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STAN ISAACS Out of Left Field |
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Playing the Whining Game |
 Major league team owner prepares to negotiate with major league whiner. |
Our National Disgrace!
Thomas, Sheffield, Bonds only
earning $9-10 million a year each!
A Look Over the Shoulder at What in More Innocent Times Was Regarded as The World of Fun and Games:
By
STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
WHINING all the way to the bank is the new national pastime for
too many baseball players these days. No matter how much some
of them make, they want more. The sanctity of a contract means
as much to some of these guys as the paper on which they might
sign an autograph for a kid.
Frank Thomas, Gary Sheffield and Barry Bonds have been crying
for more money beyond the millions they are making because other
players are earning more. So far Thomas has made $107 milllion
in career earnings, Sheffield $104 million and Bonds $83 million.
At one time Sheffield and Bonds were the highest paid players
in the game and Thomas second highest.
These blokes locked themselves into long-term contracts just
before contracts zoomed into the stratosphere so they are now
demanding that their contracts be reworked to put them on a level
with the high-earners of today. Bonds finds it an embarrassment
at $10.3 million a year to be only the 20th highest earner, Thomas
sat out early spring training because he has to suffer the indignity
of being, at $9.93 million a year, only the 24th highest paid
payer and Sheffield has demanded the Dodgers pay him because
they don't think it is a disgrace that, at $9.92 million per
year, he is only the 25th highest paid player.
Thomas
is a rich case. Because he is a butcher as a first baseman, he
is often used as a designated hitter. This requires him to sit
on the bench and in the course of a three-and-half-hour game
expend physical effort to the extent of lumbering the 60 feet
or so from the dugout to the batters box. Should he not get on
base that is the sum total of his labors for the day. For this
he was not embarrassed to demand more millions. When it finally
got to him that he had become the poster boy for greed, he lamely
apologized this week.
In the playoffs last year, when money players are most needed
to come through, he went 0 for 9 as a hitter against Seattle.
Thomas had a good year last season after two sub-par ones. When
he had a bad year he didn't offer to return any of his salary.
These supposed role models to youth signed long-term contracts
for security. If they got hurt they would still have to be paid.
They didn't anticipate that an Alex (Awad) Rodriguez would come
along and wangle a 10-year contract for $252 million or that
Derek Jeter would corral a 10-year $189 million deal.
There is a simple solution to their woes. He-men that they are,
they ought to have faith in their abilities and sign one-year
contracts. If they have a good year, they then can hold up management
in the next contract. If they have a bad year…..
Let's
Display Those Tattoos!
Some of the pro basketball players are such walking billboards
of tattoos that the artisitic splendor of their decorated bodies
deserves a more fitting showcase. I would hang such as Allen
Iverson and Marcus Camby on hooks in an art museum for the edification
of true aesthetes. It might increase museum attendance among
youths who normally don't stray from pro basketball environs.
Indestructible?
I have never quite understood the appeal of auto racing so I
found myself outside the national mourning for stock car racing
legend Dale Earnhardt. I am struck by the irony of so many of
his admirers calling him "indestructible."
Temper
the lust!
There are only two basketball conferences that don't have a post-season
tournament: the Pacific 10 and the Ivy League. These leagues
rightfully honor the significance of the regular season which
automatically sends its champion to the NCAA tournament. There
are so many teams in the NCAA bash now that it probably would
make sense to automatically put every Division I school into
the tournament and share the receipts of the tournament equally
among all those schools. That would temper the lust of some schools
to do whatever they can to recruit outstanding players in their
bid to dominate in the NCAAs.
New
role for NIT?
New Yorkers like to think of themselves as nothing but bigtime.
But its annual National Invitatation Tournament, which gets the
teams that aren't chosen for the NCAA tournament, is a second-rate
tournament that has no reason for being other than it still makes
something of a profit. It would make more sense for the NIT to
possess some significance by making it a tournament to decide
the metropolitan area champion. This would include all the New
York, New Jersey and Connecticut schools, while granting a bye
to the schools which are in the NCAA tournament, allowing them
to drop into the NIT after they have been eliminated from the
NCAA.
Race
Track Fixation?
My Kind of Craziness: A retired school teacher from Maryland,
Bob Beck, has made it his mission to attend every thoroughbred
race track in these United States. He's up to 221 and will add
the Manor track in Austin next month and Yanapai Downs in Arizona
later in the year.
Exactly
Whose Treat?
Rick Reilly, usually an excellent Sports Illustrated essayist,
is little more than sophomoric in the piece in the swimsuit issue
in which he giggles about the joy he visited on his 14-year-old
son by taking him along to the photographer's shoot of the scantily
and often unclad models during the shoot. It's hard to tell if
the 14-year-old or the 40-ish Reilly was more agog about seeing
these nymphets, any one of which could be the age of a Reilly
daughter.
Roy Blowhard
Jr.?
Would that we be saved from the pale imitations of Muhammad Ali
in boasting. Ali was one of a kind in the way he frolicked and
used outrageous humor to raise trash talking to an art. Light
heavyweight champion Roy Jones Jr., who easily defeated Derrick
Harmon recently, is no Ali. He came across as a blowhard babbling
almost unintelligbly without any humor about his greatness in
a post-victory rant with HBO's Larry Merchant.
The Role
Model
Newspaper obituary notices frequently come up with precious tidbits.
In the New York Times long obit on movie producer-director Stanley
Kramer it noted in a late paragraph that Kramer named one of
his three daughters Casey--after his hero, Casey Stengel.
© 2001 by Stan Isaacs. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master/Clips
Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA 94901-5506,
USA.
You can comment on this column or contact Stan Isaacs with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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