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.
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.
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.
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.
The good news is that baseball can come and go, but God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
We had a great run.
Nice going MLB. All of the other sports have become woke. Baseball hasn’t started up yet and had the opportunity to the only sport that was free of politics. Imagine the money they could have made.
Long term, they are disappointing young boy fans who will not come back. They are pissing away their future.
MLB is dead.
Without having somebody at the top in charge, as the example of not being able to hand out player discipline to prevent a wealthy player with unlimited resources from employing spotters and wearIng wires results in anarchy to where the most corrupt win. People would eventually not want to watch , and not because they are not allowed to go to the stadiums or be infected with a virus gas, or because games are too long for tic tock attention spans, but because nobody wants to watch rigged games.
Baseball itself has always been a refection of American life, rigging the system, greed and corruption of prideful people resulting in the loss of law and order could easily describe why our nation has shut down and not just baseball.
They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.
“Of course, we won’t mind if you look around,” you’ll say. “It’s only twenty dollars per person.” They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For it is money they have and peace they lack.
And they’ll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.
People will come, Ray.
The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.
America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.
This field, this game — it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.
Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come...”
Last time I took a break from baseball over strikes and steroids it was for many years. This might be forever.