MAY 20, 2002
BASEBALL BUMMER
Just what we needed!
A potential baseball strike on top of the terrorist attack!
Why can’t we space these things out a little better?
This week the headlines have dealt heavily with the “possible baseball strike in the offing”.
It sounds as if both side are feeling us out in advance to see how we might react to another
baseball black out.
It strikes me... no, I shouldn’t have used that word - it just shows I’m not thinking any
clearer, at the moment, than the teams and the owners.
Thus far, no one has said anything of real substance and unless someone says something
with some real meat and bone to it before too long ESPN and others who make a living
talking about it’s vagaries are going to have a rough time filling air space allotted to our
national past time and its problems.
I can picture players and owners poring over their mail -incoming e or otherwise, trying to
decide if fans will take it all again. If they seem a bit leery, kick the “soft” pedal before they
get the dissonant tune too firmly in mind and start singing their own little song of rebellion.
From my boonie bleacher seat, I’d say I already miss it and it ain’t even gone yet! Just the
threat of a baseball strike goes against my ole American grain in some odd way.
Apparent the players and the owners all seem to think certain inequities have come about
in the financing of the game, and they are both probably right. Someone went g way out on
the financial limb with those fantastic deals some players have and they have forgotten that
the average Joe-player who doesn’t make anywhere near that much. Most of them would
have to outdo Satch Paige’s fifty-nine years
- most of them in baseball - before they could do half as well as their well-off brethren. The
average player needs some better recompense, however, just to keep tab with the times.
Owner say several teams are losing money, but, thus far, no one seems to be carting open
books around showing how and when or even where.
Let’s keep the playing field level, as much as possible with a mound where the pitchers hold
forth, and let’s play by the rules rather than by sandlot improvisations.
One would think that the game which relies so much on the judgment of umpires, referees
and coaches and accepts their
instant decisions as final would have little trouble solving economic and labor problems
without convoluted agonies for themselves and others, at every turn.
A.L.M. MAY 20, 2002
