Last bats: Realignment's races will be different

I'm watching the Dodgers trying to stay in the National League West race with less than 1 1/2 games to go when I realize it's not going to be this way next year. The lords of the realm are going to have some sort of realignment plan in place before the next season starts. Baseball is a safe haven for nostalgia. After all, there's no harm done by remembering "the good old days" of a sport. That kind of nostalgia doesn't get in the way of living in the present. However, change has come mighty quick in recent years. Divisional realignment created the wild-card spot in the playoffs. This year, interleague play was added to the regular season. Next year, it'll be a whole new ball of wax with at least a few teams switching leagues. The divisions will be different, although some rivalries will be preserved and new ones created. The sad part about it is that -- duh! -- the changes will be made not to improve the game, but to improve business. The lords of the realm virtually forced realignment to happen when they assigned the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays to the American League West division. Come on! Everybody knows that couldn't stand -- having all the Rays' divisional opponents a day's flight away. I wouldn't want to have that team's jet-fuel bills. Good stories in baseball? This year, however, there's plenty else in the game to give fans the excitement that seasons long past brought. Larry Walker and Tony Gwynn both chased a .400 batting average for a minute. They didn't make it, but few rooted against them. People felt good about these guys the way they do about the big names of old. Unlike the way they feel about, say, Tony Philips. Then, there was the war of attrition in the chase after Roger Maris' record. In the past few weeks, the field shook down to Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr. It doesn't seem like either will make it, but when was the last time two guys hit 50 home run in a season? Couldn't be that Mantle-Maris year, could it? Even if Junior wears his hat backwards, he's got a low-key air that keeps him on the good-guy side most of the time. McGwire says he signed his huge contract with St. Louis only after his son, who lives in southern California, said it was OK. It's not the same as Lou Gehrig saying he's the luckiest man alive, but it's a statement that has a similar kind of vulnerability and emotion behind it. Definitely not what you'd expect from a guy who hits rocket blasts almost every day. Speaking of rockets, how about Roger Clemens? The Red Sox have to rue the day they let this fabulous pitcher go, with the hint that he was washed up. Not hardly. There were other good stories in this year before realignment. For instance, people say that pitching's diluted. However, in the year when two hitters chased .400 and another two chased Maris, eight pitchers had a shot at winning 20 games as late as September 1. Enough for instances, though. It's fun to realize that even thought baseball deserves the licking it gets for having the most spoiled athletes in pro sports and possibly the most medieval owners, there were too many good baseball stories this year to mention here. What's most likely to be remembered next year is not the realignment, but the reason for the realignment. Two new teams coming aboard in Florida and Arizona. The fans in those markets will get big-league ball for the first time and cheer their good guys. They won't be cheering the owners. Of course, the owners in their counting houses won't be able to hear the cheers anyhow. Copyright © 1997, Salvatore Caputo

Gov. Symington meant business

I know the following column strays a long way from pop culture, but how can any Arizonan ignore Gov. Symington's forced resignation from office after being convicted on seven of 21 felony fraud counts? Like Evan Mecham, Fife Symington ran for governor of Arizona with the promise that he would make government efficient by applying sound business principles. It was a persuasive argument, apparently After all, a public raised on stories about insane patterns of government spending (insert a ridiculous $ figure paid for a coffee pot or a toilet seat here) knows that there ought to be a tougher method of cost accounting. American business with its "leaner, meaner" philosophy of the '80s seemed to have it. Symington appeared to be a successful businessman, dealing in more dollars than Mecham's auto dealership could dream of. So why not give him a try? Could it hurt to reduce the tax load on the average citizen by making government cut bloat? Other people's money Symington, who dealt in millions of dollars, used a sound business principle to make himself the developer of the Esplanade and the Mercado. That principle is that whenever possible you must use other people's money to power your deals. If you can get people to fund your "vision," you put nothing on the line except your reputation. However, your reputation usually has to be pretty good to get savvy people to put up the money. Symington's reputation was good. He knew the art of the deal, and he put deals together the way an artist applies paint to canvas. People believed he could make things happen and were willing to back him financially. In government, he used the same principle, by using taxpayers' money. He got this government deal to go by promising some returns to the taxpayer in the form of reduced income tax. If you didn't look at the toll it took on social-service agencies such as Child Protective Services and the state's aid program to public schools, it seemed like a good deal. Ultimately, though, government -- especially the government of a democratic republic -- is not a business. Self-interest and public interest A businessman has the right to be out solely for himself in business, but government has to look out for everyone's interests. The businessman will try to convince the other guy that a deal is mutually beneficial, but he'll do everything in his power to make the deal more mutually beneficial to himself. (Think of this idea from George Orwell's Animal Farm: "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.") That philosophy doesn't work, though, in government. If there's widespread cynicism about government, it exists precisely to the extent that politicians take the system for all that it's worth, instead of acting as public servants. The system continues to limp along instead of running because of self-serving attitudes in politics. Symington favored business. He showed no sympathy for the average Joe who had to stick his kids in one of Arizona's struggling public schools. How much would even a $50,000-a-year wage earner have to scrimp to put one child through a high-quality private-school education in Arizona? Could even a zero-percent income tax put enough money back in that parent's pocket to make it possible? Business is good Business does make things run, and in general, good business makes good sense. American business has created the standard of living here. However, American business owes its ability to flourish in large part to one of the most stable governments the world has seen. This is not a government that's about to nationalize any industries. (OK, the railroads are the exceptions that prove the rule.) In fact, quite the opposite. Government extends a large helping hand to many troubled businesses. However, because business is powered by self-interest, it can edge toward practices that are not in the public interest. It's costly, for instance, to keep a chemical factory from polluting the environment, and the short-term, bottom-line interests of business would like to avoid that cost. (Having become a modest entrepreneur myself, I face ethical issues every day that make it tough to get ahead. I'm convinced it would be much easier to do business if I didn't have a conscience.) The government is supposed to be responsible for a different kind of cost accounting. It's supposed to ensure the public interest rather than self-interest -- or at the very least, attempt to find a compromise between opposing self-interests. (Although there are many questions about the way government today is shouldering this responsibility, no one has created a model in which business would willingly shoulder the social burdens it creates.) Business is bad Symington, acting in his self-interest, lied to bankers. At least that's what federal lawyers persuaded a jury to believe. This was a crime for which he may well be imprisoned. To my way of thinking, his larger crime was that he used similar false representations -- that he was a successful businessman -- to win election. He will never be put on trial or sent to prison for this, though. There's no law against lying to the voting public. Yet as sure as Symington seemed about his innocence and the soundness of his principles, maybe he really believed that it's OK to lie to bankers. (I can see me misrepresenting my worth to get a loan. Ha!) Then again, maybe he just lied to himself. Copyright © 1997, Salvatore Caputo