The Florida Marlins have been scolded for years for carrying a payroll that more closely resembles what Charles Barkley loses in a weekend at Cesar’s Palace than a pro baseball teams financial statement.

The Players Union, which entered into an agreement with major league teams to provide revenue sharing for smaller market teams to keep them competitive, wants the Marlins to increase their payroll as specific to the agreement. The Marlins maintain they utilize their revenue sharing adequately as shown by their domination of teams like the NY Mets who spend about 5 times as much and finish with much worse records.

My problem with all of this is revenue sharing in general. If people in Florida don’t want to go out and support their team, then they don’t deserve to have a team at all. Just because cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and LA pull in a billion dollars more, doesn’t mean they should have to support baseball deficient cities like Kansas City and Miami. Take the Marlins out of Florida and give Vegas a team then.

And for God sake, someone take the Cleveland Indians check book away from them. They spent over $81 million on their payroll last season, and gave away every good player they had during the season.

About the Author: Charles Drengberg

Charles Co-Founded FTRsports in 2009 as something fun to do with his spare time. He’s now insanely addicted to making it the greatest sports blog ever, which isn’t hard because most sports blogs suck.

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