Not My Problem. Give Me Some.

Imagine that you work for the Namibian Department of Commerce. The US Trade ambassador comes knocking at your door one day and asks if you would like to trade goods with the United States. The United States has much that it can offer, so long as the trade is fair and beneficial to your home country.

The US Ambassador is primarily interested in your Uranium supply. This is your most valuable resource, since the rest of your country is filled with sand and sadness. The United States has neither a care, nor a want for either of those, but they do have plenty of tradeable goods, from which your country could benefit.

However, what the United States offers you is a few bags of various plant seed.

Now, once planted, these seeds could yield all kinds of valuable resources down the road, including food, fuel, and other consumable products such as rope, paper, and oils.

Or, maybe your semi-arid land is not capable of supporting these seeds and they will yield nothing.

Or, maybe they are just bunk seeds that will end up folding under the pressure of the bright (sun) lights, and will end up abusing and or being abused by underground, noxious substances only to flame out in a giant gasp of, what could have been?

These seeds, in other words, while perhaps being less expensive than the uranium-enrichment process, are no guarantee.

And the United States, you see, they don't just want some of the uranium. They want ALL of it, telling you that in time, the seeds will make the exchange worth while, and besides, up north Chad has some of that good shit Yellowcake and they'll definitely take them up on the offer.

You don't want to miss out on the bingo, do you?

I can only imagine that this is what life feels like at the trade deadline for teams like the Pirates (every year), the Orioles (most years), and the Indians (this year). Some general managers are trying to make the best of their flaming pieces of garbage, while others are trying to bolster their already loaded rosters for the second-half push. And much like the Global Political Economy, life at the trade deadline is a zero-sum game. Some are going to get richer, while others are going to get poorer. There is no salary cap here, so while some can afford to roll the dice, others certainly can not.

After all, there is no voting in the front office, and there are no military coups in the clubhouse. However, there are attendance statistics and merchandise sales numbers, as well as an owner who terminate your sorry ass at any moments notice.

And even though my home team was certainly a beneficiary of this uneven, economic arrangement, something still felt hollow and even unfair about it. Perhaps even detrimental.

Sure, shit happens, and teams can fall off the map in less than a year (Indians, Rockies), but this is less true for the megapowers (Yankees, Red Sox). And as long as these teams continue to work with a seemingly endless well of resources, the gap will never close, and if anything, the wedge will continue to spread the league apart.

We will stop short of advocating any major overhaul of the system, mainly because we failed Macroeconomics, and tend to vote Republican (we'll let you decide which of those is true, if any), but we will suggest that something is wrong with this current approach, both for teams and the fans alike. Especially, you bandwagoneers...

But that's a discussion on identity which we will need to save for another day.