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My parents spent nearly $90,000 on my college education, highlighted by my degree in political science. That's right, political science. Back in the day, I took four separate classes on the Middle East alone, becoming something of an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ten years later, I couldn't even point out Israel on a map. That's college for you. In one ear and out the other.

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But something snapped for me Monday morning. Sipping iced coffee and reading the USA Today, I stumbled across page 6C of the sports section -- an entire page devoted to the latest goings-on with the impending strike. Yuck.
Please understand, I've been skipping these strike articles for the past six months. That's just the way I operate. If something bad might happen, I don't want to know about it ... I'd rather just pretend it isn't happening at all. Besides, my beloved Red Sox were playing pretty well (at least through June, until the league quietly passed a rule that the Sox offense couldn't rally for a comeback if they were losing after six innings). I didn't want to think about a strike. Not yet. Now, I couldn't avoid it any longer. What the hell was the problem here? Was it really that bad? So I devoured page 6C. I knew they agreed on steroid testing. The amateur draft could never be a deal-breaker. The luxury tax works with the NBA, so there's no reason it couldn't work with baseball in some form. As for revenue sharing, the owners want to share 50 percent of local revenues, minus stadium expenses, minus the cost of syringes, divided by Tony La Russa's IQ, which needs to fall between the average of all 30 teams, or else money gets allocated to a central fund, which then goes toward my medical fees, because my brain just started hemorrhaging ... I mean, who even understands this stuff? I certainly don't. But it didn't seem improbable that they could hash everything out. While mulling this over, I stumbled across the following paragraph from Hal Bodley's article headlined "Clock ticks as negotiations resume." "The last strike began on Aug. 12, 1994, dragged on for 232 days and wiped out the World Series for the first time in 90 years. The walkout ended only after a federal judge issued an injunction restoring the rules of the expired labor contract."
Good Lord. In other words, the strike lasted nearly eight months, ruined Tony Gwynn's bid for .400, ruined Matt Williams' quest for 62 homers, ruined Montreal's "catch lightning in a bottle" season, murdered the World Series, antagonized fans, nearly destroyed the sport as we know it ... and they ended up saying, "All right, let's go back to the old labor contract, start a new season and play it by ear."
Wasn't that the dumbest turn of events in the history of sports, or am I crazy? Has there ever been anything quite like it? What was accomplished? Was it like one of those marriages were the couple gets so tired of one another, they end up separating for a few months ... eventually reconciling because they would rather be miserable with one another than miserable alone? More importantly, why wasn't I angrier about this? Why did I just accept it? Why did I keep watching the games when they came back? Why didn't I hold a bigger grudge? Why did I pull a Michael Corleone and do the "Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in" routine? Eight years have passed, and I'm still trying to figure it out. I don't believe that owners and players care about fans, that Team Selig has any semblance of a master plan, that there's a way to salvage the competitive spirit of the sport that doesn't involve the phrases "luxury tax" or "salary cap." I keep reading how owners and players are at the brink ... lemme tell you something, I'm at the brink. If a restaurant serves crappy food, you stop eating there. If a rock band puts out lousy records, you stop buying them. Yet baseball has been serving up a lousy product for the past few years, and it's getting worse, and nobody seems willing to do anything about it. ***** **** ***** And that's when it dawned on me, at 10:12 a.m., sitting at my local Dunkin' Donuts: I can stop going. Think about it. I only attend eight to 10 Red Sox games per season, partly because it's impossible to find tickets, partly because of the price ($55 and up for good seats), partly because the allure of Fenway Park has faded for me over the years (when a baseball park doubles as an inusfferable, uncomfortable dump, that tends to happen). So what's that? Eight nights a year where I have to find something else to do? I could handle that, couldn't I?
And couldn't you? Couldn't we all? Isn't there enough happening in our lives where we could collectively say, "Screw it, we're not buying tickets anymore"? That doesn't mean we would give up baseball in the "cold turkey" sense, like a three-pack-a-day smoker suddenly slapping on the patch. We could still follow games through TV and radio, peruse box scores, read newspaper accounts, operate fantasy teams, enjoy SportsCenter highlights and everything else. It would almost feel like living in Hartford, but better, because you wouldn't actually be living in Hartford.
One thing stops us from making that fateful leap off the bandwagon, a collective forcefield of memories and affection: Sammy and Mac, Griffey and Griffey Jr., Reggie and Nolan, Koufax and Gibson, Willie and Mickey, Joe D and the Splinter, Babe and Lou, Ty and Cy, Angell and Updike, Topps and Fleer, fathers and sons, Fenway and Wrigley, Strat-o-matic and Microleague, Boston and New York, the Dodgers and Giants, Roy Hobbs and Crash Davis, Terrence Mann and the cornfield ... forget about the anti-trust exemption, baseball has an "anti-fan" exemption. There's too much history here. You can't turn your back on baseball. It's sacrilege. But you can stop buying tickets, can't you? At least for a little while, at least until you're absolutely positive that the ship has been righted? My buddy Kurt put it best. We had already made plans to attend tonight's Red Sox game, our last game at Fenway before the inevitable strike (we wanted to catch one more game before we turned our backs, like a farewell appearance). So we were discussing the strike, getting more agitated as we talked, and finally Kurt blurted out, "I feel like a guy whose girlfriend keeps cheating on him ... I mean, how much can you take before you lose all your self-respect?"Quick Note from Sports Guy | |
Thanks to everyone who sent in thoughts about last week's "Madden 2003" piece, which generated a staggering amount of responses (nearly 1,200 e-mails in three days). Needless to say, it was impossible to write back to everybody, but I did read everything, so hopefully we'll be able to run a feedback column at some point soon. One clarification: I didn't forget about "Super Tecmo Bowl" -- I just lumped it into the section about the original "Tecmo" game to save space. In retrospect, I should have devoted at least a paragraph to it, since it was a far superior version with more plays (and as many of you pointed out, it was actually the first football game to keep stats, beating the "Madden" series by about nine months). And yes, I know I forgot to put Christian Okoye and Barry Sanders in the "Top 25 Pantheon." It has haunted me every night since. Anyway, thanks again. |
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