The title of my post pretty much says it all today. I don’t know what more to say, but I’ll try…
We have children being schooled in their houses, not for days, or weeks… but for months. it’s been months. MONTHS. About a quarter of their school year has been spent in isolation at home learning remotely. (As an aside – the teachers who made this all work are heroes. Talk about essential workers! And the parents who did the work at home, helping to teach… amazing. This is people truly coming together!)
Tens of millions of Americans are out of work.
Hundreds of thousands of businesses have closed – many for good. Never to reopen.
People’s savings accounts have been destroyed. Retirement plans decimated.
Fortunes have been lost. Dreams have been shattered. Lives have been ruined.
Every single death brings sadness.
In many ways, this is an unprecedented time.
People can’t go out. Fields are closed. Churches closed. Parks closed. Lakes, beaches, mountains, and trails… all closed. Recreation? What recreation?
For the last number of days, there have been gigantic demonstrations (not all very civil) in the streets of the big cities. Destruction is taking place. At least one city was literally on fire.
Tensions have been brought to the bursting point.
…And the owners and players of Major League Baseball are arguing over how to share the millions and millions of dollars that will come their way if they ever get back to playing.
Contrast that final statement with the way this essay began.
The owners and the players are arguing over the millions of dollars they will all have if they bring the game back.
IF THEY BRING THE GAME BACK.
If ever there was a definition of tone deaf, or being out of touch, baseball is exhibiting it in full force.
While the country needs something positive, some type of a return to normalcy… the owners and the players argue over money:
Across the country, people are lonely, isolated, confined to their homes – many are suffering. Lives are being lost. Many living lives are shattered. Depression rates are rising.
It’s becoming more and more difficult to find the good.
The country needs a distraction. It needs an outlet. It needs something positive.
And the players and the owners argue.
America needs it’s national pastime.
“You know,” one player was reported as saying, “It might not be worth me playing if I can only get half or less of my multi-million dollar yearly salary…”
As these financial behemoths argue over having enough cash on hand for their palatial estates, yachts, expensive cards, and thick gold chains… at that exact time, the sport has gutted its minor league systems (to save a few bucks on the edges) ruining the dreams of not just the players, but the small towns and communities across the country who relied on these teams for their own livelihoods not to mention the joy and the entertainment they brought.
And the draft, formally forty rounds, has been reduced to five.
Why?
So the big deep pockets can stay big and deep and hopefully get bigger and bigger and deeper and deeper. All at the expense of others.
Talk about shattering dreams.
These are our baseball heroes?
In a time when the country needs them more than ever, as the world is seemingly crumbling around them, the people who run and play the sport we love haggle and haggle and argue and debate over how they will bring our game back to us…
If they will bring our game back to us.
It’s not their game.
It’s our game.
It’s not their national pastime.
It’s ours.
Here’s some simple advice to the owners, the players, their associations, councils, agents, and the like.
Figure it out. Today. Now.
Your greed and selfishness has never been more apparent – and ugly. And in the worst time. No one wants to hear about your petty squabbles. No one.
At the worst possible time, you have shown the worst of yourselves. Get over it all.
If you want the fans to care about your sport, you have to show that you care about the fans.
We have entrusted our game, our national pastime, to you. You’re breaking our trust. All of you.
Get it done.
Today.
Let us know the plan how baseball plans to return. Bite the bullet. Suck it up. Stop being petty and selfish and focused only on yourselves.
The country needs baseball as soon as the games are allowed to be played.
We need to know, right now, that your priority is in bringing the game back. To us. The fans – the ones who support you.
We need to know that you support us. Now. Right now.
Get it done.
NOW.
