Do the Yankees Truly Dominate Baseball?
The Truth about Competitive Imbalance in Sports
Oct 27, 2009
On Sunday night the New York Yankees defeated the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to win the American League Championship Series four-games-to-two. It was their 40th AL pennant, a record for championship appearances in North American team sports. On Wednesday they will begin the World Series against the defending champion Philadelphia Phillies in pursuit of their 27th title, which would also be a record.
In the past 14-seasons the Yankees have made it to the World Series six-times and won it in four of those trips, and their success has led critics to condemn Major League Baseball as the sport with less diversity at the top than any other. A closer examination proves that to be untrue; while the Yanks have certainly flourished, leagues such as the National Basketball Association have seen even fewer teams compete for the ultimate goal.
Lack of a Salary Cap: Good or Bad?
Looking at the four major North American sports leagues (MLB, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, and the NBA) over the last 20 years shows that MLB is no more dominated by the Yankees than the other sports are by single teams. Since 1990, while 12 separate teams have won the World Series and the Super Bowl, and 11 have won the Stanley Cup, only seven have managed to win the NBA Championship.
A salary cap has been touted as a panacea for the problems that supposedly plague MLB more than other leagues. Yet despite the presence of a hard salary cap in the NBA and the NFL for most of the last two decades, the sports have had just as hard a time getting fresh blood into the most important games as baseball has had. The NHL added a cap in 2005 after it lost an entire season due to a lockout, and though it is too soon to tell, in the first four seasons of play with it in place, no team has yet won the Cup twice (although the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins have met in the Stanley Cup Finals the last two seasons in a row, with the Wings winning in 2008 and the Penguins in 2009).
Dynastic Teams Draw Interest
There is a belief that has existed for some time that holds that baseball has a lack of turnover compared to every other sport. In truth, it is the NBA that sees less change among the teams that win its championship than all others. If a dynasty is defined as a team that wins three or more championships in the span of five-years or less, the Yankees are the only one that has been in baseball since the 1972-1974 Oakland Athletics, who won three World Series in a row.
In just the last 20 years there have been many more dynasties than just the Yankees. In the NFL the Dallas Cowboys and the New England Patriots both won three Super Bowls in separate four year spans (1992, 1993, and 1995 for Dallas; 2001, 2003, and 2004 for New England); the Patriots also made it to a fourth Super Bowl after the 2007 season, but lost to the New York Giants. The NHL has seen no true reign since the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s, but the Detroit Red Wings have come extremely close, winning the Stanley Cup in 1997, 1998, 2002, and 2008 (they also lost in the Cup Finals in 1995 and 2009).
No circuit has seen more teams become dominant for long runs than the NBA. Since 1990 the NBA has had its share of dynasties, starting with the Chicago Bulls winning three-in-a-row from 1991-1993, and then again from 1996-1998 with a two year break in between when superstar Michael Jordan took time off from basketball to try his hand at baseball. The Los Angeles Lakers then had a three-peat of their own (2000-2002), and the San Antonio Spurs won titles in 1999, 2003, 2005, and 2007. The Lakers recently won the 2009 championship, giving them four for this decade (and they have journeyed to the Finals two more times, in 2004 when they lost to the Detroit Pistons, and 2008 when they were beaten by their arch rivals, the Boston Celtics).
The Teams with the Most Fans have the Most Detractors too
Sports leagues actually benefit from having teams win relatively often. Certain teams like the Yankees, Lakers, Cowboys, and Red Wings are both beloved and despised by large segments of the populace. When the Yankees are involved baseball enjoys higher TV ratings not just because of the fact that they have a lot of fans, but also because so many people want to see them lose.
The majority of fans claim to desire parity more than anything else. However, sports seem to work better when there is one team that can be counted on to succeed (at least in the regular season). That allows people to get to know the players on teams other than those they personally root for, and league executives do not care if fans are watching just to see a team like the Yankees lose as long as they are watching.
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