Posted on 07/14/2002 11:06:51 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
Now it is official. We are not going to play ball with the Twins. They cannot make up their minds about committing to an exclusivity agreement with St. Paul, and as a result of their skittishness, Randy Kelly pushed away from the table and said, "Thank you, gentlemen, but we are done.''
The mayor was not about to take a referendum to the voters for a 3 percent tax on restaurant booze and food without a promise from the Twins. And the Twins were not about to agree to anything because they claim they are unsure about location, parking, infrastructure and the ability of motorists in Orono, Medina, Minnetrista and other points west to actually find downtown St. Paul.
Kelly told reporters that "we have turned over every stone … moved every mountain and looked under every rock.''
Well, that's about where you'd find baseball these days, under rocks.
In the meantime, the Crying Commissioner, Bud Selig, when he is not emoting publicly about the All-Star Game fiasco, informs us that a couple of clubs might not even make it to the end of the season because they can't meet payrolls and baseball doesn't have enough money to give them a hand.
Maybe a fellow has been too hard on Selig. Maybe he is just a fall guy whom the owners are paying handsomely to stand out front and play the role of an utter dunce. First he blew the All Star game by allowing it to end in a tie, and then he compounded that unthinkable development by insisting that we shouldn't hate him for the decision and might we please help him quit feeling so sad about the events in Milwaukee. Good Lord, get this man some therapy.
In the old days, a commissioner might go to a saloon if he thought he was going to spend a long and lonely night. The way Selig lets us in on his introspection, it sounds like he sat on a dune near Lake Michigan and let the wind dry his tears.
It wasn't even 24 hours later before Selig resumed his chore on behalf of the owners and was informing the baseball world that a couple of the clubs don't have any money. The Twins, incidentally, are not one of them. The Twins keep introducing a note of poetic sanity to this disturbed season — they enjoy a commanding lead in their division with a relatively modest payroll while playing in a ballpark that the Crying Commissioner has targeted for replacement.
Let's see if we have this straight. Selig continues to threaten Minnesota with extinction because Minnesotans will not do what is necessary to build a new ballpark that presumably would result in more revenue for whomever owns the Twins. At the same time he is telling us that a couple of clubs — he won't name them; maybe they are playing in new parks — don't have any money.
Keeping in mind, mind you, that Selig makes these pathetic blusters while the players are meeting to set possible strike dates because they are easily as corrupted as the owners.
A heroin addict has more self-respect than we have seen demonstrated from anybody in a position of authority in baseball.
Randy Kelly has done us a favor. There was a time, not even that long ago, when I wouldn't have balked at paying the 3 percent on my bar tab. But too much has happened in such a short time. That tie in the All Star game was the final straw, but where I felt my stomach first flip was when Barry Bonds hoisted Torii Hunter over his shoulder and trotted off the field with him.
It wasn't the National League and the American League squaring off to solve the age-old debate about which league is better. It was the "community'' of baseball players getting together for an empty exhibition that would protect their health and thus their paychecks.
Not a nickel of public money should subsidize the demise of this once-great pastime. Not a nickel should be this country's baseball battle cry, and let it begin here. Not a nickel.
Not a nickel ever should have in the first place.
It's already established that the cities are whores to the baseball teams, now they're just negotiating on the price.
Amen..
Schools sports also, imo.. Let those who engage in them foot the whole bill by themselves.
Somebody has.
Major League Baseball didn't only make a mistake, it committed breach of contract, deceptive trade practices, negligent representation and misrepresentation when it ended the All-Star Game in a 7-7 tie, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.
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