The Sports View

By Sun Advocate

Well, professional sports stars are at it again. The poor major league baseball athletes feel that they are underpaid and are crying poverty. My heart goes out to them.
A strike is scheduled to begin this Friday and it is unknown as to how long it may ensue. Well, all I can say is what a better time for baseball to come to a sudden stop, just when football season is gearing up to begin its regular season. How many sports fans will be upset to see one sports season end and another begin? Not I.
It seems like every few years baseball athletes throw a fit and gripe and moan about their employment situation. How about joining the real working world and get a real job, one which requires the employee to work, not play for a living. It would sure break my heart to be paid mega bucks to play golf for a few hours a week. I don’t know if I could handle the stress of a job like that.
During the strike, why not send baseball athletes to work at a McDonald’s to earn their wages while they’re laid off? Let them see what it is like to work over a hot grill for eight hours a day making a little over five bucks an hour.
Better yet, let them carry a 40 lb. belt filled with tools and equipment and let them truck down thousands of feet beneath the surface of the earth to work in a coal mine for eight hours a day. Let these athletes see how much fun this job is.
Or let these athletes be on the other side of the media. Let them pick up a camera and stand for hours taking pictures of a little league baseball game. Then let them come back to the office and sort through the hundreds of photos and write a story about children who they hardly know, while at the same time cover as many community events as possible in a day.
Baseball athletes are the minority workers in this country. Not many athletes will ever reach this level of play and surely, the average American worker will never make in a lifetime what a baseball player makes in a year.
It makes me uneasy to see these players cry over the figures of their bank accounts when the average American saves for several months to pay for a ticket to a professional baseball game. Just who do these players think pays their checks?
And what is the deal with signing bonuses? For most American workers, a signing bonus would be taking the pen which was used to sign a work contract. The chain may still be attached, but hey, pens are valuable commodities these days.
Now I guess I’m being unfair to baseball players by saying that they are greedy sports stars. I apologize and would like to say that all professional athletes are alike however, baseball stars tend to cry the loudest.
Whatever happened to playing for the enjoyment of participating in a sport which one loves? I thought the fascinating part about being a sports star was to stand before a packed crowd to be welcomed by the loud roar of applause.
Baseball I thought was America’s favorite pastime. What is so fascinating about grown men crying about their wages while denying sports fans the opportunity to enjoy a highly contested major league game?
The excitement of baseball is the crack of the bat and the smell of hotdogs under a warm summer sun. Shows what I know.
Who do these athletes really think are being victimized by these arguments? It surely is not the players or the owners. It is the fans. The ones who buy the tickets, buy the shirts and hats, and the only ones who truly love the sport of baseball.
When baseball does resume play, the best the players could ask for is to be the fourth or fifth page headline of a national newspaper, behind of course the NFL and even table tennis.