Business Insight Zone

I’m sure if I could corner him about this, Bud Selig would crow about how well Major League Baseball has been doing in recent years, how much money baseball is making, how it’s growing overseas, etc. And he’s right: despite my profound misgivings about his own competence, the commissioner has overseen a remarkable flowering of baseball’s financial success.

That being said, baseball couldn’t have liked the way this year’s playoffs went: several small-market teams made it deep into the playoffs, and only the presence (and ultimate victory) of the Red Sox abated the ratings disaster of a post-season loaded with series sweeps, in which only 28 of a possible 41 games were played. The league could have used a p.r. jolt somewhere along in there.

I’m roughly the 10,000th person to suggest it, but maybe one of these days the powers-that-be in baseball will listen to this suggestion. So, to repeat:

Major League Baseball should have an awards dinner right after the World Series.

That’s not so hard, is it? The rationale couldn’t be simpler: get all of baseball’s top stars in one place, make it a gala, and televise it to the world. It would be like the Academy Awards of baseball, and I have to believe that at least one of the cable networks would be thrilled to run it.

You’d schedule it for three days after the date of a potential World Series Game 7, which would give the winning team enough time to hold its victory parade. Then you’d have all the finalists fly to Miami or Las Vegas or New York for a black-tie soiree at a fancy hotel.

During the evening, you’d hand out all this hardware for both the National League and the American League:

• Rookie of the Year
• Manager of the Year
• Gold Gloves
• Silver Sluggers
• Comeback Player of the Year
• Hank Aaron Award
• Cy Young Award
• Roberto Clemente Award
• Most Valuable Player

Since every prize except the Clemente is awarded for each league, and since there are Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers for every position, that’s more than four dozen awards in all — plenty for a chockablock night of baseball celebration. You could also open up new categories, e.g. for “Play of the Year,” that could be voted on by fans or the players themselves.

I’m thinking of all of this because today is the day that C. C. Sabathia of the Cleveland Indians won the American League Cy Young Award. Now, Sabathia’s still a heck of a pitcher whether he wins the award today or a week ago or a month ago — but wouldn’t it be a bigger deal if he won it at an Emmy-style party? Instead of dribbling out stories all this week — “Oh, he won the Cy Young? Cool.” — MLB would command the attention of the American sports audience for one extra (and extra-special) day.

Set my baseball fandom aside, and I still have a hard time understanding how this could do anything but make the league a pile of money and win them a lot of good press.

But possibly this suggestion makes too much sense ever to be contemplated . . .