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Baseball Parity By Denis Mueller It is that time of year, soon the first ball will be thrown out and the boys of summer will return. During the season, you will hear references about some golden age when the teams were equal and everyone had a chance. Well, it never existed. Baseball, more than any other of our sports, has never been equal. Rich teams have always dominated the poorer franchises. Let's look at the record. Before Baltimore had a team there were the St. Louis Browns who later became the Orioles. The Browns had a history of futility that spanned over 50 years. Only once did they win the pennant and that was in 1944 when World War II had taken many of the good players. Attendance was so bad during the 1950's that legendary owner Bill Veeck once had the fans vote on what the team would do in a particular situation. With only about 500 people in the stands, decisions were based on a show of hands. Another example is the Philadelphia Philles. They had a string of bad luck that lasted through the first half of the 20th century. It was only broken in 1950 when the "Wiz Kids" won the national league flag. But perhaps the cruelest ex- ample of futility lies in the history of the Chicago baseball teams, the Cubs and the White Sox. For 177 baseball seasons neither team has won a World Series. The White Sox last won one in 1917 and the Cubs somehow man- ages to go back even further to 1908. The Sox, believe it or not, were once the flagship team of the American league. They won it in 1901 and again in 1906 before winning the 1917 World Series. Then came the "Black Sox" scandal when they had the distinction of fixing the series. For the next 40 years, they did not win a pennant and when they did, the Los Angles Dodgers ousted them, 4 games to 2. The Cubs are another story. Their last championship goes back to 1908. In the 1930's they were pretty good but never good enough to win it. Their last appearance in the "Series" came in 1945 when the Tigers defeated them. After that it was pretty much downhill. It wasn't until 1967 that they had a winning record. So now it is a new season and guess what? The teams that spend the most tend to win. All those except the Dodgers who are pretty much a trainwreck-I feel no pain for them because rooting for a team owned by Rupert Murdoch is like rooting for the devil. But to get back to my point about parity and the game of baseball, unlike football, where anyone can win, baseball has always been league where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Sort of like life. That's why Baseball is America's game.