make it be the past again

In an interview with Denver Gazette’s Mark Kiszla, Rockies owner Dick Monfort stole some headlines and pushed a week or so of discourse by calling for Major League Baseball to adopt a salary cap. In Dick’s eyes, his team lived on an unfair playing ground with the Dodgers of the world. LA could spend an infinite amount of money over an infinite amount of time to win games, he believed his team was forced to play within boundaries set by financial limitations. Through laughable quotes about how Scott Boras has more power than Rob Manfred (?) and that he would be more willing to invest in a salary floor if it meant there would be more revenue sharing among the teams (some kind of rich guy only socialism?), Monfort revealed that he doesn’t think there is any way for his team to win consistently with the ever present threat of the Dodgers.

These quotes have already been dissected thoroughly by many. A salary cap would likely not fix many of baseball’s “haves and have nots” problem. The Dodgers can pay Shohei and Blake Snell on the baseball field, but even if you took that away, the Dodgers money invests in every little corner of the organization to find advantages. Just as a quick example, in 2022, the Dodgers had a team of 30+ data analysts within their organization, the second most in baseball (behind Tampa). The Rockies? Less than five.

The Rockies have since invested in analytical engineers, we are led to believe. But there are still very strong rumors that they are offering WELL below market rate for director roles within this department. So therein lies the rub. The Rockies won’t invest in ANY part of their baseball organization so they could make every team have the exact same payroll and still the Dodgers would win.

But that’s not what really caught my eye in this interview. Throughout his time talking to Kiz, Dick had several quotes that made him sound like he was writing a resignation letter.

Setting aside the obvious problems in this statement (more young players than ever are leading teams in WAR, the 2007 Rockies had plenty of veterans), the real core of the failures in Dick’s mindset rests in…nostalgia.

Nostalgia is a mind killer, a virus that infects your very nature until you will concede any belief to a lie that it used to be better. The world moves one direction, forward. It’s funny that those that say “if you don’t learn history it is doomed to repeat” are often the ones saying “please history repeat yourself my god I just need you to repeat yourself so bad”. The belief that the Rockies can repeat 2007 isn’t just bad because it isn’t based in the reality of the circumstances that created 2007, it’s bad because you shouldn’t be trying to recreate anything. The best way to succeed in a new world is to adapt yourself to it. It’s the fundamental lesson of life itself! But if you’re Dick Monfort, you are begging Manfred to turn back the clock rather than understanding you are in a new world and need to adapt to it’s experience.

The new, darker world we live in is a direct consequence of nostalgia not being rooted out and destroyed when it could. Americans stopped looking forward to things, they stopped believing in what could be achieved, so they started to dream of a world from the past. A world, and I cannot stress this enough, that never existed. That’s the Rockies too. Rather than having a vision of succeeding within the environment they reside in, rather than believing that the difficult circumstances they faced were a worthy challenge, they’ve become whiners and believers that if you just made the world 2017 again everything will be ok. It won’t be ok. It can never be 2017 again. Nolan Arenado isn’t good anymore, the Safdie brothers are no longer making movies together, this time is over.

I have a lot of opinions on how the Rockies could be good or that the Dodgers being a behemoth is a worthy villain to fight and vanquish on the field. I also have a lot of negative opinions on the way baseball salaries are currently structured. But the truth is, if they don’t root out this belief that things used to be easier or better, they will never succeed. Their failure isn’t in environment, it’s in their way of doing business. The yearn for the past is why they continue to hold on to the exact same people they hired 15 years ago, it’s why they continue to reply from their iPads. Dick wants sports to be “fair” or “pure” but he doesn’t want to do the things internally to make it so.

As the club kicks off their 33rd Opening Day today, there will be a lot of talk about the ways they have improved. Their bullpen will look better, their pitching in the minors will continue to show life, maybe Zeke Tovar will continue to light up the leaderboards. But underneath it all is a mind virus. The nostalgic undertone of every decision will show it’s head as they stumble to another loss. The Rockies are adrift not because they don’t have a vision, but because their vision is to beat back against the current and hope to find better days in the past. A Jay Gatsby like resolve to never be happy with the world you’re a part of. We are victims to Dick Monfort’s nostalgia, just as we are victims to everyone’s nostalgia, just as many of us are victims to our own.

Regardless of the tiresome financial arguments that the owners make in favor of a salary cap, I beg us all to not fall into the nostalgic trap they are selling outside of it. The Rockies will not be good if the Dodgers aren’t allowed to sign free agents. They will only be good when they actually understand that the world is new now and you can only succeed by being new yourself.

162 to go