I’m wondering if someone has the time and panache to explain the pending baseball strike to me. I mean, I understand how and why Unions are needed – to protect the rights and benefits of labourers. It made sense in the factories when they were first formed and where you still find them, in most cases they are still needed today. If there’s one constant throughout history, it’s the greediness of business owners: they never appear to have a limit in any business.

Take car dealership owners as an example – if you’re managing their dealership, they want money. You start making them money and hit your quota – get congratulated? No. You get told that now you need to sell more cars. You start to sell more cars and you again hit your quota the next month – get congratulated? No. You get told that you didn’t make enough money on the cars you sold. It’s an endless cycle, with the owner getting more and more demanding and in turn making impossible or at least unreasonable demands. They are a couple of acceptions to this rule, but they are extremely rare.

Having said the above, why is baseball even considering a strike? Yes, they have a union, but why? To protect them from the owners? Ok, lets use that as a possibility. How are the owners miss treating the players? Are they demanding quotas on the field? No. Are they cutting their medical benefits if they don’t leg out a bunt? No. Are they denying pay for players that throw tantrums? Bah! I wish they would in some cases – Everett, yes you – you suck and should be banned from the field. No, the players have a union to protect their wallets. See, the owners of baseball teams take in a lot of cash, like most business owners. They get the money from the stadium tickets, from the vendors in the stadium, and from whatever other things the team can get them money with. For someone like Steinbrenner, he’s a celebrety in his own right, so he’s even gotten a couple of movie deals and a “stand in” for his persona on Seinfeld. So owners want cash. There’s no really not other viable reason to own a baseball team; you might love the team or love to win, as Georgie has shown about the Yankees, but the main drive behind owning the team is cash. If you truely loved the game, you’d be on the field level in some capacity, like Willie Randolph (currently the 3rd base coach for the Yankees, after having been a 2nd baseman) has most of his life.

So the owners love money. Guess what? So do the players. The main reason for this upcoming strike is money. The players are pissy that the owners are getting more money than they feel they “should“. What the shit is this? The league minimum for baseball players is well into 6-figures – somewhere around $275K, I think. And what do they do for a living? They play baseball. They make commercials. They make PSA’s to stay off drugs. They get to keep their bodies in perfect shape for a living. So again, what the shit is this? This reminds me of two kids that are about to play a game of marbles, where ya need six marbles to play. One of the kids has 32 marbles and is whining and pissed off that his opponent has 34 marbles – both seem to have forgetten what you need to play (six marbles for this analog). So now the owners are getting more money, which means the players want some of it on the basis of that they’re doing the work. Money money money.

I don’t know how we got to this stage of baseball, but I wish we could reboot the whole process. Game tickets are $40+ a seat, depending. If you got season tickets, you’re the people most screwed by the strike – you support your team and get snubbed! The bleachers, always the cheapest seats, have gotta be over $20 now. Beer is $6.75. Soda and water (20oz) are $4.00. Hot dogs range from $4 to $5.50, depending on where you get them. And the stadiums in most cases are still bringing in people. Players are making millions upon millions. You hear “$1.2 million a year” and think “Jeez, that’s low” now a days. My solution? Put all the players on a minimum level. Why not? What are we saying? That the only reason they have heart is because they’re paid to? That they won’t do their job as well for 1/4 of a million as they do for 3 million? If they don’t like the pay or they don’t like the job, get the fuck out of the field, literally. Quit. Get out. Find another job. For most of these players, that means going to be a french fry technician at a local fast food restaurant – no shame in that, but lets see how much they like $6 an hour versus the “measley” $275K minimum I’m proposing. Next, force the owners to drop the prices of everything at a stadium. They want money? We just cut their payroll, so they can give back to the people. If the people have more money because things are cheaper at the stadium, maybe they’ll buy more food and merchandise. Lastly, scrap the union. It’s obsolete. Why do you need it? If you are getting treated badly, sue. That’s the motto of the day in the USA. If you think someone has wronged you, take’m to court. The union isn’t doing anything to protect the players at this point – there’s nothing they need saving from if the owners have a fixed payroll.

Now the players and owners are back on a level field. Now it’s a game again. That’s what I find to be most galling over all – people seem to have forgetten that this business is based on a game that people would play for free, if they had to do it for a job. They need to get their perspective back because the only thing this strike will do is enrage the fans. The game of baseball was such an important part of most peoples healing and coping last year, that a strike this year will destroy the hope that the sport game once them. It will lessen the power of the sport over many of it’s fans and cheapen the name of the game for all. This should be avoided at all costs.

Of course, the fact is that the odds of the “plan” above ever getting done is the same chance that the American League will get rid of the DH. It’s inconceivable. Just as inconceivable that we won’t have a strike in major league baseball this year…. *sigh* How long until the NHL’s pre-season?