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12/13/2011

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.

2 comments:

Big Mark 243 said...

... I think that when people reminisce for 'the good old days' that such yearning always come with a big brush for the white washing of those times.

Back in the 'good old days', baseball was particularly notorious for restricting player movement and income.

As to thinking of baseball (or any sport for that matter) as a quaint little 'childhood game', I am reminded of an article I remember reading as a child about basketball... how it was derived from a game played by Natives to the South American continent, where the losers would be beheaded. So my thing is, when has 'a game' only been a game? I wonder who enjoyed the movie 'Gladiator'? That again was 'entertainment' that the participants provided.

Hopefully my point has been made. A 'game being only a game' simply has NEVER existed. Whether you go back to the 'days of yore', when 'the love of the game' resulted in crippling injuries and lowered quality of live, not to mention life expectancy.

And another thing... the racial component to this. As the money grows in the 'left turn' sport of auto racing; the purses in Mark Twain's 'good walk spoiled' in golf; in tennis... the purses and endorsement opportunities seem endless. It is only in the sports where there is a large minority populations, namely the big three of baseball, basketball and football, that we hear the lament of the 'good old days'.

Interesting. Let me know when the decision to let women vote and work outside of the home is made. I will be waiting and 'shakin' it over hear' with the rest of the oppressed classes...

PattiKen said...

It's yet another manifestation of what I think is perhaps the most serious threat to our well-being as a nation, as a world. GREED.