Wall Street Journal: The Decline of the National League, by Darren Everson:
By just about every measure, the 16 teams in Major League Baseball’s National League are inferior to the 14 in the American League. The AL has won 11 of the last 16 World Series, including three of the last four. The annual All-Star Game, to be played Tuesday, has practically become a farce: Not counting a 2002 tie, the AL has won 10 straight. …
The plight of the NL seems rooted in a chain of events that began in 1973 when the AL adopted the designated-hitter rule. … [A]nother advantage for the AL began to kick in: an unprecedented haul of offensive talent. From 1987 to 1993, through a combination of luck, necessity and good scouting, AL teams signed a group of [outstanding] young players. …
Just as this talent haul began, something else broke in the AL’s favor: the Tax Reform Act of 1986. This act, which was aimed at simplifying the tax code, was also expected to curtail the public financing of stadiums. It limited the amount that tax-free stadium bonds could be financed by team rent payments. But the law did not make public officials any less eager to subsidize new stadiums. To accommodate the law, they just charged teams little or no rent — making it more attractive than ever for teams to demand new parks. "It’s a major economic advantage," says Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College.
While 10 NL teams played in ballparks built in the 1960s and 1970s that were once the envy of baseball, there were more AL teams playing in older parks that needed replacing. In 1992, the Baltimore Orioles moved into Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which inspired a wave of retro-style, baseball-focused ballparks in downtown entertainment districts. … Four other existing AL teams built new parks from 1989 to 1994 and three more built or renovated from 1998 to 2000. Meanwhile, no existing NL team opened a new park from 1978 to 1994.
The result was a huge financial disparity. In 1990, before the building boom, the average per-team player payroll in the two leagues was about equal. By 1998, the increasing ballpark revenue gave AL teams a $5 million edge. And the gap is growing. This season, the average AL opening-day payroll was $97 million, $14 million more than the NL average.
