Royals Sold for a Billion Dollars Should Baseball Fans Worry?

David Glass is selling the Kansas City Royals for $1 billion dollars to Kansas city businessman John Sherman. This according to multiple outlets including KMBC and KCTV.

The Royals are worth a billion dollars? If you're a baseball fan the fact that someone is willing to buy the team for that amount of money should worry you. Why? Because I think it sends the message you can own a team and not have to worry about whether or not the team is successful on the field. I would not call the Royals successful on the field under the ownership of David Glass.

Sure he brought the team another World Series. But how many years under his ownership was it really fun watching the team play? From afar I watched the team go from a national presence to not even worth mentioning in a discussion on baseball. And they certainly  haven't been fun to watch the last couple of years.

Also, how does this price tag impact you and I? There was a time when we could go sit in the outfield at Kauffman Stadium for $2.75. In the 1980's my Mom never worried about how expensive a baseball game was. She'd take me and a few other neighborhood kids four or five times a year.

Now the cheap seats are $19 up in the nose bleed section of the stadium. And while concessions were never cheap at the ball park, it's ridiculous how much a hot dog or a soda costs. Not to mention the cost of a beer. How much more will it cost us to see a game if the new owner spends a billion to just own the team?

Maybe spending a billion dollars on a ball club will create an urgency to win. An organizational culture that wants October baseball every season. That would be good for baseball and it's fans. If it creates more owners who don't think winning will increase their team's value and they're content to field mediocre to bad ball clubs every year and they still will make bank when they go to sell. Well I think that's bad for the game and it's fans.