Phillies president talks baseball

Bill Giles, president and part owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, spoke to a group of students at the Law School yesterday, touching on topics ranging from a salary cap for players to funny antics that occurred during the 1993 season. When Giles first joined the Phillies organization in 1970, his task was to find ways to draw more people to Veterans Stadium. Only 515,000 people went to a Phillies game during the 1969 season, compared to the more than 3 million who saw the team this year. Giles, who now owns 20 percent of the team, concentrated on the current state of Major League Baseball, which he said is at its peak of popularity. During his talk, though, he also pressed for a salary cap and shared revenue within the major leagues. "Baseball is at a serious crossroads economically," Giles said. "We cannot survive the current economic situation ? baseball has never been a profitable industry." He pointed to the uneven distribution of revenue in the major leagues – much of it from television contracts – as a lingering problem for owners. "New York clubs have much more revenue than Seattle, and clubs in smaller markets can't compete," he said. "We [the owners] almost had a [shared revenue] deal in Wisconsin two months ago but were two votes short." During his speech, Giles discussed the current lack of permanent leadership within Major League Baseball. The league has not had a commissioner since Fay Vincent was fired in 1992. When asked about the legal proceedings that followed Vincent's failed attempt to move the Chicago Cubs from the National League's Eastern Division to the Western Division, Giles added in a joking manner, "The case was never tried; we fired Vincent ? Baseball has never had a Pete Rozelle," speaking of one of the legendary National Football League commissioners. Giles went on to praise the highly effective marketing efforts of the NFL and NBA. "We need to market the game on a national level better," he said. "The NBA does an excellent job [of marketing] and their popularity is rapidly approaching that of baseball. The most important quality a commissioner can have is integrity, but it would be nice to have someone with a background in marketing." Giles also defended baseball's current exemption from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, saying without the exemption, baseball would be unable to control the movement of teams. He cited the moves of the NFL's Colts from Baltimore to Indianapolis and Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles as examples of what disruption losing the exemption could cause. Giles also spoke fondly of the Phillies players and their championship season. "I've never seen such a rewarding, exciting, fascinating season," he remarked. "I'm sorry it came to such a rapid end."