burth179

True, but they aren't even trying to be more "competitive" than they were in the late 90's....

Yeah part of the problem is the Buccos fans, they don't care if the team sucks they still go for the food, bobbleheads, beers, etc, but the here is the main problem. The main problem is David Littlefield is terrible, and can't scout players worth of crap. He is constrained by finances to a degree, but most of his moves have been flat our bad. All of their top picks are busts for the most part. The jury is still out on a few of them, but all in all they have done a terrible job of drafing. Then the trades. Aramis Ramirez for Bobby Hill and Matt Brubek? Wigginton and a reliever whose name slips my mind, for Benson? (Keep in mind they could have had Scott Kashmir, who the Mets traded for Victor Zambrano a few days later, but Little-joke had to try and fill 2 holes with one guy). They got rid of Chris Young, etc. They waste a bunch of money on Burnitz, Randa, etc. Ownership doesn't care though, they probably hired Littlefield to keep the status quo. Nobody in baseball regarded Littlefield as any brilliant mind by a long strech when they hired him. The Collective Bargaining Agreement has caused managment to be content with, or almost hope for 72-90 seasons so they can keep getting their reveneue sharing money. If they make too much on their own, or get "too good", they lose their revenue sharing. It's almost as bad as Tampa Bay, who gets more in revenue sharing than they even spend on players. It doesn't matter if 20,000 walk out, the owners are still making money regardless because of the CBA. Hopefully some changes are made to the CBA when it runs out, to force teams to match what they get in revenue sharing on player salaries or something to keep teams from hoarding the money. With the new staduim ownership promised to at least try to spend money and put a winning team out there. They have obviously not kept that promise. But walking out of one game isn't proving anything. Besides, they bought their tickets already to get in the park, and that is all management cares about.