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Go ahead and strike!
By Al
Ruechel | 07-29-02
I used to love the game of baseball
when I was a kid growing up. In a small Iowa town in the summer,
there wasn’t much else to do but play baseball. Like most kids I
dreamed of coming up to bat and swinging like Mickey Mantle with two
outs in the bottom of the ninth. On the field I was Brooks Robinson
at third base. Every backyard was turned into a Fenway or Dodger
Stadium. There were no fences or foul poles just Mrs. Rosenberg’s
lilac bushes and Old Man Kroneman’s barn. If you hit the top it was
a homer. Anything off the sides or lost in the bushes was a double.
You break a window and the games over and we pretend you don’t
exist, until tomorrow’s game.
Every kid regardless of age or talent was drafted into those hot
summer night games played under the glow of a single light bulb hung
from a nearby tree. Old grain sacks stuffed with leaves worked as
bases. Our bats were old cracked remnants from the town team,
wrapped with so much tape if they did break again they would never
fell apart, just sort of limp in the middle. We only had one good
baseball with leather on all of the sides, all the rest were chewed
up by my dogs. We shared our gloves and passed them one from one
generation to the next. They looked like a cartoon hand that had
been run over by a steamroller. For padding we used to wad up an old
sock or a piece of torn t-shirt. Heck, I don’t even remember if we
kept score. We played and played and played because we loved it. It
was a simple as that.
There’s nothing simple about major league baseball today. It’s big
business with big egos and big problems. The baseball we played and
watched as kids isn’t the same game we see on TV today. The love of
the game is gone, replaced by a bunch of spoiled brats who have the
gall to call themselves the heroes of summer. They like to think of
themselves as a Mantle or a Marris or a Williams when in fact they
are no better than the corporate CEO’s of Enron and WorldCom. Team
owners are so brazen they attempt to hold the public hostage by
demanding new palatial stadiums built at taxpayer’s expense. Then,
they strike deals practically at gunpoint to walk away with most of
the profits from concessions and parking and anything that takes
place in “their” stadiums.
The word “love” has been stricken from the baseball vocabulary by
the word greed. Players want a piece of the action without taking
the risks of ownership. They don’t like having to pay a luxury tax.
Poor babies. Players and agents huddle together creating deals that
make no monetary sense. You say 200-million dollars for one player?
Isn’t that the cost of a small stadium? Can one player win a World
Series for you? A-Rod is that true? There’s no salary cap so teams
like the Yankees can spend 120-million a year on salaries while
other teams like the Devil Rays can barely afford one sixth of that.
That’s why the same teams keep winning over and over again. Boring!
Now players get huge signing bonuses they get to keep even if they
end up bombing out. Have you heard of a pitcher named White for the
Devil Rays who got 10-million dollars right out of high school? He’s
still in the minors waiting to develop. And how is it that some
teams are paying for players that aren’t even on their rosters? In
my world you get paid for working, not sitting on the bench because
you sprained an ankle or pulled a muscle. We report to work aches
and pains and all.
Then there’s free agency. Hey, why shouldn’t a player be able to
market his skills and get the most money possible? Money, money,
money. It’s always about money. The agent gets some, the union gets
some, and the players are wading so deep in the green they can’t
even imagine how to spend it all. But they need more. It’s about
respect now and sharing the wealth. I mean really, how can you
survive with only four homes and a half dozen cars? And, if George
Steinbrenner can make 100-million a year (which he doesn’t) then why
shouldn’t I be able to make that much? I’m the star. I’m the
attraction. I got to take care of my family, you know! I’ve got my
lifestyle, my image!
You ungrateful jerks. You ask us for our loyalty and for our support
in the stadiums and you still want more. You make more money in one
week of baseball then fans will make in a lifetime. We have to sit
in the nosebleed seats and restrict our eating to maybe one hotdog
or maybe on drink because everything is so stinking expensive.
You go ahead and strike, you poor babies! You’re so stupid you
haven’t figured out the reason attendance is so low is because
baseball never recovered from the last strike. Since 1998 overall
attendance is down 37 percent with TV ratings falling another 36
percent. That spells trouble! Surveys also suggest fans blame
players for the labor problems and not owners. And worst yet, 69
percent of the fans think a strike could permanently harm baseball
in the near future.
No, I won’t be shedding a tear for the players or the owners if this
strike puts another nail in baseball’s coffin. This isn’t baseball
anyway. This is like Wall Street of late. The value of the sport is
way over priced. The books have been cooked. The players union
reminds me of the ENRON board of directors. They are strangling the
golden goose all the while trying to stuff more food down its
throat. Their telling the fans not to give up on the game all the
while they are raping it for their own personal game.
No, go ahead baseball and pull the dirt over your grave. Forget fan
loyalty and honor and role modeling. The true game of baseball has
been and always will be a game for kids and dreamers and those who
believe in last minute heroics and miracles. The sooner this
nightmare called modern Major League Baseball is dissolved the
better.
Al Ruechel, copyright 2002, all
rights reserved
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