Cap in Hand: How Salary Caps are Killing Pro Sports and Why the Free Market Could Save Them

Iconic baseball writer Bill James, in 1987, frustrated with MLB’s labor stoppages and the decline of the minor leagues, wrote that the minors “were an abomination … if you’re selling a sport and the players don’t care about winning, that’s not a sport. That’s a fraud … an exhibition masquerading as a contest.” Bill imagined a better model and proposed that, as opposed to limiting the number of teams in MLB to protect parity, a free market was capable of sustaining many more franchises — hun...