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Well that was fun.
About as fun as a wisdom tooth extraction.
Once again we as fans got roped into the mystique of “When and where” and wound up No place and No where.
Enough is enough. I don’t care where and I certainly don’t care when. The proverbial ship has sailed, leaving the entire fanbase of Major League Baseball waving like lunatics trying to flag down the cruise ship in the distance known as normalcy, to no avail.
I spoke to one castaway who simply wanted me to put him out of his misery, “Cancel the damn season already”, he said, “at this point we’re just handling each other’s dicks; and it’s the biggest waste of time ever”.
Another, wearing a sparkling white Captain’s hat sold me a bill of goods that will get me off this damned island of despair in no time.
“The MLBPA is the strongest Union in the world… they’ll figure it out!”
I believe none of them. Why should I? It’s all just a mirage.
No one is looking forward any further than a week ahead where the future is just as convoluted as the present. Everyone is holding their hands so close to their vests that we can get off of this island twenty times over before hearing anyone’s plan.
Like most castaways, we’re dispensible.
No one is looking for us. No one cares. We’re yet another blip on the radar.
The state of baseball is not one I ever would wish on the children of my enemies. It belies the thinking that we as fans have any standing at all.
Once again, the shiny plane flies over our desert island and looks past our pathetic waves; or they see us and simply make us want to wave harder, waving our palm fronds and anything shiny to finally be rescued and live our normal lives again. It doesn’t matter.
The pilots don’t care.
As we prepare to dig into our new home on our desert island of baseball fans, we simply have one question to ask. And that question is “Why the hell would you do this to us?”
Why leave us on this island?
Why have us second guess the Baseball Gods?
There is no answer to these questions. The simple one would be “greed” but that’s way too simple. It’s beyond greed.
It’s misplaced pride, misplaced honor and misplaced talent.
I can guarantee you men in the era of Lou Gehrig would never do this to the fans of the game. Men in the era of Reggie Jackson wouldn’t do this either. But these entitled athletes – if you can call them athletes – have nothing else to do but get people riled up via social media. And it is their rudderless leadership that has led us on a collision course to this rocky, lifeless island.
The days of the role model are gone. They don’t have to be, but they are.
I know there are guys who want to play baseball again. I’m willing to bet my life on it. We need those guys to take the game back. From the lawyers. From the stat guys.
The flames of romance need to be stoked.
All I can hope is this…. The game will once again take its rightful place as America’s pastime once we as a civilization can come to grips with the fact that hitting the other way to beat a shift is just as normal as breathing or eating. Maybe a drag bunt will get us moving in the right direction toward the lagoon keeping us from Baseball Nirvana.
Baseball will wake up. It has to. Or else we all need to go to sleep for a long, long time; only to wake for the pretense of rewriting nostalgia.
-el jefe
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