by Barry Stagg
October 1994
Strikes, strikes and more strikes: Baseball has just about ruined the 1994 season and about the time that the baseball playoffs would usually begin hockey maybe putting itself on strike as well. Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League are getting used to the ridiculous ballet being played by players and owners basically juggling economic grenades in the hopes of blasting the other fellow. Grenade juggling, especially done by overstuffed brats, is usually a deadly sport. Owners and players in both these sports with few exceptions have shown absolutely no connection with the day to day reality of life. While most people struggle their way through the wet, sodden blanket of an ever lasting recession players and owners are dining out on the frenzy of heavy media strike coverage.
When CNN can break away from regular programming and even pre- empt their usual vomit about the O.J. Simpson case just to report that the baseball strike is not settled then it is certain that the whole ridiculous spectacle has passed into an arena usually reserved for such non-sports such as professional wrestling. A cannibalistic festival of preening vanity is upon us with pomposity coupled with wealth being the order of the day. How much longer can people stand to look at a prancing Donald Fehr representing his blow-dried players, standing at a press conference in front of his impossibly rich grocery boys? How long can the public stand to watch Richard Ravitch issue deliberately confusing statements on behalf of his own bunch of blindly confident owners?
Baseball is capable of ruining itself. When the fans stopped coming to the ballparks in the major league cities, that is one thing. However when the fans stop watching television in the far reaches of television land in places like Norman's Cove, Newfoundland and Kelvington, Saskatchewan and Manitouwadge, Ontario, then baseball is in big trouble. It is the world wide television audience that really sells the game and makes it a rich man's paradise. Without the television revenue that really flows from the ratings that show popularity, the sport itself will generate only a small amount of revenue compared to present standards.
Disgust, contempt and plain old disillusionment may descend like a black plague on major league baseball. When fans realize that a summer can be better spent watching the local baseball players fumble the ball around in the sand, then major league baseball may realize that its rich grocery boys who used to field ground balls in major league stadiums are going to have to learn to live on their old wages or else find jobs as grocery boys. They will have great difficulty because there are many competent grocery boys out there who will certainly have the advantage over spoiled buffoons whose every need has been catered to since it was realized that they had the potential to be profitable entertainers.
Hockey has a chance to avoid the stinking black hole that baseball has tumbled into. Hockey players by nature are a more canny lot then baseball players. This is probably because hockey is just so much harder to play with so much more punishment required of even an ordinary player. When Wendel Clark steps up to the pay wicket to accept his million a year every fan, no matter how indifferent or however opposed to Wendel's team or Wendel's personality or will, still accept that this man has earned his pay and earned it with broken bones, aches and pains and the overall expenditure of effort. Hockey players may realize that existence as a professional hockey player is indeed a precarious existence and that the days of shovelling snow on ice rinks is never far off if care is not taken with the basic business of hockey. So there is hope that hockey with its aggressive American commissioner can still avoid a strike.
If the National Hockey League does go out on strike in early October and it continues for any length of time its fans will get used to living with professional sports and they may find that there are other things of a more personal nature, of a more simple but fulfilling kind that can occupy time. Baseball was easily replaced this summer with many other things and hockey, while it will be harder to replace in the depths of winter, still can be replaced with the pleasures of minor hockey, senior hockey and the pure joys of experiencing the cold outdoors in warm clothing.
In any event a good sound economic thrashing for professional sports is in order. A few bankruptcies and a return to menial jobs for owners and players would be extremely therapeutic for the lot of them. Why not let them ooze into oblivion?
Until next month, be proud, be prosperous.