collective bickering
I don't know if I ever threw out my account of the end of my love affair with Major League Baseball in the lumberyard. I've been coming back, but it's been a slow process.
In the 80's, when I was dating the wife, she was a Braves fan. I liked baseball, but had no particular team I followed. The Phillies were there to some extent, but I wasn't fanatical by any means. You have to realize that I spent a fair amount of a few baseball seasons on ships in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean, and back then (in the stone ages), you may have got scores daily, but that was about it....not even box scores. Even the scores were sporadic. You might get them one day, but not the next two. All other news came about two weeks late with the mail, and there was no real time television, and nothing remotely resembling an internet....so following any sports team was difficult, even if you were a rabid fan. In football season you got scores, but if you were lucky you got those on Monday. But anyway, once I got to Pensacola and started teaching flight school, I could watch TBS with the one-day-wife, and we watched the Braves...and they sucked. Still we watched, a few nights a week. I got to where I loved watching them, and if by some chance they won, it was even more special. Then toward the end of the 80's going into the 90's, they got better (and we got married). The Braves started making the playoffs. The excitement in our little house grew and we decided to take a week or two vacation in Atlanta. We planned it all out. We got tickets...like in April...for a September home stand with the San Francisco Giants, which in April looked like it would be a series with two contending teams. Then, the strike happened. The Braves were kind enough to refund most of our money (they kept the service charge/handling fee/whatever they call it, which for 2 tickets, 3 games, something like $5 to $10 a ticket...you do the math)...and we were pretty much pissed off. To top it off, there was our hero, Tom Glavine, on the tube sounding like the biggest whiner of the bunch. OK, I was very much pissed off. After that, I didn't watch another Major League Baseball game that decade. I didn't. I went to minor league games in J'ville and enjoyed them, but if those guys got promoted to the majors, I didn't see them again. The last few years I've started watching again, but still with a passing interest. I certainly couldn't name all the guys playing for the Braves, like I could when they were losers in the 80's. I don't even consider myself a Braves fan. I consider myself a Jacksonville Suns fan, but not particularly a fan of the Dodgers, their parent team. I am a situational fan. I like watching the situations that the season brings, and my rooting interest varies depending on the situation, with one almost universal exception. I dislike the Yankees, and even then because in most situations I follow that involve them, I can't bring myself to appreciate their side of whatever the situation may be. If you're reading this and thinking it's a shame (not the Yankee part...the baseball in general part), I agree with you. I don't like where that strike took me. It stole baseball from me, and I'm still struggling to get it back, and all that is background to my point.
Right now the National Football League is mired in uncertainty, with the players and owners bickering about their collective bargaining agreement. All of them make plenty of money now, but all of them want more, and can't seem to come to terms on what will happen in 2007. It's causing an immediate problem with the beginning of free agency, but I'm thinking more long term. I'm praying they don't steal football from me the way the baseball owners and players swiped baseball from me in the 90's. Please you greedy bastards...please don't ruin this game the way the idiots in Major League Baseball ruined that one.
In the 80's, when I was dating the wife, she was a Braves fan. I liked baseball, but had no particular team I followed. The Phillies were there to some extent, but I wasn't fanatical by any means. You have to realize that I spent a fair amount of a few baseball seasons on ships in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean, and back then (in the stone ages), you may have got scores daily, but that was about it....not even box scores. Even the scores were sporadic. You might get them one day, but not the next two. All other news came about two weeks late with the mail, and there was no real time television, and nothing remotely resembling an internet....so following any sports team was difficult, even if you were a rabid fan. In football season you got scores, but if you were lucky you got those on Monday. But anyway, once I got to Pensacola and started teaching flight school, I could watch TBS with the one-day-wife, and we watched the Braves...and they sucked. Still we watched, a few nights a week. I got to where I loved watching them, and if by some chance they won, it was even more special. Then toward the end of the 80's going into the 90's, they got better (and we got married). The Braves started making the playoffs. The excitement in our little house grew and we decided to take a week or two vacation in Atlanta. We planned it all out. We got tickets...like in April...for a September home stand with the San Francisco Giants, which in April looked like it would be a series with two contending teams. Then, the strike happened. The Braves were kind enough to refund most of our money (they kept the service charge/handling fee/whatever they call it, which for 2 tickets, 3 games, something like $5 to $10 a ticket...you do the math)...and we were pretty much pissed off. To top it off, there was our hero, Tom Glavine, on the tube sounding like the biggest whiner of the bunch. OK, I was very much pissed off. After that, I didn't watch another Major League Baseball game that decade. I didn't. I went to minor league games in J'ville and enjoyed them, but if those guys got promoted to the majors, I didn't see them again. The last few years I've started watching again, but still with a passing interest. I certainly couldn't name all the guys playing for the Braves, like I could when they were losers in the 80's. I don't even consider myself a Braves fan. I consider myself a Jacksonville Suns fan, but not particularly a fan of the Dodgers, their parent team. I am a situational fan. I like watching the situations that the season brings, and my rooting interest varies depending on the situation, with one almost universal exception. I dislike the Yankees, and even then because in most situations I follow that involve them, I can't bring myself to appreciate their side of whatever the situation may be. If you're reading this and thinking it's a shame (not the Yankee part...the baseball in general part), I agree with you. I don't like where that strike took me. It stole baseball from me, and I'm still struggling to get it back, and all that is background to my point.
Right now the National Football League is mired in uncertainty, with the players and owners bickering about their collective bargaining agreement. All of them make plenty of money now, but all of them want more, and can't seem to come to terms on what will happen in 2007. It's causing an immediate problem with the beginning of free agency, but I'm thinking more long term. I'm praying they don't steal football from me the way the baseball owners and players swiped baseball from me in the 90's. Please you greedy bastards...please don't ruin this game the way the idiots in Major League Baseball ruined that one.
John put this out here at 8:58 AM
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