Professional baseball's off season, like every ride found in a theme park, is filled with emotion. There are the ups, the downs, the twists and the turns. From the moment the plastic harness comes down snug over the shoulders, the people strapped in know it's going to be a wild ride that will eventually come to a screeching halt. Today, the Major League Baseball off season has evolved. It's now comparable to something found at Six Flags or Universal Studios. The only difference is that this ride never truly ends.

During baseball's adolescence, it wasn't customary, nor was it conceivable that players could bounce from one team to another in between seasons. That made the notion of dynasties not only a possibility, but also a reality. Remember the Cubs in the early 1900s, the 1915 Red Sox, the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s... and '60s Yankees, even the Big Red Machine in the '70s. All of those teams remained intact without discrepancies between the players and their clubs. Then again, ball players weren't making a great deal of money in that day and age, even as professionals. So, technically, the lure of the almighty dollar never existed. Throughout time, however, the game evolved (or to some degenerated) bringing corporations and baseball franchises together, which birthed Major League Baseball: The mega conglomerate.

The idea of the MLB as a big-time, money-maker infectiously spread, bringing on a new found yearning for the players to get a piece of the pie and escape their so-called "indentured servitude". Circumstantially, the owners' plans to keep players at a low rate and fatten their own pockets never bore fruit. In fact, it wasn't until the dismantling of the Reserve Clause in '75, which brought on the beginning of free agency in '76, that the lid to Pandora's box was blown-open. Instead of having a transparent sport that was somewhat controlled and partially visible, the game of baseball morphed into a mystic, murky abyss that had no limitations. Players began to hire agents that sought top dollar for their clients by means of litigation. And what began with contracts comprised of tens of thousands, soon bulked into hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was the start of the climb up a slippery slope.

By the late '80s, it was rarity for a player to make less than a million dollars playing a game six months out of the year. Some wanted to believe that the ballplayers' move to free agency was a virtual inevitability. Others thought that it was only temporary. However, likening the rapid rise of player-salaries to an instance of the domino effect gone wrong is most appropriate: A player would compare the statistics and contracts to another player of the same position. If his statistics were better than the other player he was comparing himself, he would ask for more money. The trend continued throughout the years, as players' asking prices increased. They didn't say baseball was a numbers game for nothing.

The theory that championships couldn't be bought was no longer relevant in baseball. Instead, it had become a sport where, all of the sudden, Yankee-sized bankrolls separated the good teams from the great ones, cutting out the economically disenfranchised ball clubs from championship contention. Owners tried to flex their financial muscle and guile during negotiations, but most likely had no choice but to concede to the demands of their players. Now, if a team whiffed on a player, what used to be a thousand dollar mistake, quickly became a multi-million dollar one. The game was changing.

The MLB had become a ridiculously expensive game as the brash greed continued during the '90s in professional baseball. It was right around the beginning of the Clinton Administration when performance-based contracts were, again, puffed-up, thanks largely to drugs that could enhance performance. Now, the idea that only a select few players in baseball could hit 50-60 homeruns was an obsolete concept. All of the teams' lineups seemed to have one or two of the Sosa, McGwire, or Canseco-types lurking around the middle of the order. This again, gave leverage to the player, enabling him and his agent to commandeer their owners' checkbooks and dictate the number written in the box to the right. Remember, the economy was flourishing and unemployment was at a record low in the mid-to-late '90s. So, if a six-year $170 million deal could potentially give a ball club 50 home runs, 20 wins, a shot at the playoffs and sell out crowds each night to see this one player, then it was a done deal. Fans loved it and so did the owners. This is where the wild ride began.

Because of that influx of cash, which lucratively flooded throughout the country in the late 1990s and early 2000s, times were good for everyone. Fans had money to attend games and owners had the dough to bring in the big name players that would keep seats filled. The motives weren't strictly altruistic from the front office, but it was a newfound relationship that worked out well for both parties. Even though free agency went against the grain pertaining to every aspect on which the game was built, it expanded baseball into a twelve month, 24-hour news headline.

From the moment the World Series ended in October, fans and front officers alike, vamped themselves ready for holiday shopping: better known as the MLB off-season. While owners and GMs met at the annual winter meetings to discuss potential free-agents signings, fans would eagerly wait in angst for any word on whether their teams made that blockbuster acquisition. Money was tossed around like snowballs. Players were traded like stocks. The motto, "if you wanna' play, you gotta' pay" was the only theme that echoed among attendees. And if a deal were imminent, it was a matter of minutes for the announcement to hi-jack the Breaking News section of the tickers scrolling at the bottom of television screens; it essentially re-enacted a normal day on Wall Street. And though the off season came with an expensive appetite, everyone, from reporters, to fans, to owners, loved it. That was just the nature of the beast during a time of economic boom.

Looking back, it's apropos to mention that everything has its antithesis, even economic prosperity. Its antithesis: If one suffers, others follow suit and act accordingly. Last season the new era of the MLB was presented with its first off-season in the midst of an economic recession. It normally had been a time when owners gladly added zeros to a player's dramatically over-priced demand and now had regressed to a collective act of penny pinching. Going back to the aforementioned point: If one suffers then the others follow suit. Unemployment was at 7.2%, an all time high, so the last concern on a sports fans' mind was taking young Billy out to the ball game. No attending fans, no money to spend on free agents.

This observation further proved relevance, as only three free agents received earth-shattering contracts in 2009; all from the same franchise coincidentally. The rest of the players available were given short-term, incentive-laden deals based on performance. That was just the reality of it when the United States was facing the worst economic contagion since the Great Depression.  The days of the long, extended contracts with seemingly endless figures were over. The sudden descent down that slippery slope was in full effect for professional baseball.

Even during the 2010 off-season, one year removed from the worst financial blunder in the past decade, baseball owners stayed the course with the same conservative mien. The belief was to go cheap and to not go long-term. Again, there were only three free agents that were worth offering long-term contracts for boku bucks. Let's face it, the likes of Jason Bay, Matt Holliday and John Lackey weren't of the same stature that caused the New York Yankees to bank roll hundreds of millions of dollars on C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira, just twelve months ago. But, they were the closest to a sure thing than any of the other free agents available. The rest had no other choice but to, again, follow suit, act accordingly and take the best offer they could muster from other teams. Even if the American economy had been making baby steps into the direction of financial repair, it was still a long way away from being back to the good old days. Or so it appeared.

There's a different way to look at it though. The lack of spending throughout the length of the Bush Administration wasn't an ominous sign of what direction professional baseball was taking. Instead, it was a revelation to what lies ahead. The impending free agent class of 2011 is one that comes around once every solar eclipse. Equating it to an ancient Greek anecdote, featuring the mightiest of heroes and gods, is the only way to conjure it in the imagination. It's one that is comprised of game-changers at every position. One featuring players that owners would be willing to pay whatever money it would take to have just one of them pose for newspapers, holding their clubs' jersey up to his chest. It's exactly why owners and GMs have been skimping out the past four years on free agency. 

It's not a conspiracy theory, not by any means. Everyone in the MLB front office knows that come mid-November, 2010, when the myriad of Type-A free agents can begin negotiating with other franchises, blank checks will be ready for filling. This will be the first time when general managers won't have to worry about swinging and missing on a free agent and owners can sleep easy at night knowing that their money was well-spent and well-invested. It's a time when fans will refuse to turn their attention away from a media outlet for a split second in fear of missing the latest swirling of hot stove buzz. With names such as Beckett, Mauer, Pujols, Reyes, Ramirez and Crawford, it's not going to be a cheap date. However, 2011 is going to be a time when fun gets put back in the game. When owners, general managers and fans will see eye-to-eye on reaching for one or two players that can turn a franchise around, or make it better than it already was. It's a time for mutual rejoice.     

What lies slightly within the horizon of 365 days is a mass-spending spree unlike anything hardball universe has ever experienced. It's the climax ending to a feature film that's spanned over years of fiscal budgeting. And although it might be the end of an era, it's just part of a wild American Ride that never ends. 

Text by: Derek Gould

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