Posted on 08/24/2002 12:00:21 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
A week ago, the Baseball Union set a strike date for the end of the month. The baseball players have shown that they're not playing around when they vow to strike, because there have been eight strikes in baseball in the past 30 years.
This has to do with, of course, money. A new economic system is being proposed for Major League Baseball, but the players are worried about their salaries being cut if this system is put in place. Presto, the automatic solution is to quit working.
The planning of a strike on the 30th -- and another World Series canceled -- is upsetting to me and many other baseball fans.
You have to understand: I grew up on the baseball field, with my brother playing baseball and my sister playing softball. I started playing – T-Ball at least – when I was four, but even before then, I was playing in the dirt somewhere at a game.
In recent years, I have played competitive baseball. My siblings and I have all been on competitive teams and traveled across the country to play in tournaments where a 100+ teams participated.
Not only have I been around baseball my entire life, I've supported Major League Baseball by watching the games on television, traveling far distances to MLB games, as well as buying a lot of baseball paraphernalia. My favorite team has always been the losing Chicago Cubs and I've never once wanted the Yankees to win a game.
My dad is a baseball fanatic, as is my sister, my brother and myself – even my mother likes to watch baseball and follows the games.
The game of baseball is one of the smartest, difficult and most complex games ever created. Abner Doubleday invented the game in the 1830s and the complexities still boggle the mind of players and fans.
A small ball is thrown up to and sometimes over 100 miles per hour to a batting plate 60 feet away, where a batter with a thin bat has to move his hips, bring the bat around, find the ball, and generate enough bat speed to meet the bat with the ball – this is all done in less than a second.
However, that description is just a tiny fraction of what comes into play with the game of baseball. Yet, even just that complex, nine players must work together to win at this game. No wonder baseball is America's pastime.
Sadly, the game has come from a time where players were loyal to their managers, teams and teammates, to a day and age of greed – and it has nearly come to a point where money is the only tangible factor that comes into play when players makes decisions on which team to play.
After all the players have been blessed with over the years, more is still demanded. They're worried about a cut in pay raises, but I was under the impression that a million dollars in one year was more than enough money for anyone.
The blessings that they have received are all from the baseball fans. Therefore, they owe it to the fans to do whatever it takes to prevent a strike. But money is everything to these guys.
The baseball strike is set for the end of the month. I hope the strike is called off – not only for the benefit of the fans, but also for the benefit of the players, because many fans won't come back.
I have supported baseball for as long as I have been able to, but what do I get back in return? A slap in the face by greedy people who play a children's game as a source of income.
If indeed, the baseball players do strike, I vow that as of the strike date, I will never watch, read, or have anything to do with Major League Baseball until this generation of players are gone. Will you join me?
Greed has taken over the game and it's a sad sight.
Why does nobody mention this?
Pretty much sums up why I refuse to subsidize baseball and why football is rapidly losing it's appeal to me.
I think once the teams became a group of hired contractors the concept of them being a "team" didn't really click with me. I'd like to think of a team like the Chicago "Bears" being a group of guys who love Chicago, play out of pride and provide a real and tanigible return to the community that supports them. How? By being decent citizens for starters.
But now that I've returned from fantasy-land, I know it just doesn't work that way anymore. Still, it just feels dirty watching a group of hired contractors rather than a team. I don't feel like subsidizing a known felon who'd sell his mother for another 200G and doesn't give a damn about the city and people his team allegedly represents.
Maybe a lot of people feel that way.
I used to be so into the tactics (my love was football, but the same thing is happening there so it's a valid point for discussion), but the other aspects of what was happening with football began to taint how I felt about it. Man, there used to be only a few things that felt better than whopping a guy at full speed in full pads on the field. Who the hell cared where the ball was? Nowadays it takes an effort to get involved, which is sad. I really loved the sport.
The current financial structure of both football and baseball have not helped to make them any more appealing to fans.
Ted Williams won't have a problem boycotting games from now on. He has frozen his position on this issue.
Oh really, then why do the players insist on a minimum salary of almost $400K. If players want a free market, then why not allow players to sign for $100K if they wish. If baseball players were worth what they are being paid, clubs would be making money, which very few are. Baseball is a mess and it is utterly stupid for baseball players to strike since they already make more than the revenues they produce. The game will be ruined and everybody will lose. Oh well, I like pro Football and college basketball much better.
I will say both sides are entirely withing their rights to do whatever they do. However as fans we are entirely within our rights to reject the whole &^%$&*( bunch of them.
I suppose I could agree with you if we were talking about cops or firemen or hospital employees or some other basic group of hard working Americans.
But professional sports are GAMES. The cost of paying these jocks multi-million-dollar salaries has jacked up ticket prices to the point where a lot of people can't afford to attend a pro game but once a year if at all.
There is greed on both sides but the owners,like investors everywhere, are the ones taking the original risk.
Some 17yr old kid in Vermont just finished high school and the Red Sox gave him $300,000 just for signing on for a two year comittment.
If he does well, the rest of his classmates can look forward (under the present scenario) to shelling out a hundred bucks to see him pitch.
Most of the baseball, basketball and football players are level headed guys but there are too many jerks who think a mega salary entitles them to behaving like fools.
I've been a fan since the mid-40s when a guy like Dave "Boo" Ferris (just elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame) went 9-0 for the Red Sox at the start of a season for something like $10,000.
Guys like Pesky, Doerr, Malzone, Ted, Dom D were heroes for a kid to look up to. Today, we've got too many Clemens, Everetts and jerks advertising Viagra.
I recently heard one intellectually-challenged jock saying somehting to the effect: "it's not for us..it's for the kids coming up, just like the last strikes were for us at that time."
Yeh, right! You really needed that second Mercedes.
Ok, I'm a P.O.'d old fart and you can shoot all the economic holes you want in my argument..but..if they can't play ball I can't be bothered wasting any time on the prima donnas any more.
I'll pull a Rosey Grier and take up knitting.
I'd like to see the marketplace determine salaries. Just like the most prestigous corporations can pay the big bucks to get the most talented CEOs or researches, the most financially successful baseball teams can pay more. Heck, I'd even like to see the draft go. If it just keeps going on its own, even the richest teams will bankrupt themselves by giving ridiculous salaries to nearly over the hill superstars. And we'll keep preferring the David and Goliath scenerios where the less known and well paid players go out and get it done.
I would think that this time round the players are smarter than their union and realize that a strike will abort a lot of their careers.
To get skilled help, the owners can't help being involved in a bidding war to sign up a potential player.
The owners invested in baseball because they love the game too! They would like at least to recover their investments.
True this is a very special skill, but I wonder if anyone has pointed out that the job market for it is (to say the least) limited. Last time I checked the want-ads I didn't see many ads saying "Wanted shortstop must be able to go deep in the hole and still turn a double play. Experence preferred, but will train the right candidate."
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