Baseball's Solution to the Dodgers Isn't a Salary Cap

Plus: Teams in city-owned stadiums keep ending up in court, and Israeli soccer fans get banned from a match in England

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! If you're looking for work, I know of a few vacancies. (Just don't ask for too much money.)

The baseball gods blessed us with amazing drama last week—but with the Dodgers winning again, the calls from fans and other owners for a salary cap are going to grow even louder. We'll dive into that, as well as a few lawsuits involving teams playing at city-owned stadiums. Lastly, you'll find out why Israeli fans aren't being allowed to attend a soccer match in England.

Locker Room Links

• Nate Silver makes a convincing argument that American sports leagues should expand to Mexico City.
• President Donald Trump complains about the new NFL kickoffs again, and is still wrong about them.
• Angel City FC player Elizabeth Eddy wrote a very reasonable op-ed calling on the National Women's Soccer League to adopt clear standards on gender eligibility. Her teammates held a press conference to disagree with her, saying they were "hurt," "harmed," and "disgusted," and that the piece had "transphobic and racist" undertones.
• Meanwhile, people freaked out when Seattle Reign coach Laura Harvey said she used ChatGPT to help her plan tactics this season (the Reign finished fifth and are headed for the playoffs). Harvey said the AI chatbot basically gave her an idea for a new defensive system that she used in specific situations: "It worked. We won the game."
• A Manny Pacquiao–Floyd Mayweather rematch is in the works.
• Pennsylvania legislators are considering an increase to their already-high 36 percent sports betting tax.
• A company owned by the MLB Players Association is under investigation. Again.
• Elsewhere in Reason: Zohran Mamdani's $5 Billion Corporate Tax Hike Threatens NYC's Status as the World's Financial Capital
• Whatever it takes to get that NIL money!
  

  Kirk Herbstreit: "That should be a penalty. Just dressing like that should be a penalty. What the hell is it? Wearing shorts out there?"

  Chris Fowler: "Short shorts, but not short on distance."

  Herbstreit: "Got his Daisy Dukes on and puts it right down the middle…" pic.twitter.com/Hy970Fogdz

  — Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 2, 2025

Floor It

The World Series was pretty awesome. It just would have been slightly more awesome to see the Blue Jays and their fans celebrating at the end. Instead, baseball fans get to spend the offseason wondering where their sport will be a year from now.

The sport is heading straight for a lockout/strike after the 2026 season, as I covered long ago. Most of the owners want a salary cap, if not for competitive balance then to keep their labor costs down. The fans, having watched the juggernaut Dodgers win three of the last six titles, are probably warming up to the idea. The union, as ever, is adamantly opposed and hasn't wavered since its executive director said they are "never going to agree to a cap."

But what if fans could feel like they get more competitive balance while owners get to discourage ballooning payrolls and the union gets to avoid a salary cap? The answer may lie in a more robust luxury tax and forcing owners to spend more with a salary floor.

Consider the luxury tax (technically called the "competitive balance tax"), where teams that spend above a tax threshold on payroll have to pay a tax on the amount they go over (the rate increases from 20 percent in the first year of going over to 30 percent in the second and 50 percent beyond that). For 2025, the collective bargaining agreement set that amount at $241 million. The Dodgers went $176 million over the threshold and, thanks to various surcharges, had to pay a $169 million tax bill.

Where does that payment go? Half of that goes to players' retirement accounts, with half going to some teams that have grown their local non-media revenue. But the current luxury tax isn't keeping a few owners from spending whatever they want, and it's not doing enough to help the Tigers or the Pirates keep Tarik Skubal or Paul Skenes.

A harsher luxury tax combined with a salary floor can give everyone a little bit of what they want. It can give players more spending on salaries by implementing a salary floor on the low-spending teams, and it can give small-market teams more spending money by funding it with the excesses of the big-market payrolls. It also allows the union and the big-market owners who want to just spend to win to avoid the dreaded salary cap.

These changes might placate owners, fans, and players and avoid a lockout and lost games. As a fan of limited government, I don't like price controls, taxes, or redistribution—but MLB is a business (albeit one that's a governing body of a sport) and whatever it takes to avoid a fan-killing lockout is good business.

But these ideas might not revolutionize the sport like people think. Like the 2023 Kansas City Chiefs, the Dodgers annoyingly pulled off a repeat after looking vulnerable all season. They were 93–69 in the regular season, not 114–48 like the 1998 New York Yankees (who spent a quaint $134 million, in today's dollars, on their payroll). The other teams with massive payrolls this season (the Mets, Yankees, and Phillies) didn't get this far. Like sports with salary caps, the champions aren't the team that spends the most money, they're the ones who spend their money in the best ways. With a little luck on their side, the Dodgers won again by spending their money and managing their players more wisely than everyone else.

Everyone Is Suing Each Other

The Mavericks are suing the Stars. The Stars are suing the Mavericks. Pasadena is suing UCLA.

Unsurprisingly, all of these lawsuits involve city-owned sporting venues.

UCLA has a lease to play at the Rose Bowl stadium through 2044. The city of Pasadena claims the school has been in talks to move its home games to (privately owned) SoFi Stadium (the Rose Bowl is 26 miles from campus, SoFi is slightly better at 12 miles away). Pasadena, a city with roughly 140,000 people, recently spent $150 million on renovations and financed another $130 million on capital improvements for the century-old venue. But the UCLA football team sucks: "The team has averaged 35,253 fans for its four home games this season, putting it on track for an all-time low at the Rose Bowl," according to Sam Farmer and Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times.

If its landlord were a private entity, UCLA would probably be able to negotiate a settlement and move on. But negotiating with a government entity means the city can try to get the courts to decide that monetary damages for breach of contract are inadequate. "They point out in their complaint that if UCLA were to leave, they not only lose revenue, but they lose sort of prestige and also sort of surrounding businesses and other entities in Pasadena, people who pay taxes in Pasadena, people who vote in Pasadena, would be hurt by this and that the Rose Bowl cares about those people as well," UCLA law professor Russell Korobkin told the Los Angeles Times.

Meanwhile, in Dallas, the Mavericks and Stars share the 24-year-old American Airlines Center, which is owned by the city of Dallas but operated by the two teams (sort of) in a joint venture. Both teams' leases expire in 2031. The original lease said the teams had to keep their headquarters in Dallas or the other team could buy out their stake in the operating company. But in 2003, the Stars moved their headquarters to Frisco, while still playing NHL games in Dallas. Apparently no one cared about this until 2024, when the Stars refused to move back and the Mavericks bought them out—for $110 cash. 

For now, it seems the teams will keep bickering in court over what to do about American Airlines Center and possible renovations. But the writing seems to be on the wall for the teams to move out after 2031: "That is why the Mavericks are working with the City of Dallas to find a 40-to-50-acre site for a new arena and entertainment district," reports Brad Townsend of The Dallas Morning News. "And it's why the Stars are considering a $1 billion arena as the epicenter of an entertainment district on Plano's 107-acre Willow Bend Mall site."

This is how messy things can get when teams try to work with governments for their stadiums instead of doing business on their own. Regardless, lawyers for the teams should remember we're just talking about sports. There was no need for the Mavericks' lawyers to refer to "the Stars' terrorist conduct." (After all, Corey Perry hasn't been on the team for five years.)

Fans Banned

On Thursday, Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv will play Aston Villa in Birmingham, England, in a Europa League match. But none of Maccabi's fans will be there to see it.

Last month, West Midlands Police said they could not guarantee the safety of fans at the match and the U.K. government's Safety Advisory Group decided no Maccabi fans would be allowed (it is common in European soccer for home and away fans to be segregated within stadiums). Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: "This is the wrong decision. We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets. The role of the police is to ensure all football fans can enjoy the game, without fear of violence or intimidation." And yet, almost four weeks since he said that, the decision hasn't been reversed. 

It's a shameful farce. London team Tottenham Hotspur, for example, has Jewish roots and Jewish symbols are often seen at their matches. As soccer writer Henry Winter asks on Substack, "Will West Midlands Police and Birmingham City Council now ban Spurs fans from travelling to Villa Park on May 2 because of the club's Jewish connections?" My old friend Tom Rogan, a security expert, writes in the Washington Examiner that "there is simply no question that West Midlands Police has the professional experience and capability to successfully police this event," citing their ability to request help from other police forces.

There was violence last year after a Maccabi match in Amsterdam that resulted in seven people going to the hospital (five of them Israeli). But that's not a reason to ban an entire fan base instead of individual bad actors.

As Winter said, "the decision suggests the streets around Villa Park are a no-go zone for Jewish people." Several groups will be protesting on the day of the match, saying Maccabi shouldn't be allowed to play at all. In Indonesia, critics got their way when Israeli athletes weren't given immigration visas and weren't able to compete in the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. You don't have to fully support the Israeli government's actions to see and be frustrated with how Israeli athletes are being treated.

Replay of the Week

Since you probably watched game seven of the World Series (highlights here if you need them), we're going with the new record for longest field goal in NFL history. I've always loved this record, and now I'm extra glad that Justin Tucker no longer holds it (the play that set up his record-setting field goal, against my Lions, should have been penalized for delay of game—so I've always said his record was tainted and should have never happened).

CAM LITTLE JUST KICKED THE LONGEST FG IN NFL HISTORY! 68 YARDS! pic.twitter.com/WGZb6O9xhX

— NFL (@NFL) November 2, 2025

That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend, Detroit City FC against Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC in the USL Championship playoff quarterfinals.