Baseball Blues

3 Pages 859 Words

Baseball Blues
Baseball has always been America’s past time. As well as other sports, it has been a big factor in keeping this country together through difficult times. In truth though, baseball has undergone many problems and issues, such as the recent strikes which is making fans angry, and the salaries of players and spending limits of curtain teams.
Strikes are one of the biggest things slowing baseball down. Every strike lowers the faith of people and their interest in the game. Since 1972 there has been eight stoppages of play, which does not make the fans very happy, not to mention the owners and players do not always want it either. They just get too greedy and provoke these play stoppages. In fact, this ongoing war between the players and the owners is what causes all this to keep going on. The salary cap is a main reason for strikes, and as Michael Knisley states in the 01/31/2000 issue of Sporting News “Let’s remember that the union continues to think a salary cap is the work of Satan. (p54)”
The latest strike has really stirred things up and could have ended the way baseball is played for years to come. America did not really need baseball fighting each other on how many millions of dollars people should be given, while the anniversary of one of the worst days in America was coming up. Baseball is one of the things that was keeping us together, and strikes are one of the reason people are becoming more fed up about the whole thing if it actually did happen. In fact, in a pole in the 8/26/2002 issue of Sports Illustrated 66 percent of the fans said they would not be interested in baseball anymore if this strike went through. (p36) Organized groups were also being set up to protest going to baseball games if this did happen.
The way that David Kaplan sees it in the 8/26/2002 issue of Newsweek, he thinks all major leaguers should be free agents. The way that free agency is set up, is a big factor t...