We are told by many commentators of the game that as fans we should be angry at the players who “cheated” the game of baseball by using steroids. Their argument is that steroids and human growth hormones hurt the “integrity of the game.”

Personally, I think the Yankees (beginning with the purchase of Babe Ruth) have done more harm to the game of baseball and the integrity of the game than Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Mark McGwire ever could.

From the very beginning the rules of baseball financing have allowed teams like the Yankees (and now the Dodgers and a few others) to begin each year with a decidedly unfair competitive advantage over small-market teams like Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Minnesota. This is because the Yankees begin each season with so much more money from local media revenue, etc., in one sense they begin each season truly competing primarily with themselves.

I think the reason people who cover and comment on baseball for a living do not focus of this competitive imbalance at the very core of professional baseball is that they truly do not see it.

Economic imbalance and competitive disadvantage is at the core of our whole system after all. Some kids drive to school in BMW’s they get as birthday gifts for their 16th birthday. While other kids are homeless and take public transportation to school. Both kids are assumed in our system to have an equal chance at success. The few that “overcome” their competitive disadvantage and “succeed” become the exceptions that prove the rule. The system we say is not a problem, the fault lies only in the individuals. They do not work hard enough. They do not make good decisions.

Each year in the NFL, all teams have an equal chance of being in the Super Bowl. That is one of the reasons that football has become the most popular sport in the United States. The basis for football’s balance and success is rooted in its revenue sharing.

It is time for baseball to take a few lessons from the NFL and fix itself before it is too late. Below is my three-step solution for fixing baseball and returning competitive balance and integrity to the game.

1. All local and national television and radio revenue for all baseball teams should go into one pot to be divided equally between all teams
2. All stadium revenue (tickets, suites, seat licenses, advertising…) for all baseball teams should go into one pot to be divided equally between all teams
3. All licensed apparel sales for all baseball teams should go into one pot to be divided equally between all teams

This simple plan would restore overnight competitive balance to baseball, integrity to the game, and once and for all get Yankee fans to sit down and shut-the-hell-up. What, I ask you, could make the world a better place than that?