Hello everyone and welcome to the first edition of "In the Name of Glove." My name is Pat Mullane, a Washington, DC based (formerly of New England) columnist for RedSox2000. I will be covering our beloved BoSox when they play in Baltimore and also will add random columns at regular intervals.

The first edition of "In the Name of Glove" deals with an issue that strikes deep in the hearts of baseball fans every where - competition. Every fan of every team has the god-given right to expect their team to contend for the World Series when spring training breaks camps - even us Red Sox fans. With our track record...especially us Red Sox fans! However, economics has taken the fun out of baseball. Now only the teams with the most money to spend contend for the playoffs. George Steinbrenner's Yankees are now taking the problem to new heights. The Yankees outspent every major league team the past three years, winning the championship in 1996, 98 and 99, failing to win in 1997 - the year of the Blockbuster Video mogul Wayne Huizenga and his Rent-a-Marlins.

New York is the biggest of the big-market teams. Contracts with MSG Television and countless other marketing agreements have given the Yankees a bottomless piggy bank with which to buy players. No one can outspend the Yankees and no one can out bid them for a player. From here on out, free agents are signed only if the Yankees let you sign them. Is this fair to baseball? No!

So what can be done? The Players Union, arguably the most powerful union in the world, will never let a salary cap happen and the have owners will never let the have-not owners have an equitable revenue sharing plan that will encourage fielding a competitive team. And let's face it, when the Yankees can buy any player they want, what's the point of developing a farm system. The Yankees wait for good players to develop in other systems and hit the free agent market and then suck them up.

All that is left is filing an anti-trust suit on behalf of the remaining 29 major league teams. For those of you unfamiliar with anti-trust law, these are the same laws that broke up Bell Communication into the Baby Bells (Bell South, Bell Atlantic, South West Bell, etc.) that have their names stamped on the front of most of our phone bills. Bill Gates is the latest victim (or should we say perpetrator), with the federal courts threatening to break up MicroSoft into three pieces because of it's monopoly of the software market. Both of these companies, like the Yankees, used excessive funds to eliminate competition in their product markets.

The Federal Trade Commision has the following to say about monopolies:

"While it is not illegal to have a monopoly position in a market, the antitrust laws make it unlawful to maintain or attempt to create a monopoly through tactics that either unreasonably exclude firms from the market or significantly impair their ability to compete. A single firm may commit a violation through its unilateral actions, or a violation may result if a group of firms work together to monopolize a market."

Such a suit would result in a ruling that would force Georgie Porgie (what's a Red Sox column with out some Jimywockey?) and his Yankees to operate under a budget and spending structure that represents the spending power and funding level of the remaining 29 teams. Maybe such a suit would encourage baseball to quit being a bunch of greedy jerks and come up with their own solution along the way.

The House of Representatives Committee on Commerce declined comment, stating that the author was lunatic and should not waste the precious time and tax-payer money of the committee. I find it no coincidence that there are four members of this committee from the state of New York, more than any other state. Damn Yankees fans and the team's influence is everywhere.

The fact is the Yankees have raised the stakes to a level that no other major league team can compete at. For any other team to have the same payroll or dominate the free agent market would cause that team to operate a permanent deficit - i.e., lose money, go broke, declare bankruptcy, go belly up, pull a munson, etc.

This may sound like the rantings of a delusional Red Sox fan, which is not entirely wrong. However, competition has been eliminated from baseball and the national past time has been stolen from the fans. The owners and the players are too greedy to return baseball to the competition that once made the sport the greatest in the world and something must be done. This is just a one more idea national past time will ignore on it's way to becoming the national afterthought.

patdaddy@prodigy.net