Just Call Me First, Rob

I’m truly amazed by how often Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred says exactly the opposite of what he should say. It’s like he has a unique gift for the comic flub — only it’s never funny, and he does it so often that it doesn’t feel like a flub.

There was the time he called the World Series trophy a piece of metal.

There was the big whoop-de-do he offered when 27,000 A’s fans showed up in Oakland to protest the team abandoning the city (“It’s great to see what is, this year, almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night,” he said, his voice dripping with particularly ugly sarcasm).

There was the time he told A’s fans that they shouldn’t worry about losing their team because, hey, the Giants are just up the road.

There were his “Lockouts are awesome” sentiments.

And so on. And so on. As I’ve written before: I don’t know if he just doesn’t prepare for press conferences, doesn’t get sound advice from the people around him, doesn’t listen to the sound advice from the people around him, or just has superhuman faith in his own ability to riff despite a Library of Congress-worth of evidence that he’s spectacularly bad at riffing.

The latest comes from Los Angeles, where the Times writes about the exorbitantly high prices of Dodgers tickets. The Dodgers, as everybody knows, have spent a gobsmacking amount of money putting together one of the most star-studded teams in baseball history — and the team would like you to believe that’s why the ticket prices are so high.

But, of course, that’s not why the ticket prices are so high — at least not directly. I’m no economist (in case you needed me to tell you that), but prices are high because people are willing to pay them. It doesn’t matter how much a team spends on players; it only matters how much fans will spend on tickets.

The Dodgers draw 52,000-plus people to their games — that’s 10,000 more per game than any other team in baseball.

Sure, spending all the money has made Dodger baseball even more attractive — you invest in players to increase interest, NOT to pass the bill to fans — but that’s not the same thing as saying:

“They have to charge those prices because of how much they spent.”

Of course, that’s what Rob Manfred said.

“The Dodgers have made a massive financial commitment in terms of players,” he told the Times, “and they have to run a business that supports that massive financial commitment.”

Yeah. Baloney.

But look, that’s just typical management talk about how ticket prices are the fault of the players’ high salaries. They’ve been playing this game for 100 years. If only DiMaggio would take less money, we’d pass the savings on to you!

If Manfred left it there, eh, it’s dumb, but it is what it is.

Manfred did not leave it there. Here’s the Times’ Bill Shaikin:

Yeah. He actually told Dodgers fans that if the prices are too high, go become a fan of the Angels. Heck, they’re right there in Orange County, only 30 miles away, which, depending on traffic, will take you 45 minutes or four days.

The list of things wrong with that idea is way too long to go through here — including the fact that the Angels stink and have been putting out a laughable product for a decade despite having two of the greatest players who ever lived — but for me, the standout point is that it just reiterates that the Commissioner has no idea how baseball fanhood works. This echoes his absurd comments about how A’s fans should just go see the Giants. Does he think that teams are just interchangeable? Does he think that people just randomly think, “I’d like to see a baseball game today played by two baseball teams, each with an assortment of baseball players?”

Is this really what the Commissioner of Baseball thinks about his own game?

From what I know, Rob Manfred is very sensitive to the oft-repeated charge that he doesn’t like baseball. I’ve offered this before, and I’ll offer it again: Rob, just call me before you say anything. I promise I’ll help.

Joe’s Notebook is filled with web-only riffs. They will pop up whenever.