, who were once the Milwaukee Braves. And now that the Dodgers have eliminated the Braves, I turn to the small-market Brewers and their Old School approach.
Meanwhile, the Cleveland Guardians lead the Tampa Bay Rays 1-0 in the American League playoff series, despite the fact that you could combine the salaries of both those ballclubs and not get to even half of what the vaunted New York Yankees pay their players.
In Major League Baseball, at least this year, money isn’t everything. For me, at least, that’s refreshing.
