Williams: Shutdown Would Be Better Than Huge Salaries
CHICAGO (CBS) -- White Sox General Manager Kenny Williams said he would rather see baseball "shut down" than watch teams squander tens of millions of dollars on single players.
"For the game's health as a whole, when we're talking about $30 million players, I think it's asinine, and we have gotten to the point of no return," Williams told Comcast SportsNet. "Something has to happen, and if it means the game being shut down for the sake of bringing sanity to franchises that are not going to stop the insanity, I'm all for it."
Williams told Comcast that White Sox fans should not expect him to pay $30 million just to bring one superstar to the team.
"If they gave me $30 million right now, I'm not going to spend it on one guy. Sorry, White Sox fans. But I'll tell you what – I'm going to take that $30 million, I'm going to distribute it around. My team is going to be better as a whole, than it is for one player, who might get hurt, then you're done," Williams told Comcast. "Sorry, that's just me."
He said the game being shut down would be far preferable to continuing the race for higher and higher salaries for individual players.
"Listen, I love the game. I love the game for the players and the fans. But in order for the game to continue to be affordable for families, for guys who hardworking guys busting their a**es every day to take their kids to the ball game, well hell yeah," he told Comcast. "Yes. I'm OK with it being shut down."
Back in 1994, team owners' threat to impose a salary cap was the motivation for a strike that ended up canceling the World Series.
