Greedy players, owners rip heart out of beloved sport; disgrace the memory of those lost Sept. 11
"They will walk out to the bleachers and sit in shirt sleeves on a perfect afternoon. Or they will find that they have reserved seats along one of the baselines, where they sat as children and cheered their heroes. They will watch the game and it will be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters and the memories will be so thick that they have to brush them away from their faces."
"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This game is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good and could be again."
—Terrance Mann (as portrayed by actor James Earl Jones) in the movie, "Field of Dreams," released by Universal Pictures, 1989.
As I write this column, Major League Baseball is just 24 hours away from yet another work stoppage, a strike of its players against its owners. It could turn out to be nothing more than a moot point. A settlement could be reached within the last few hours before the strike deadline set for Friday. Negotiations have been ongoing in a New York hotel, an attempt to avoid the strike and somehow come to a collective bargaining agreement.
As I write this, two teams have already cancelled charter flights for their destinations on Friday. Other teams have instructed their players to go home instead of going to the ballpark on Friday. The strike looms like an ominous dark storm cloud. It hovers like a vulture.
And as that cloud continues to lower and the vulture maintains its descent toward its prey, my heart aches more and more.
Because if these money-obsessed players and these greedy, lying owners didn’t somehow come to an agreement by August 30, 2002, then that date becomes to me like the day that Don McLean sang about in the classic song, "American Pie."
McLean thought that the music died when Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash in Iowa in 1959. I will know that my favorite sport will have died when they walked out on August 30, 2002.
That will be it. I will never attend another major league game. I won’t watch. I won’t pay attention. I won’t read box scores, like I have daily since I was 5 years old. I won’t listen to games on the radio, picturing like I was there in the stands.
Hey, some people might think it’s a blessing, because after all, I’m a Met fan and everyone knows that the Mets went on strike themselves about three weeks ago and quit on the season.
But the game of baseball is something that is going to be destroyed. And these idiotic players and owners can’t see the forest through the trees – or in this case, can’t see enough green dollars through their rose-colored glasses – knowing that if the game ends on August 30, it could very well be irreparably damaged.
Attendance at major league games is dwindling at a rapid pace. There are more members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir than there are people in the stands at a Florida Marlins game. There is talk of actually folding franchises – something that hasn’t happened in more than 100 years. Television ratings for prime-time games are at an all-time low. The children of today couldn’t care less about baseball – and they translate into the paying customers of the future. The tradition of the game is dying.
Do the players and owners pay attention to any of that? Apparently not.
Nope, the players want to maintain their free agent rights, so they can continue to collect multi-million dollar contracts. The owners don’t want to open their books, because they are all crying poverty, yet, no one knows for sure, because everything is more secret than a meeting between Enron and Arthur Andersen officials.
Can anyone feel sympathy or empathy for players, who make an average salary of nearly $3 million? I mean, these aren’t the migrant farm workers of Texas here. These guys aren’t coal miners in Pennsylvania or auto makers in Michigan. When those unions go on strike, there is a sense of compassion, because families might go without milk and bread for weeks.
Do you think Alex Rodriguez has to worry about buying groceries, with his $252 million contract?
So can baseball fans relate to the so-called plight of these people? I mean, be real. They play a game and get paid handsomely to do so. And they have gripes?
Incredibly, the people who truly suffer when there are work stoppages in professional sports are the fans, the hard-working schmoes who plunk down hundreds of dollars to go to bring their families to games or to pay the ridiculous cable fees to watch the games at home.
Oh, that’s right. Even buying cable isn’t a guarantee to see the games – like the Yankee fans, who have Cablevision as a cable provider, are finding out this year.
How can the players and owners forget about the most important ingredient of their respective franchises, the people who actually make the sport remain a constant through the years, namely the fans? We’re not even a consideration.
We weren’t a consideration in 1994, when they all packed up and left us high and dry, without an end to that season, without a World Series. Didn’t they learn from that debacle? It was a disgrace not to have a World Series. In October that year, there was this empty cauldron, a vacant abyss that was never discussed again, because they all game back for the start of the next season – and everything was fine.
Or so it seemed. Eight years later, not having learned its lesson from the last time, they’re on the verge of walking out again. And it amazes me.
Here’s the other thing that is really appalling about the whole strike. In a few days, our nation will endure the first anniversary of the most horrific event of our lifetime. These players cannot be out on strike while the rest of the nation mourns. If they are, then it’s a collective slap in the face of the families who lost members on Sept. 11.
Flashback to a year ago, when the nation was ready to get back to some sense of normalcy a week or so after the terrorist attacks. The first sign that we were getting on with our lives as best as possible was that we went back to our national pastime. We went back to the ballparks.
There were countless poignant, moving moments, where ballplayers were united on the field with members of our emergency service personnel. The Mets and Yankees both wore hats honoring the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police and the New York Fire Department. We waved flags, sang "God Bless America" instead of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," and used baseball as part of our healing process. Baseball embraced us and consoled us.
Now, a year later, the players are turning their backs on all of this? How quickly they forget.
There has been some talk that the players might strike Friday, but then return to the game before Sept. 11, to avoid the gigantic public relations gaffe that will occur if they’re actually on strike on the first anniversary of the attacks.
That’s not good enough for a true-blue baseball fanatic who tells people that baseball isn’t a sport, it’s a religion. That my cathedral is Wrigley Field and my shrine is a poster of the 1986 Mets. They walk away this weekend, then so do I. Forever.
Sorry, Terrance Mann, but perhaps baseball isn’t able to mark the test of time any longer. We can thank one emotion for all of that. Greed.