[DiMaggio5CF]

I kinda like the idea. I don't know if owners need to negotiate advertising deals, but you would have an income based on ticket sales, TV deals, and advertising -- which would be largely determined by your franchise's success, although market size would play a role. It would be up to you to set a budget for your GM; the skill would be deciding how much of that income you want to keep as cash in the bank to spend on free agents further down the line.

Your GM would negotiate the trades and free agent signings and bring the deals to you for approval. He could also bring you deals that would put the team over budget and ask you for the extra cash to make it happen. Do you dip into the savings fund you had set aside because you found yourself in a pennant race or do you stay the course and keep that money for that big free agent you have your eye on during the upcoming off-season?

You could give your GM goals. You can set as many goals as you want for the season or the off-season. You would have two options -- give an order to do something about a certain player by name or go after a certain type of player. Something like this:

A) [Action: trade for, trade away, sign, release, etc.] [Specific Player's Name] by [Date: today, this week, this month, the trading deadline, the end of the season, the end of the calendar year, the beginning of spring training, Opening Day, or a specific date]

B) [Action: trade for, sign, acquire by any means] [Type of player: hitter, power hitter, contact hitter, LHH, RHH, switch hitter, starting pitcher, relief pitcher, closer, RHP, LHP, position] who is [Add as many criteria as you want -- ratings, stats, or both (and time frame -- last year, last 2 years, last 3 years, career, in any one season)] who is [age] by [deadline - see above].

So I can tell my GM to trade away Alex Rodriguez and acquire a left-handed-hitting third baseman who is under 30 years old with a 5 or higher contact rating who hit at least 15 homeruns last year by the start of Spring Training.

The GM does the best he can and comes to me to approve any potential deals and/or to choose packages. You can approve or decline a deal, or you could table it for now -- then it would go in a pending decisions bank that you can access to have him revisit it later and see if the other player/team is willing to still do it.

Of course, you can still negotiate deals yourself, as you do now. You can take a deal that the GM brings to you and start negotiating on your own if the deal is close but not exactly what you want. The more you meddle, though, the more you get a bad reputation and the more you will have to pay to get GMs to work for you. The quickness with which you fire staff and other obviously relevant decisions would also factor into your reputation.

Personally, I also would like to see the ability to vote and campaign for a specific commissioner when the old one retires and perhaps certain issues in the CBA if that's not too in-depth. Commishes could have specific personalities and ideas and agendas, which would affect you and how you operate (salary caps, revenue sharing, salary floors, expansion, contraction, willingness to approve new stadiums and franchise moves, etc.). The better your reputation as well as your agreeableness with other owners (they occasionally approach you for support on issues; do you accept or reject them?) plays a role in how successful you are in campaigning. That's getting a little ahead of ourselves, though.