Fans should strike if MLB players walk
The Major League Baseball Players Union has set an Aug. 30 strike date. Can we speak for a lot of baseball fans by asking, “Who cares?” Aug. 30, by the way, marks the start of the Labor Day weekend, a time when baseball traditionally has captured the nation’s imagination as contending teams begin their stretch drives and players set their sights on long-standing records.
Frankly, we’re amazed at the inability and/or unwillingness of baseball owners and baseball players to settle their differences. Here we have rich men on one side and rich men on the other side arguing about, of all things, money. That’s what they care about. Not the fans, certainly. And not the obligation they have as caretakers of the great American institution of big league baseball, a job for which they are obviously ill-suited.
Go ahead, spread the blame around. Slather it on 30 club owners, who spent themselves into a mess and now can’t get out. Save a generous portion for the union leadership, which can’t seem to fathom that baseball’s financial situation is directly responsible for the competitive imbalance that relegates many teams to perennial loser status and makes drawing spectators difficult even for successful clubs.
Even if you’re reluctant to hold the players responsible for the owners’ stupidity, you can’t help but wonder at their own intellectual shortcomings in failing to recognize that baseball fans have had it.
They’ve had it with cavalier owners. They’ve had it with whiny players. They’ve had it with paying good money to watch bad baseball.
We know, we know. Many of those same fans came crawling back to the game after baseball’s last work stoppage, one that accomplished what world wars and economic upheavals never accomplished: cancellation of the World Series. If nothing else, baseball fans are a forgiving lot.
But even their patience has finally run out. Another work stoppage, were it to lead to cancellation of a second World Series, could send a lot of the faithful scurrying to another altar at which to worship. Already football and basketball have exceeded baseball in popularity. People have lots of things on which to spend their recreation dollars. No one would blame them if once and for all they turned their backs on a sport that is so poorly administrated and which cares so little for those who make it possible for grown men to become millionaires playing a little boys’ game.
Those who have hoped against hope that wiser heads would prevail and baseball would get its house in order may at last have to concede that there is no wisdom in major league baseball. Only arrogance, dumbness and a lot of guys making embarrassingly big money for embarrassingly poor performance.
Who needs it? Who cares? If the players strike, so should the fans. Permanently. Then the owners and the union will have all the time in the world to figure out how they managed to destroy a genuine piece of Americana.