by Barry Stagg
April 1995
Baseball: Joe Hill or Ken Hill?
In a month where Canadian naval vessels are preparing for war against Spanish predators on the Grand Banks, the trivial pursuits of baseball strikes pale in comparison. Despite that the baseball strike is still a never ending event that occupies the cerebral powers of Canadian and American sports writers. One of the stock comments of many a barely qualified, but supremely servile sports writer is to the effect that replacement baseball players and replacement baseball are beneath contempt and particularly are not worthy of being reported by the supremely gifted journalists.
Again and again I hear jibes on the sports radio stations of Toronto and the same comments come through when American sportscasters reach down to comment about the athletes who are trying to make major league baseball teams in this year's bizarre spring training. There are infantile contests at such radio stations to determine whether there is one person in the world interested in replacement baseball. Well I, for one can indicate that I am just as interested in replacement baseball as I am in the ongoing fiscal welfare of five million dollar a year men such as New York's Danny Tartabull and Baltimore Orioles selfish shortstop Cal Ripken. When I see these foolish men sitting out and letting their five million dollars a year go by I have nothing but scorn for their efforts. If they are stupid enough to sit out and forego their money while able, if less gifted athletes, are filling their positions then they deserve every indicia of poverty that may descend upon them.
To call the baseball strike an actual labour dispute is really an insult to those who legitimately went off work in decades past to obtain the basic safe working conditions over which labour battles were initially fought. This is a dispute between celebrity athletes and rich owners. To have this fiasco continue on throughout the cancellation of the World Series and now on through the start of another season is ridiculous. It is as if Hollywood actors had decided to go on strike to exact better working conditions on film sets. You can hardly imagine such a dispute dragging beyond a few weeks and in the end common sense would prevail when all players (both owners and actors) realize that the profit that was slipping away can never be regained. This is an obvious fact in the baseball dispute, yet players who are grossly overpaid and who are facing the end of contracts that will never be renewed, are still staying out in the supreme belief that they are doing for baseball what courageous miners and their pioneering unionists did for the ordinary worker seventy years ago. It is a perfect illustration of rich, ignorant arrogance on the part of these players and their overfed agents. It is a further indictment of the so called sports journalists who nuzzle up to these people, these supposed reporters who are toeing the players line and refusing to even acknowledge that replacement baseball exists.
I watched a replacement baseball game on television the other day. The Montreal Expos and the Chicago White Sox played a good game with good athletes, most of whom had played in the high minor leagues last year. These are good players and they come mostly from the United States where the supply of good baseball athletes is endless. While I watched the players it occurred to me that the use of replacement players and the attitudes of these youngsters trying to make a living could put baseball back to a golden age where ordinary fellows were trying to make a living and were glad to have the opportunity to rise above the dust and grime of poverty.
Back in the 1920's and 1930's baseball was a way out of grinding poverty and for every Babe Ruth who rose to a phenomenal salary there were others who were glad to simply get a paycheque for doing something that did not involve the possibility of death in the workplace on any given day. Nostalgia and the longing for simpler rules of the game may play a large part in wishing for a return to this type of format. Nevertheless the player's attitude in a replacement season would be a refreshing difference in comparison to the overblown egos and the illiterate ignorance that spews forth from millionaire ball players. Some of these accidental millionaires are only one bad investment or the end of a contract away from a self-induced descent to dependency and soup lines.
I will watch replacement baseball. I will support the players who are making every effort to play a game the way it should be played. I will watch players who are without the pretensions of millionaires who have lost sight of the fact that this is a game that began as child's play and is still a child's game that men are privileged to play for large sums of money.
Baseball is an institution that will endure despite the best efforts of many to bring it down to the level of a mere industry. Let us play ball and let us not be ashamed to watch the athletes that are filling the shoes of those who deem that several millions per year is not enough compensation for their everyday sweat.
Until next month, be proud, be prosperous.