I love baseball, I have since as far back as I can remember. Growing up watching the Big Red Machine and the Indians have some decent players but never being able to win. We used to have neighborhood games and little league and used to emulate the play of the stars we wanted to be like the most. For me it was Pete Rose and Tom Seaver.
But those days are over and baseball has become very self destructive. It seems they can't get the sport to stay truly healthy. I don't see kids playing much baseball anymore, or wanting to be their favorite player. That's one reason the sport is having to import talent. And when you lose the youth's interest you are on a serious slide to eventual death.
Maybe it's better that kids are losing interest. I mean how many times does a kid have to see his favorite players leave his (the kid's team) for more money and then bad mouth the city and fans? We saw it in the past decade here in Cleveland.... we watched them all leave and then bad mouth us fans. And the kids of this area are supposed to stay interested in that sport? How can you expect anyone to? Yet, baseball allows it, encourages it and supports it.
When you have supposed great players that take these huge contracts to play for teams that will never compete because of those contracts (i.e. A-Rod in Texas) it shows that the players don't even care about the fans or the game, but only about their wallets. If a sport's players don't care about the fans or the teams the sport will die.
The only thing keeping baseball alive right now is the television deals..... without them baseball would be going bankrupt financially, it already is morally.
If baseball is to grow and become the nation's pastime again, the sport needs to do something about salaries. Make caps, put all the revenue into a pot and split it all equally, whatever.... the sport owes it to the fans and to the beauty of the game to save it and try to keep the competitiveness alive.
I do believe, however, that the best way to watch the game I love is through the minors now. Watching the players work their asses off, sign autographs before the games, see them at restaurants and bars afterward, and so on. It's a great way to get to know the guys.
Akron has the Aeros, Cleveland's AA minor league team and it's great. We get to know the players before the rest of the country and they get to know Northern Ohio, which is the best location in the nation, and the attitudes of the people here. And we fans can see which players will truly be able to make it as Indians and which ones would be better off elsewhere (by their attitudes, interactions and so on).
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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"
Last edited by pan6467; 03-30-2006 at 01:24 PM..
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