AMERICANA / THE DODGERS AREN'T BREAKING BASEBALL'S RULES. THEY'RE BREAKING BASEBALL

By Thomas Shess | PillartoPost.org-In 1930, New York Yankees superstar Babe Ruth signed a contract paying him $80,000 a year, $5,000 more than President Herbert Hoover earned running the United States. According to one of baseball's most enduring stories, a reporter questioned whether a ballplayer deserved to make more than the president. 

The Babe reportedly replied, "I had a better year than he did." 

Nearly a century later, the Los Angeles Dodgers have taken baseball salaries to another planet. Whether they're having a better year than the rest of America is another question entirely. 

The Dodgers failed to win their third consecutive World Series in 2026, and judging by the hand-wringing in Southern California sports media, you might think the franchise had been banished to the Pacific Coast League. 

Imagine the hardship. Two World Series championships in three seasons. A hundred victories this year. Another National League West title. And somehow, a four-game elimination by the Milwaukee Brewers has become a catastrophe requiring explanations, personnel changes and perhaps a public apology. 

Meanwhile, in 29 other major-league cities, baseball continues to confront a question considerably more important than whether the Dodgers can purchase another championship: How much financial advantage can one franchise accumulate before competition becomes something less than sporting? 

Consider Shohei Ohtani. No reasonable baseball fan would deny his extraordinary talent. He is among the greatest players ever to wear a major-league uniform. His $700 million contract with the Dodgers is a monument to that talent. 

But that monument has a rather peculiar foundation. Of the $700 million owed to Ohtani over his 10-year agreement, $680 million has been deferred. For the first decade, Los Angeles pays him just $2 million annually in salary. 

Beginning in 2034, the club will pay him $68 million a year for another decade. That's 97 percent of his contract postponed until after his playing agreement expires. 

It is legal. 

Major League Baseball's collective bargaining agreement permits it. And therein lies the problem. The Dodgers have discovered that one of the most powerful tools in modern baseball isn't a 100-mile-per-hour fastball. It's an accountant with a clean glasses and a sharp pencil. 

To be fair, the Dodgers must account for the present value of deferred salaries under baseball's luxury-tax system, and they must fund those future obligations under league rules. 

Ohtani's annual luxury-tax charge is approximately $46 million, hardly pocket change. But the distinction between accounting for money and actually paying it today is precisely where a rich franchise finds its advantage. 

Los Angeles has the financial resources to make enormous commitments, structure payments across decades and continue shopping for other expensive players. Most franchises cannot operate with that freedom. 

And while the Dodgers deserve credit for identifying an opportunity in the rules, baseball's commissioner deserves scrutiny for allowing a system in which extraordinary financial engineering can become a competitive weapon. 

The problem reaches beyond Los Angeles. The New York Mets, Yankees and other wealthy clubs can also assemble payrolls beyond the practical reach of smaller-market competitors. 

At the opposite end, owners who spend comparatively little can collect substantial franchise revenues without demonstrating the same willingness to invest in winning. One side buys advantages. The other sometimes declines to compete financially. Neither extreme serves baseball particularly well. 

The Dodgers' 2026 payroll illustrates the disparity. Depending on the accounting method, Los Angeles carried more than $400 million in player commitments, while some clubs entered the season with payrolls below $100 million. Nobody should confuse those figures with a level playing field. 

Of course, money doesn't guarantee championships. Milwaukee demonstrated that rather emphatically when it swept the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. 

Baseball remains a stubbornly unpredictable game. 

A rich club can buy three expensive starting pitchers, but it cannot purchase a timely seventh-inning single. That's part of baseball's enduring charm. 

Yet unpredictability in October is no excuse for financial inequality from April through September. Every franchise deserves a realistic opportunity to build a winner, retain its homegrown stars and compete for established talent without confronting an opponent whose financial resources seem almost inexhaustible. 

Commissioner Rob Manfred has made the issue central to baseball's labor negotiations. Reports in early November indicated that Major League Baseball was pursuing a salary cap and salary floor for a future labor agreement. Figures under discussion included a cap of approximately $258 million and a floor of $180 million. 

The players' association objects, arguing that a salary cap would suppress compensation and restrict the market for talent. Is that a legitimate concern?

Baseball should never repair competitive imbalance by simply transferring more wealth from players to owners. Nor should the sport reward billionaires who refuse to spend enough to field competitive teams. A reasonable solution must address both extremes. 

It should require meaningful investment from every franchise while preventing the richest organizations from turning payroll flexibility into an effectively unlimited advantage. 

And the next agreement should take a serious look at the extraordinary deferral provisions that made Ohtani's contract possible. There is nothing wrong with a player negotiating a brilliant contract. 

There is nothing wrong with a team seeking every legitimate advantage. But there is something fundamentally wrong when baseball's rules permit advantages that much of the league cannot realistically duplicate. This is not an argument against Ohtani. It is not even an argument against the Dodgers, whose management has operated with considerable intelligence. 

It is an argument against a system that confuses financial ingenuity with competitive fairness. Baseball survived the Black Sox scandal, the reserve clause, labor stoppages, steroid scandals and a hundred other threats to its credibility. It can survive the Dodgers. 

But the sport should not have to depend on occasional postseason upsets to reassure fans that everybody still has a chance. Major League Baseball likes to remind us that hope springs eternal every April. Hope, however, should not require a billionaire owner, a multinational financial empire or an accountant capable of moving $680 million into the next decade. 

If baseball wants 30 teams competing for one championship, it should stop allowing 30 different definitions of a level playing field. 

MEDIA MONDAY / AFTER TWO DAYS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE JUST GOT A LOUD KNOCK ON ITS DOOR

One day after the midterm elections, The New Republic spotted something in the returns that could change the way Americans elect their presidents. TNR asked its readers to share their day after the election piece on the Electoral College redux. Here's what we're sharing, thanks New Republic editorial inspiration. 

By Thomas Shess | PillartoPost.org | November 5, 2026--It took one day. One day after Americans delivered a sweeping midterm election victory to the Democratic Party, The New Republic published an article suggesting that the most consequential result of November 3 might have little to do with who controls Congress. 

The headline was enough to stop a reader over his morning coffee: “Democrats Win Enough Seats Nationwide to End Electoral College.” Hafiz Rashid, writing for the magazine on November 4, had spotted something remarkable in the election returns. While the country was counting new senators, representatives and governors, another story was emerging in the state legislatures. 

The arithmetic of presidential elections was changing. And the Electoral College, that curious 18th-century contraption through which Americans have selected their presidents for more than two centuries, suddenly had a reason to look over its shoulder. 

The development was neither a constitutional amendment nor an actual abolition of the Electoral College. Instead, it concerned the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a state-by-state agreement under which participating states would award their electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the most votes nationwide. 

The agreement already has 222 electoral votes committed. It needs 270 before taking effect. The Democratic election victories have opened a possible route to 283. 

For a proposal that has been discussed for twenty years, that is quite a morning after. 

The Blue Wave Reaches the Statehouses 

Most national election coverage naturally concentrates on Washington. Who won the House? Who controls the Senate? How much political authority remains with the president? 

But America's political architecture doesn't begin or end at the Capitol. The November 3 elections also delivered an extraordinary expansion of Democratic power in state government. Democrats captured five Republican-held governorships: Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Texas. Their victories included Gina Hinojosa's defeat of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a result that would have seemed extraordinary only a short time ago. The legislative results were equally consequential. 

As of November 5, Axios reported that Democrats were positioned to flip 12 state legislative chambers and control 51 of the nation's 99 legislative chambers if outstanding results held. That would end a 16-year period of Republican dominance in statehouse control. 

In Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democrats emerged with control of the governorship and both legislative chambers. Arizona was also positioned to join that group, pending final results. 

The National Conference of State Legislatures confirmed significant Democratic gains while cautioning that several races remained unofficial. These victories matter for reasons extending far beyond the usual legislative arguments over taxes, education, abortion and spending. 

State legislatures possess constitutional authority over the appointment of presidential electors. That is the opening The New Republic recognized almost immediately. 

The Number Is 270 

Consider Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. Together, those four states possess 50 electoral votes. Add those votes to the 222 already committed to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and the total reaches 272—two votes beyond the number required to activate the agreement. 

Arizona, with another 11 electoral votes, would bring the possible total to 283. The compact would leave the formal Electoral College intact. But its participating states would pledge their electoral votes to the nationwide popular-vote winner, even when voters in an individual participating state preferred another candidate. It would fundamentally alter the practical operation of presidential elections. 

No constitutional amendment would be required for the states to enact their compact legislation, although whether the arrangement could ultimately take effect without congressional approval remains an unresolved legal question. That distinction makes the 2026 election results particularly interesting. 

For decades, opponents of the Electoral College have faced an intimidating constitutional barrier: amendments require two-thirds approval in both houses of Congress and ratification by 38 states. The interstate compact proposes another path. And suddenly, enough states may possess the political majorities to attempt it. 

An Old Argument Meets a New Election 

There has never been a shortage of arguments about the Electoral College. Its defenders point to federalism, the constitutional role of states and the importance of preventing presidential campaigns from concentrating exclusively on the country's largest population centers. 

Its critics answer that the present system already concentrates campaign attention on a handful of competitive states, leaving millions of Republican voters in heavily Democratic states and Democratic voters in heavily Republican states with relatively little influence over the final electoral outcome. 

The historical record supplies ammunition for the debate. In 2000, George W. Bush won the presidency while losing the national popular vote to Al Gore. Sixteen years later, Donald Trump won the Electoral College despite receiving nearly 2.9 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. 

The present system permits that result. Its defenders consider the system constitutionally legitimate; its critics question whether it should remain the measure of presidential victory. And the American public has hardly been silent. 

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2024 found that 63 percent of American adults preferred changing the system so that the candidate receiving the most votes nationwide wins the presidency. 

Thirty-five percent favored retaining the Electoral College. Those are pre-election figures, not a measurement of the national mood following November 3. Nevertheless, they establish that the question has a substantial public constituency. 

The Washington Question 

What, then, should Congress do with the opening presented by the midterms? The answer will require something more substantial than congratulations, victory speeches or the customary promises of national renewal. A new congressional majority does not automatically create a constitutional consensus. Nor does Democratic control of a state government guarantee that its legislators will support the compact. 

Michigan failed to enact the proposal during an earlier period of unified Democratic government. Nevada's Democratic governor vetoed compact legislation in 2019, citing concerns about diminishing the state's influence in presidential elections. 

The constitutional questions are formidable as well. Legal scholars disagree about whether the compact requires congressional consent under the Constitution's Compact Clause. 

There are additional questions about nationwide recounts, differing state election procedures and possible disputes over the allocation of electoral votes. Those objections deserve serious public examination. Yet there is a distinction between acknowledging those obstacles and assuming that they will keep electoral reform outside the national conversation. 

The midterms have changed the political possibilities. Congress can examine the compact, consider the constitutional questions and hear from governors, state legislators, election administrators and scholars on both sides. And the press can perform its own essential function: establish what has changed, what remains uncertain and what the public deserves to know. 

One Day, Folks 

There is something encouraging about how quickly this story appeared. On November 4, while much of the country was still absorbing the scale of the election results, The New Republic magazine's media universe had already moved beyond the familiar winners-and-losers coverage. 

Axios, too published its own examination of the Electoral College opportunity that same day. By November 5, the broader story of Democratic statehouse gains was coming into sharper focus, with reporting from Reuters, the National Conference of State Legislatures and other national outlets. That is how an important public discussion begins. An election creates new circumstances. A journalist recognizes their significance. Other reporters investigate. Constitutional scholars disagree. Legislators are asked where they stand. 

The public begins paying attention. 

Whether the Electoral College ultimately survives unchanged, is altered through the interstate compact or is replaced by constitutional amendment remains unsettled. But the question has acquired something it did not possess on November 2: a new political map and enough potential electoral votes to put a long-discussed proposal within reach. 

The next presidential election is only two years away. For a system that has endured since the nation's founding, that is not much time. For a country that has just demonstrated how rapidly its political landscape can change, it may be time enough to begin a serious reckoning. The Electoral College has survived more than two centuries of American elections. The question now is whether it can survive what happened the day after this one. 

Fifteen year old, daily bkog PillartoPost.org has an opinion simply asking the Electoral College to examine what it wrought.  It gave us Donald Trump.  He did not win the national vote.  We do not need the Electoral College to open the door to a dictatorship possibility, again.  Ever.