There are currently 30 major league teams. There are 16 teams in the National League and 14 in the American League. The reason they are unbalanced is because in baseball every team plays just about every day, and teams play in (typically) three game sets, so you need an even number of teams in each league to avoid scheduling problems. This means that the NL Central has six teams while the AL West only has four. It would be ideal to add a couple of western teams to even out the leagues and enfranchise some disenfranchised parts of the country (I think Portland would be perfect for a second team).
The common argument against expansion is dilution of talent. You take the same number of major league players and spread them across two more teams, and it means you have to now have inferior players on major league rosters. That's 50 players who weren't good enough to play in the majors yesterday now playing in the majors. The response is the fact that there is a larger and larger talent pool from which to draw players, both from population increases in the US and the every increasing influx of talent from outside the US, which means the borderline players now were likely talented enough to be big leaguers in less diluted times.
The chart below shows how many Americans per team there have been since 1960, the last year of pre-expansion MLB:
Year Tms Popuation Pop per Tm 1960 16 180,671,158 11,291,947 1961 18 183,691,481 10,205,082 1962 20 186,537,737 9,326,887 1963 20 189,241,798 9,462,090 1964 20 191,888,791 9,594,440 1965 20 194,302,963 9,715,148 1966 20 196,560,338 9,828,017 1967 20 198,712,056 9,935,603 1968 20 200,706,052 10,035,303 1969 24 202,676,946 8,444,873 1970 24 205,052,174 8,543,841 1971 24 207,660,677 8,652,528 1972 24 209,896,021 8,745,668 1973 24 211,908,788 8,829,533 1974 24 213,853,928 8,910,580 1975 24 215,973,199 8,998,883 1976 24 218,035,164 9,084,799 1977 26 220,239,425 8,470,747 1978 26 222,584,545 8,560,944 1979 26 225,055,487 8,655,980 1980 26 227,224,681 8,739,411 1981 26 229,465,714 8,825,604 1982 26 231,664,458 8,910,171 1983 26 233,791,994 8,992,000 1984 26 235,824,902 9,070,189 1985 26 237,923,795 9,150,915 1986 26 240,132,887 9,235,880 1987 26 242,288,918 9,318,805 1988 26 244,498,982 9,403,807 1989 26 246,819,230 9,493,047 1990 26 249,464,396 9,594,784 1991 26 252,153,092 9,698,196 1992 26 255,029,699 9,808,835 1993 28 257,782,608 9,206,522 1994 28 260,327,021 9,297,394 1995 28 262,803,276 9,385,831 1996 28 265,228,572 9,472,449 1997 28 267,783,607 9,563,700 1998 30 270,248,003 9,008,267 1999 30 272,690,813 9,089,694 2000 30 282,171,936 9,405,731 2001 30 285,039,803 9,501,327 2002 30 287,726,647 9,590,888 2003 30 290,210,914 9,673,697 2004 30 292,892,127 9,763,071 2005 30 295,560,549 9,852,018 2006 30 298,362,973 9,945,432 2007 30 301,290,332 10,043,011 2008 30 304,059,724 10,135,324 2009 30 307,006,550 10,233,552 2010 30 308,400,408 10,280,014
Every time the population per team gets around ten million, MLB has expanded. As you can see, we live in a time now where there is a greater population per team since any time before expansion began in 1961. It is time for expansion in MLB, and I think Salt Lake City is a fine potential spot for a team. I won't go into the details, but I think the Salt Lake metropolitan area has a lot of positive attributes that could make it attractive to Major League Baseball.
Expansion brings the teams and league closer to Americans, balances power more evenly throughout the country, and improves the brand generally by making the game more accessible. I would suggest naming the team the Utah Reds, but that nickname is already taken. Maybe the Utah Smog? I'm just brainstorming.
The United States House of Representatives could benefit from the idea of expansion, as well. For reference, first, I'm taking my information from the Wiki page for the HofR and the Google fusion table for population. In 1776 there were about 2.5 million Americans and 65 Representatives, for a ration of one Representative for every 38,462 citizens. Below is a rundown of all the years the House has been expanded and the new ratio:
1776: 38,462
1791: 58,684
1793: 40,956
1803: 41,322
1813: 43,345
1815: 45,648
1817: 47,814
1819: 50,089
1821: 46,577
1833: 58,520
1835: 61,237
1843: 83,917
1845: 88,429
1847: 93,191
1851: 102,612
1853: 108,587
1857: 121,094
1861-1868 is the Civil War and Reconstruction, so it got all screwy and I'm not going to figure it out. I think the numbers get normal again in 1869.
1869: 155,472
1873: 142,429
1883: 165,312
1889: 186,564
1891: 192,740
1893: 186,714
1901: 200,995
1911: 240,059
1913: 223,506
1959: 407,866
1961: 420,347
1963: 435,039
Today the population is about 310,232,863 and we still have only 435 seats, making 713,179 Americans for every Representative, or about 18.5 times the original ratio 1776. This is a big problem. Reducing the ratio would help in a few of ways, I think.
First, it would bring our representatives closer to us. This would make each individual voice more important and more powerful. It would allow us easier access to our representatives, and make them more accountable to us. It would perhaps open up lines of communication between the electorate and the representatives that cannot exist with such a large ratio as we have today.
Second, I think it would affect campaign funding positively. I recently heard on NPR, and I can't find a link to back this up so take it with a grain of salt, that something like 20% of all winning Representatives received less than 10% of their total campaign funding from their actual constituents. And something like 75% received less than half from their constituents. The rest of the money came from political action committees and corporations and labor unions and the like. This is incredibly disconcerting to me. Every single Representative has been bought by big interest groups. If we expanded the House significantly that money would get watered down and the local constituent money might become more important.
Third, it could serve to weaken the political parties. Because Representatives would be more concerned with their actual constituents they might be more likely to think independently and not just get sucked into the cogs of the machines. They would have less fear of going against party leadership to serve their constituents because they would be closer to their constituents than to the party. There would be more districts that were idiosyncratic in one way or another because of their smaller sizes, making it harder to fit in neatly with either party. A dramatically larger House might even create enough room for a third party or regional parties that doesn't seem to exist now.
So, in the same way that expanding the MLB would strengthen its brand and increase its popularity with little to no effect on the overall quality of the product, so would expanding the House of Representatives be good for democracy. There are plenty of good men and women who would make excellent political leaders if only the system were not so corrupt and distant from the People. If we combined an expanded House with things like campaign finance reform and term limits, we might actually improve the government brand and make it function better.
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