Posted on 06/17/2020 8:04:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
Vastly overpaid ballplayers crying about money and games played while millions are still out of work.
Greedy players and greedy owners can’t seem to reach an agreement. They would have the sports world all to themselves (except for golf and European soccer). And thus are missing a great opportunity.
The Cleveland Browns taught me a valuable lesson. Professional sports is a business, nothing more, nothing less. In general, the people associated with a professional sports franchise don’t care about you, or your city. They care about taking care of themselves. I have no problem with that.
But, when the teams come crying to the fans asking for support and loyalty, remember, it’s like the makers of Tide, or Kleenex asking for your loyalty and support. To heck with that, produce a good product, I may watch, I may not.
And when they come, hat in hand asking the taxpayers to build them a structure so they can make huge piles of cash, I’d say get lost.
Reality.
Too greedy and way too detached from their dwindling fan base.
I gave up on baseball during the strike-shortened season (’95 or so?). I did not intentionally walk away, but during the long layoff, I found I could do without it and moved on. I did not come back to it until 5 or 6 years ago. This year is shaping up to be the beginning of another period in which I lose interest in baseball (hell, pretty much all sports).
It’s amazing to me how petty and stupid they’re all being. For one thing the agreement they made at shut down means they could just turn things on with no additional negotiations. But of course the MLBPA is generally considered the most powerful union in sports. And they like to prove that by #$%^ing the bed periodically. The owners went in for more negotiations, and the PA $#%^ the bed. They could have been playing in May. They could have been national heroes. Nope.
If an NFL season is shortened from 16 to 12 games, the only thing the fans notice is that there are four fewer weeks of football. But if an MLB season is shorted to 50, 100 or even 140 (out of 162) games, then it forever carries a black mark in the eyes of fans because none of the statistical achievements really mean anything in a historical context.
This year is shaping up to be the beginning of another period in which I lose interest in baseball (hell, pretty much all sports).
They sure are. They could be the only game in town right now - a massive roll out on July 4 could have generated a lot of excitement and good feeling for the country. But the billionaires and millionaires can’t figure it out.
Now comes Dr. Fauci’s recommendation to baseball about the timing of safely wrapping up their season. My bet right now, no baseball.
Fine by me. There’s plenty on Netflix and Hulu to watch.
I’ve heard one major issue is that they planned to play in empty stadiums. With no ticket sales revenue, the owners are going to take a huge financial bath this season.
Sad to say the owners will come out ahead financially if there is no 2020 season at all.
Then on the other hand the players, some of whom make millions of dollars in a season, are balking at perhaps getting only a high six figure or low million dollar payday for a short season.
Ideally both sides would realize that 2020 is going to be a tough season for everyone, and make Financial sacrifices in 2020 for the good of the game in 2021 and beyond.
After the strike-shortened 1994 season I swore I would never support MLB again. I’ve done a good job over the years. I’ve attended a total of four MLB games since then — all of them in the last 15 years. Two of them were company events, and one of them was a group event in another city as part of a multi-day conference. My only moment of weakness (where I went out and paid for tickets out of my own pocket) came a few years ago when I was dating a girl who was a hard-core baseball fan. :-)
Like usual by you Kaslin good post however you could have simple said Baseball,Short-sighted on both sides and screwing up a grand opportunity.
I'm not so sure about that. I've been under the impression that MLB is under tremendous pressure to put SOMETHING on the field this season because the financial/legal repercussions they'd face under their TV contracts would be devastating.
And I have no interest in defending the players here, but the public statement from one of them on this mess made a lot of sense. He was really talking about the blatant inconsistency in playing games under modified conditions. He said (I'm paraphrasing): "If it isn't safe enough to play with fans in the stands, then how is it safe to play at all?"
> when the teams come crying to the fans asking for support and loyalty, remember, it’s like the makers of Tide, or Kleenex asking for your loyalty and support <
Very well said. I like a good football game as much as the next guy. And sometimes a friend of mine will tell me, “You gotta support your team!”
To that I always reply: “Why?” Oh, the blank looks I get!
Oh, I'll get caught up on projects around the house that I keep putting off. I can watch more movies from my vast Blu-ray and DVD collection, watch more operas, etc.
When you really think about it in depth, sports are really stupid. I try not to dwell on the fact that when we watch a sport, we are watching people do something that has no practical application in life. "Wow, that guy can really throw a ball through a hoop!", etc. It takes some imagination on the fan's part to see these trivial talents as somehow important and a source of regional pride.
The fun of sports is forgetting unimportant stuff and getting wrapped up in something unimportant. Once too much reality intrudes (labor contracts, BLM, etc) it ceases to be a diversion and becomes an annoyance.
As an old friend told me, professional sports is like professional sex. There is no love involved, and it is all about the money.
Geez Ben: How did we ever get along when there were but 16 teams and none west of the Mississippi? When there was damned little spring training, when the post season was no greater than seven games? When parks held maybe 25,000 at most (less the House that Ruth built). When there was no such thing as an NBA. When pro-football was an Eastern joke. Somehow America survived. Perhaps because we paid more attention to our family than to our sports team?
There will be no sports in the Brave New World, comrade.
Only labor and shortage, unending.
“Each passing day without Major League Baseball stands as a stain on America’s national pastime and represents a sad failure to capitalize on a golden opportunity for the game and the country.”
Well... while the romanticism is appreciated, this is not our daddies’ America anymore. Any return to pro sports will be so heavily laced with wokeness about “racism,” it’ll be insufferable.
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