Hating the White Sox is being made easier and easier everyday. Normally, I wouldn't write negatively about another baseball team, I'd rather spend my time and energy on trying to figure out how exactly I came to the Cubs being are my favorite team. But jeez...
First, the White Sox trade one of the 3 best relievers in baseball for Billy Koch. I think, great! Keith Foulke is easily the better pitcher...look it up. Then, Billy Koch decides to fit into the White Sox clubhouse by ripping on the Twins. The Twins!!! Here's a team with payroll somewhere around what a good dinner on Rush Street costs. Here's a team that was on the contraction chopping block 2 years ago. Stirring the fire with these guys is sort of like making fun of St Mary's School for the Blind after they win the state championship or something. Here's a team full of overachievers and hard-workers who have defied all logic to be one of the best teams in the majors over the past 2 years. Nicely done...
Next comes Spring Training. In the new collective bargaining agreement, there stipulations for drug testing. At first, the testing is done once, and, if 5% of the league tests positive or refuses to take the test, the testing becomes random year-round. So 17 White Sox players decide to boycott the test. A show for the absolute unfairness and paranoia such a test would elicit? A protest against the ownership trying to put a slightly tighter noose on the union and the players? Nope...this group of backwards Neanderthals decides to boycott the testing because they WANT random drug testing in thye league. And, sure, anyone who is on the side of fair play would say, "Testing, good...Steroids, bad...we need to randomly test the players to insure that everyone is on the same playing field." Without getting into reasons why drug testing is a bad thing, I'll focus on another issue.
Here is a CBA that the union has negotiated with the owners. It took the threat of a strike and a unification of the players to come up with a system that may or may not do the trick to stem the tide of steroid use. But the point is that the union, the same union that's ultimately responsible for these players being paid the money they are, put its approval on this CBA. And these primadonna players want to uindermine that negotation? They dare bite the hand that feeds them? Who the hell do these morons think they are? This is at least on par with crossing a picket line (something I used to hold against Rick Reed and Damian Miller and others, but no longer really do). Sure the union has its share of problems, but this is still the only recourse players have against the owners. This si still the only body that can negitiate collectively, for the overall good of the major league players. If it wasn't for the union, players would still be indentured servants to the owners, with no ability to make their grievences heard, and no way to insure fair salaries, punishments, and many other issues. And a group of players dares undermine that? I wish the Players' Association could have told them to go stick it up their collective...never mind. Of course an irony here ius that many of the fans of the White Sox are supposed to be blue-colar workers from the south side. Chicago is a big union town, and many of the fans are undoubtably in unions. I wonder what they think about this...
And then there was 4/15/03. There has been a lot of national attention written and talked and shown about what happened last night at Sox park. Fans running onto the field attacking umpires. Billy Koch giving up runs in bunches in the ninth inning. Things are good down there, huh? In the mean time, Shawn Estes throws 8 innings and the Cubs score 11 runs to win. Karma...
Sox fans will remind me that at Wrigley Field, 2 fans ran onto the field and tried to burn an American flag. At least that was an act of protest that didn't hurt anyone. And a couple of morons decided to steal a hat off a Dodger player. At least they didn't run on the field and bloody up a coach or try to mug an umpire.
Carlos Zambrano goes today for the Cubs. I'll be at the game, maybe I'll report on it afterwards.
posted by Oleg at 10:32 AM
