The $103.1-Million Ticket

The Boston Red Sox have made dubious history yet again.

The team is paying a total of $103.1 million for rookie Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka. This is an exorbitant amount for any pitcher, but here’s the real kicker: $51.1 million of that price tag was merely for the right to negotiate with him.

Certain Japanese players who want to play in the United States must go through a process dubbed “posting” before signing with a Major League team. Teams submit blind bids to the player’s Japanese club, and, if it is accepted, the highest bid awards a team the rights to sign him. This ante can only be refunded should the American team and the Japanese player fail to agree on a contract. Unsure of what they are getting, teams usually keep their bids conservative—until Boston’s binge.

Fifty-one-point-one million dollars. Forget about how many Harvard educations that could buy, or even how that is almost four times the previous record posting of $13.1 million. It is higher than the 2006 payrolls of five Major League teams. It is nearly half of Boston’s own 2006 payroll—all for one player’s ear! This doesn’t even factor in Matsuzaka’s salary, which Boston brass and the pitcher’s agent, Scott Boras, have reportedly agreed will be a hefty $52 million over six years.

One has to respectfully ask Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein: Have you completely lost your mind?

You control a team that already outspends everyone but the Yankees. You already have the second-largest contract ever on your books. Your tickets are far and away the most expensive in baseball, not to mention the hardest to get. How exactly are mortal fans supposed to get within a mile of Fenway Park next season? How much sense does it make that ticket prices in the ultimate college town are out of students’ leagues? Here’s some news for the Yawkey brain trust: All of Boston is Red Sox Nation, not just Louisburg Square—yet it’s hard to imagine how else the team will earn back Matsuzaka’s money.

The rest of baseball shouldn’t think that it can escape from the blame. Many other teams were ready to shell out tens of millions for Matsuzaka. He is just the latest and most desperate example of baseball’s free market run amok. Teams are all too willing to turn out their pockets thanks to power-agents like Boras, whose whole job is to drive a wedge between competing teams and then exploit their blood feud. A plague on both their houses.

Matsuzaka isn’t even a safe bet. Many Japanese players are less of a force on this side of the Pacific. Matsuzaka may become synonymous with the international mega-flop and could destroy the American market for Japanese players. No general manager would risk paying significant money for another export. Closing the door between Japan and America would be a big step back from the increased internationalization of recent years, which culminated in the celebrated March 2006 World Baseball Classic.

Remember your parents’ baseball? Kids could once spend an afternoon at the ballpark on a whim and some pocket change. Now, they almost have to choose between paying for a ticket and paying for college. Money in the game was running wild before, but the Red Sox’s splash has set an appalling new precedent that all fans will come to rue. Well done, baseball; you are managing to take the nation out of the national pastime.



Nathaniel S. Rakich ’10, a Crimson editorial comper, lives in Greenough Hall.