Retirement certainly has its advantages
Another nice point about being “retired” is being able to sit around on these hot days we have been having, in the shade of your front porch, and think that you don’t have to do anything unless you want to do it. Oh, there are days when you miss covering the games, but as time goes by those days become less frequent in your thoughts. Now, if that sounds to you like the first signs of laziness, “bingo!”
Still, it does seem strange to go to the ball field now and not have a scorebook in your hand. You might find this hard to believe, but before packing it in, I completed 50-years as a sports writer. Someone asked not too long ago “how many games do you think you covered in that span?”
Hard to say, but if I had a buck for every inning of baseball covered, another buck for each quarter of football covered, and still another 100 centavos for every quarter of basketball noted, there would be a rather hefty sum after my name at the local bank.
These idle times have also given pause for reflections on the world of sports.
-One really nice point now about going to games is the chance to mingle with the spectators. Before, once the game started, you had to concentrate strictly on what was happening on the field. Now, with not having to cover, you can wander around and join the crowd, talk to old friends and make new ones, discuss the games, anything you want to talk about … things that previously couldn’t be done before until after the game, and only briefly then.
-Did you see that note last week that NY Yankees infielder Alex Rodriguez was pondering who he should represent while playing baseball in the next Olympics, his native Dominican Republic or the United States. The answer should be obvious – who is paying him that ridiculous figure of 25-million bucks a year to play baseball. That’s gratitude for you.
-Can you believe it’s about a month until high school football teams begin practices for the coming season. Legal practices, that is. That’s another nice point about retirement. No more cold autumn nights or rainy afternoons at the local fields.
-At the same time that means there is little more than a month to go in the County Baseball League season.
-Yes, tempus does indeed fugit!
-How about that brief item earlier this week that “the broken toe will cost Pirates pitcher Oliver Perez at least six weeks of playing time, and will also cost him a piece of his paycheck.”
A “piece” of his check?
If that simpleton was playing for me, it would cost him his entire paycheck for the entire time he is on the sidelines. Seems he was upset after allowing four runs in six-plus innings against the Cardinals, so he kicked a locker room laundry cart and broke his left big toe, and will be out six to eight weeks. If I owned the Pirates, he would not be paid for all that time. He deliberately took himself out of action. He deliberately made himself unavailable indefinitely. And most of all, he deliberately hampered the progress of his team and teammates by making himself so childishly unavailable to play. And I’m supposed to pay him for that deliberate and stupid idleness!!
-Of course, the players union would then be poking its nose into the situation. My reply to them would be that Perez is being punished for a situation of his own making. It’s my team, I pay the salaries, and I’ll make the final decisions. If you don’t like it, there’s the door, take Perez with you, and don’t slam it on the way out.
-Now tell the truth – with the National Hockey League apparently getting its problems settled, or at least some semblance of a settlement, how many of you really and truly missed not having the NHL around the past season? How many of you were unable to go about your daily tasks because you didn’t have the NHL to follow?
-I thought so!
-See, the sun came up every morning, it went down every evening, the moon came out, and the stars twinkled. Just the same as had happened every day previously.
-Now, it would really be great to see the football, baseball, and pro basketball owners show some of the collective backbone that the NHL owners showed, and stand up to their hirelings. Don’t bet on that every happening, especially in baseball as long as free-spenders like Ted Turner and George Steinbrenner are around. It’s the old story, “if your owner won’t pay you what you want, some over and play for me. I’ll give it to you.” So, are either of those owners in first place?
-Then there’s that NBA jacko that forked over 18-million for some low-IQ’er to play basketball for one year. Seems frustrating at times, doesn’t it, to stress academics to our kids, and then have some lout who can barely read and speak at a fifth-grade level sign to bounce a basketball for more in one year than we will ever see in 10 lifetimes.
-Just think how much good could be done in the world if all that money wasted on high athletic salaries for one year would be donated to colleges to help those students who have to struggle for years after they graduate to pay back loans they needed to go to school in the first place.
Jim Kriek is a correspondent for the Herald-Standard