What if Wellington Mara had owned the Yankees, and not the Giants? ...
What would baseball look like now?
Would there be quite the disparity in payrolls that we have today?

When you think of baseball payrolls, you think of contrasts. Yankees/Red Sox vs. Royals/Rays.
In football, you exceed the cap. Then what? Your team spends some time in purgatory, then they return to the norm. No obvious discrepancies come to mind.

Maybe that's not fair to baseball. When Mara pooled the tv money in the 60's, the pot wasn't quite what it is today. Plus, the football money's came from pooling one source on a broadcast occuring on one day. Baseball's issue has more to do with the size differences between the markets, and the money that comes from that market alone.

I always felt Steinbrenner got a bad wrap for having a large payroll. They would kill the guy if he didn't have that big a number on his roster.

Still, watching the obituary for Mara last night, I had to wonder. Maybe that's a little bit of a tribute for him also. Could the guy have fixed another sport?  ¶ 2:35 PM