Just ... stuff

I left this comment on a blog I read - a poor Cardinal fan lamenting the loss of Albert Pujhols as a player for the Cards.

As a Cubs fan, I'm not only glad to see him gone from the NL Central, I'm glad he's now in the AL.

I can, however, understand your pain - but you must understand, these guys are all prostitutes who play for those who will pay. AP got a big head and felt he wasn't being treated with the 'respect' he deserved as the Best Player In Baseball. It's an unfortunate fact of life that in chasing the money, things like loyalty, devotion and respect have been driven out of the game in favor of the 'bottom line'. On BOTH sides.

I liked the game much better when I was a kid - when lineups seldom changed from year to year, when pitchers went 9 innings and relievers were run out starters, when the people who played the game did so because they loved the game - not because they were going to become millionaires. Maybe the game itself hasn't changed - but the people who play it, have.

As I stop and think more and longer about it, I believe that these changes are actually a reflection of the way we have allowed ourselves to drift over the years that have passed since I was a kid. Baseball has always been seen as America in microcosm, and perhaps in this case it actually is. Read This We Believe, the Manifesto of the SC Johnson Company - the makers of Pledge and other household products. That's they way things were, once upon a time - less "Driven by the bottom line" and more concerned with "a fair shake" and being "you brother's keeper".

The lineups never changed and people did things for love.

Or it seems so. From here.

Ndinombethe.