[ale] [OT] (- Way OT) Pre-emptive baseball strike

[aaron]

On Saturday 17 August 2002 23:27, you wrote:
> I know this is about as far off ale topic as it is possible to get, but
> I think it worthwhile and I hope you guys will join me on this one.
> I'm too nerd to be much of a baseball fan, but I find that I can
> support this position anyway.

I don't know about nerds, but of the mainstream sports I think baseball 
offers the greatest attraction for geeks. Besides George Carlin's famous 
list of Baseball's pastoral advantages over Football, there are the 
unique, interesting aspects that statistics play a significant role in 
the game and it is the defense which puts the ball into play.

> ----------------------------
> On August 30th, a group of spoiled crybabies, who each get paid more in
> a year, for playing a kid's game, than you will earn in several
> lifetimes, will go on strike.

I can't agree more that most all player salaries in mainstream, major 
league sports are hugely inflated. However, regardless of any inequities 
in comparison to other careers, people have the legal right to organize, 
unionize and/or strike for better contractual conditions, and doing so 
should not become an indictment of character.

[snip]

> It is not the owner's money they are
> striking for. It is your money they want. The owners just collect it
> and keep a little extra for their trouble.

That's where this rant gets to be a real stretch... like a rubber band to 
the moon stretched. Like the players, the fans have a legitimate, legal 
right to strike (at least until the league association subscribes to 
NAFTA or the WTO) but fans shouldn't be misdirected to playing favorites 
in a blame game.

It's pretty easy to demonstrate that the team owners are guilty of at 
least as much greed and opportunism as the players, and in general I 
think they're guilty of a whole lot more criminal behavior. One only 
needs to look at the 100 plus taxpayer subsidized skybox bastions that 
have been built over the past decade to get a taste of it. Team loyalties 
of players fell to the insider trading of the owners long before free 
agency came to the field, but now owner avarice has discarded the 
regional loyalties of the fans, too. They blackmail entire cities with 
threats of moving *their* team if the community doesn't cough up the 
funds (via the taxes of fans and disinterested nerds alike) to build them 
a play palace where they will lay personal claim to all the procedes from 
tickets, concessions, parking and any other gouge they can dream up and 
mark up. (This is all *after* having subverted our entire publically 
funded  higher education system to serve as their private minor league 
farm team network.)

Perhaps the lone exception in this professional sports greed game is the 
Green Bay Packers franchise, which is actually owned collectively by a 
non-profit group of about 2,000 small business people and fans that 
live and work in Green Bay.  Mixing a little community spirited 
volunteerism with smart management, they have kept ticket, concession and 
parking prices reasonable despite the enormously inflated player 
salaries of the NFL. They consistently sell out the open air stadium 
seats (sorry,  no sky boxes) for $7 to $28 regardless of inclement 
weather or the the teams win loss record for the year.

Of course, the rest of the owners of NFL franchises have since amended 
their association's charter to specifically ban any new or future 
community ownership of any NFL team, so we don't need to worry about that 
kind of altruistic fan and player loyalty showing its ugly head again.

Back at the plate, though, I think the avarice and foul play (heh, heh) 
don't seem quite as bad in Baseball yet. Maybe we can demand that "less 
greed" be added to Carlin's Baseball attribute list if a fan boycott of 
the self interested MLB owners and  players this fall proves effective in 
restoring sanity to our national pass time.

> [snip]

peace
(after justice)
aaron


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