The Sad State of Baseball

This will be the last year for an exhibition baseball game as part of the Hall of Fame inductions at Cooperstown. Why? Because the players made it part of their agreement with the owners.
This hardly comes as a surprise considering the overwhelming number of overpaid, under-talented loafers in the major leagues today. Big money and long-term contracts spoiled what once was the greatest game of all. I quit watching the major leaguers years ago when the players quit going all out on every play. Quit when a great many of them began bulking up with drugs, when every bum picking up splinters on the bench earned far more than the average worker, when a sore finger was excuse enough for taking a month off. Now those poor boys can't play an exhibition game to please the fans.
It was August of 1936 when the St. Louis Cardinals came to town to play an exhibition game with the minor league Akron Yankees. The team known as the Gas House Gang because they never backed away from a fight was involved in a tight pennant race, yet they passed up a day off to make the people who pay their salaries happy.
Did a bunch of rookies play the game? Not on your life, it was the regular lineup featuring such stars as Frankie Frisch, Joe Medwick, Leo Durocher and Terry Moore. Paul Dean pitched, then George Earnshaw. Dizzy Dean had been on the mound the previous day but he knew the fans wanted to see him so he pinch hit with the understanding the intended batter could stay in the game. After that Dizzy wandered through the grandstand with a hot dog in one hand, a bottle of Coke in the other. He would sit with one group, then another.
The only regular who didn't play was Pepper Martin. He was out with a legitimate injury so he went to the press box and took over the public address announcing. When the game ended, the Cardinals were in a sour mood because they lost, 6-5, to a team that included several future major leaguers.
Could it happen today? Not a chance. Not with the present day prima donnas who would have been eaten alive by the Gas House Gang. One of the greats of the game, Bob Feller, had this to say in an Associated Press story: "It's all money, isn't it? I think it's a shame. It's an insult to the Hall of Fame and to the Hall of Famers. I just think they should do it for the fans. What do they do for the fans, anyway? Take their money? Raise their prices?"
Yes, Bob, that's what they do. It's why I quit watching them.

I love that movie "A League of their Own". I can't imagine any team riding around in a bus like that ... trying to sleep ... and then playing in the dirt in a skirt!!

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You know, baseball players aren't the only ones being over paid. I can't believe the salaries of most major sports players ... and then the TV and movie stars ... and half of them can't even act! A million dollars an EPISODE??? How many millions for one movie????

When my husband was a senior in high school, his mother died unexpectedly in February, and to deal with it he put his heart into baseball, and came out the best in the city of Racine Wisconsin with all sorts of newspaper articles commemorating his successes. He was given an offer to play minor league ball. But there was another offer was from a lawyer in the town who had an interest in Ripon College, a small school in this state. He called my husband-to-be and asked if he was going to college, and he told him he wasn't because he didn't have enough money. They didn't have athletic scholarships at Ripon at the time, but this man had some money and wanted to see his alma mater have some sports teams, so he said, "Don't worry, I'll pay for it if you go to Ripon college."

So he did, and he met me, and he eventually went into the Marines and learned to fly planes as a career. And onetime our grandkids asked about this "Ripon College," and we said, "Well, if it weren't for Ripon College, and a kind man in Racine, and BASEBALL, we wouldn't all be sitting here eating dinner."

Yes, this whole big family is here because of baseball!!! And every once in a while, my husband will remark about whether he could have had a baseball career, but certainly with a lot less money than today's players get.

Love, Carol

Love, Carol

Salaries everywhere are out of hand. And it appears that part of the American public's obsession with celebrities in sports, music, films--and yes, even novelists*--is based in part on earnings and the number of extravagences a person has.

I agree 100% about the negative changes we've seen in baseball with the slow incursion of big money. I really have very little tolerance for people who make more in one year than my neighborhood makes in a lifetime. And that includes pitchers as well as movie stars.

Well said, Dick.

Malcolm

*While there are multiple reason for big advances, one of them is that the advance alone creates buzz, a general expectation that the author who got the money is worthy of more celebrity-based respect than the authors who got little or no advance against prospective royalties. That said, how many of us will tell a big publisher we don't need a $1,000,000 advance and would prefer, say, $50,000 instead?