The baseball fan's annual end-of-season lament is supposed to be, "Wait till next year." But most fans have no realistic hope that their boys of summer will ever win a pennant. Major-market titans like the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox dominate the sport, slugging out win after win while once-mighty franchises like the Kansas City Royals (who, not so long ago - OK, more than two decades ago - went to the playoffs six times in 10 years) remain perennial cellar dwellers. The culprit is competitive imbalance, Major League Baseball's euphemism for an economic structure that gives teams in big media markets access to more money and, therefore, more resources to build a strong team.
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