The Salary Cap: Baseball's Enduring Straw Man

I hate the Yankees.

In the interests of fairness, I should make this clear before I go on. I've been a fan of the Atlanta Braves since the days of Dale Murphy, Rick Mahler and Bob Horner. It was with great pride that I watched the Braves build themselves into a baseball dynasty.
And it was with great pain that I watched them go down, again and again, in October. Yes, they won it all in 1995, beating the Indians in six exciting games. But as good as it was to see that, it was with a crushing sense of pain and doom that I watched the Braves lose the series in 1996 to the Damn Yankees. I remember sitting about 8 inches from the TV screen as Mark Lemke popped out in the 9th inning. I tried to force the ball into the stands by sheer force of will, but it didn't work. Charlie Hayes caught it for the last out of the series. And so was born my hatred of the Yankees. It didn't get any better in 1999, when the Yankees swept the Braves out of the World Series. By then my hatred was festering.
I say all of this because what I'm about to say may sound like Yankee favoritism. Let me assure you that it is NOT. What I say I say as a baseball fan, pure and simple.
Baseball doesn't need a salary cap.
 

A great day . . . for parity

Today was a great day to be a baseball fan, no doubt. There was excitement all across the National League, as two playoff spots were pursued by four teams. The American League was sewed up a while ago -- it should be Red Sox/Angels and Indians/Yankees in the ALDS -- but the National League came into this weekend with no teams having clinched a postseason berth. The D-Backs and Cubs clinched a spot on Friday, and they will face each other in the NLDS. But the NL East and NL Wild Card came down to today and, amazingly enough, only one race was settled.
The Mets got blistered by the lowly Marlins and lost 8-1, with Tom Glavine getting knocked out of the box in the 1st inning. So the Mets had to hope for the Phillies to lose, which would result in a tie and a one-game playoff tomorrow (it actually could have been even more complicated; if both teams had won today, there was a possible 4-way tie with the Rockies and Padres for 2 playoff spots. I don't even want to contemplate what that would result in; there's never even been a 3-way tie for a postseason spot before, let alone a 4-way tie for two spots).
Instead, the Phillies routed the Nationals and clinched the NL East, their first postseason berth since 1993. The Phillies were 7 games back with just two weeks left in the season and somehow managed to come back -- perhaps the most amazing comeback in baseball history. Which, conversely, makes it one of the worst collapses in history for the Mets, right up with the '64 Phillies, '51 Dodgers, and '95 Angels. The borough of Queens might spontaneously explode with anger pretty soon, so I expect ownership to throw some sacrifical lambs to the crowd (Willie Randolph, first of all) to prevent an armed uprising.