Cleveland Fans Are Debating Crowdfunding Enough Money To Keep Francisco Lindor On The Indians And I Am ALL IN
Letter to the Editor (Cleveland.com) –
Let’s agree that Francisco Lindor is a generational baseball player who is not only beloved in Cleveland but nationally. His joy is shared by those who watch him. At all of 25 years old, he is baseball royalty.
Yet, we are resigned to losing him as he enters the prime of his career. With rare exception, our star players have been unloaded in their prime by a resource-challenged small market team that has, to the credit of management, remained surprisingly competitive.
Our owners, who generally live within their means, probably reason they cannot spend $30 million annually on one player and remain competitive. Understood.
Why not crowdfund a contract for Lindor? Recognizing the incongruity of asking a working-class city to fund part of a king’s ransom to play baseball, why not? If we chip in $100 million, maybe that puts the deal over the top. I’m guessing I’m not the only one who would throw in a few hundred bucks to watch Lindor retire in an Indians uniform.
Probably a ridiculous idea.
We have a little over two years to pull it off.
David Weiss,
Beachwood
David from Beachwood…….I LIKE YOUR STYLE.
Quick question: Is this legal…..? Because if this is legal, I feel like the game has absolutely been changed. I understand that this would never work in a league like the NFL because it has a hard cap, and it probably wouldn’t even work too well in the NBA with the soft cap. But the fact that the MLB is the only major US sport without a salary cap means that it is prime for the taking for a die-hard baseball city to crowdfund its way to signing a superstar for the big bucks.
Patient Zero: Francisco Lindor
It absolutely sucks that the Indians owners cannot afford to keep him here on their own dime. How poor can you be? But just because we have unquestionably the worst ownership in all of baseball does not mean that we should have to lose our 100th straight star in their prime. I think David in Beachwood is on to something here.
So how would this work? GoFundMe or an increase in city taxes? It would be such a cool story for a city to pass a levy to increase taxes to keep a superstar player at home. Call it the “Hometown Discount Tax”. Or shit, even call it the “Frankie Tax”. But I just don’t see how the city of Cleveland itself would be the city to do it. It’s obviously the people from the suburbs that would have the money to do it, and I can’t see Strongsville, Parma, Westlake, etc all finding ways to pass it.
So yeah, it would have to be a GoFundMe. This would probably be the first ever GoFundMe started for a billionaire. But even though it would help him, it would also help all of us. Without Lindor, this team loses its flash. It loses its fire. And it loses a damn good baseball player. I mean, if the MLB tossed every single player into a pool right now, where would Lindor get drafted? 1st? 2nd? The dude can play….and he is so damn cool.
And I know that we all already donate at least $25 for a ticket and $9 per beer each time we go to the ballpark, but I’d be willing to pitch in another couple hundred dollars for a one-time fee to sign Frankie Lindor long-term. Who wouldn’t?
I will be speaking to Mike Portnoy Esq. today to see if this is legal, and then we will start to get the ball rolling. The math adds up that 500,000 people would have to give $200 to get to a hundred million. If an extra hundred million on top of whatever the Dolan’s offer won’t keep Lindor….well then I guess what everyone says about Cleveland is true. But we won’t even need 500,000 people. Businesses will join in. Restaurants. I bet people even start leaving money for this cause in their will. We have two years to raise $100,000,000. Frankie is worth it….let’s do it.