Hot Stove: Pirates, Coonelly support cap
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Add the Pirates to the small -- but growing -- list of Major League Baseball teams publicly speaking in favor of a salary cap.
Team president Frank Coonelly, who worked a decade in commissioner Bud Selig's office before taking his current post two years ago, made clear that he would back Selig should the sport pursue a cap in its next labor negotiations in 2011.
"Having studied the issue for years while working at the commissioner's office, I continue to believe a salary cap is an economic system that works for a sports league as a whole, the individual clubs and, because of the growth it can promote for the league, the players," Coonelly said in an interview Friday. "As a result, yes, the Pirates would support an effort by the commissioner's office to secure a salary cap in collective bargaining."
Coonelly would not project whether such an attempt would be successful, though. Or even if it will be a goal. Baseball is the only one of the four major professional sports without a cap, and there are two dominant reasons: One, the owners never have united behind the cause. Two, the players' union, led by Donald Fehr, is powerful and vehemently opposed to salary restriction of any kind.
"Baseball's history in attempting to negotiate a cap is well known and, thus, I don't think it's productive to place odds on whether the commissioner's office will attempt to secure a cap in 2011 or beyond," Coonelly said. "While we would support such an effort, we will leave that decision to commissioner, and we will spend all our time and energy working to build an organization that will win championships under the current system."
In the past month, spurred partly by the economic crisis but largely by the New York Yankees' manic spending this offseason that included nine-figure commitments to Mark Teixeira and CC Sabathia, two team owners issued rare calls for a cap: The Milwaukee Brewers' Mark Attanasio was first in suggesting that baseball "may need to impose a salary cap to preserve competition." The Houston Astros' Drayton McLane followed with, "We would love to have a salary cap, but the union has been very resistant to that."
First Published January 4, 2009 12:00 am
