Perhaps if NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA players came up with better, more applicable words than “players union” their organizations wouldn’t strike so many as comical.
The use of “unions” as it relates to how players unions operate are making Samuel Gompers, John L. Lewis and Albert Shanker spin in their organized labor-dug graves.
Predictably, the NFL Players’ “union” is protesting the NFL’s decision to suspend four players who participated in the Saints’ three-season pay-per-body come-on.
Lost to the union as a matter of obligatory dissent, is that the entire Saints’ bounty sickness was aimed at fellow NFLPA members — union men targeting fellow union men for on-the-job assaults.
In a sensible, right-headed world, the NFLPA, from the start, would have declared its sincere intention to fully cooperate and even equally share in the NFL’s investigation to determine which Saints acceded to the Saints’ coaching staff’s cash-for-injured opponents programs, a plan to maim NFLPA members.
But that only could happen in a sensible, right-headed world.
Under Donald Fehr, the MLBPA for years inspired, enabled, enriched and protected its drug-dirty playing members from both exposure and punishment. Not that either was aggressively pursued by MLB during the ka-ching steroid slugger years, but the MLBPA consistently placed its clean “union” members at both a financial and career disadvantage.
How many players — union members — took it as a tacit green light to use PEDs because the MLBPA’s collective bargaining agreements provided tacit green lights? The MLBPA backed the dirty guys and very likely increased their numbers rather than serve, protect and sustain the clean guys.
The Fehr/Bud Selig era became baseball’s extended version of “On the Waterfront.”
“Players’ unions”? Gotta be a better, more accurate words for them. How about “Players’ Board of Appeals Complaints”?
TV delivers empty feeling at Yankee Stadium
Worth the Price of Omission: What goes unspoken doesn’t always go unseen. Even more than recent-past seasons, the expensive seats in Yankee Stadium, as seen throughout games on YES, are going empty, home plate, down both lines, 20-30 rows deep.
The greed-driven inverted reality — the number of seat occupants increasing further and further, higher and higher from the infield; the opposite of what was for decades in old Yankee Stadium and all ballparks — never has been more stark.
Tuesday night against Tampa Bay, one would have thought that the Stadium virtually was empty until camera shots of fly balls, fair and foul, provided backgrounds that showed thousands in the less expensive seats.
Wednesday’s game with Tampa Bay showed only a slight increase in bodies seated in the expensive seats — those Commissioner Bud Selig personally declared “affordable.”
If ever there were a continuing, colossal symbol of price-gouging, it’s new Yankee Stadium — parking only $35.
* Great stuff on WCBS-Radio on Wednesday during the first inning of Rays-Yankees. With the radio feed down, WCBS provided YES’ call. But every few moments one could hear John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman wondering — shouting — into their microphones.
“Whose broadcast are we hearing!?” Waldman shrieked.
“Am I on the air!?” Sterling demanded.
If you were scoring at home, Waldman went with “we,” while Sterling went with “I.”
* Sunday night in D.C., Phillies’ starter Cole Hamels hit cocky Nationals’ 19-year-old Bryce Harper with a first-inning pitch, leading to Hamels’ five-game, one-start-delayed suspension. (Notably, Hamels could have lied or not commented, but he admitted to intentionally hitting Harper.)
The single act of Harper being hit by Hamels inspired Mike Francesa, who seemed to indicate that he knew exactly what went on — the game was nationally televised by ESPN — to deliver an authoritative lecture that included:
“Next time make Hamels pay! Hamels was coming up in that game last night. Why didn’t one of the Washington pitchers hit Hamels?!”
Minutes later, a caller told Francesa that Hamels was hit (two innings later in his first at-bat by Jordan Zimmermann).
At that point Francesa said he didn’t know anything about what happened until that morning (yet, still didn’t get it right), and that, “I didn’t even watch the game.”
In other words, he got caught. Again. He only pretended to know everything that went on, then delivered his expert take on something he knew nothing about. Again.
Stanley Cup playoffs full of US
The performances of many U.S. players throughout the Stanley Cup playoffs has been sensational.
The surprising Kings have been led by winger and captain Dustin Brown, from Ithaca, N.Y. The Capitals’ dynamic offensive-defenseman John Carlson — at only 22, the best two-way man throughout the Rangers-Capitals series — is from Natick, Mass.
And not that local TV would pay attention to soccer, but the save and control of a shot by Red Bulls goalkeeper Ryan Meara in stoppage time in a 1-0 win against Houston on Wednesday (seen on MSG Plus), was sensational. Meara, 21, is from Yonkers.
* Mustard, no relish: Elias Sports Bureau is checking to learn whether Mets rookie Jordany Valdespin, after homering in Philadelphia on Monday, set the MLB record for longest time taken for a first-time home run-hitter to return to the dugout.
* With the Knicks and Rangers done for the season on MSG, and MSG now showing movies such as 1977’s “Annie Hall,” the four-channel “expensive sports programming” Cablevision network should be heavily discounted to providers and customers for the next four months, no?
* When Gary Cohen, Wednesday during Mets-Phillies on SNY, declared Rob Johnson, the catcher called up from Buffalo to replace injured Josh Thole, was “tearing the cover off the ball” in the minors, one figured that in early May, that meant, oh, at least .360. Cohen then said that Johnson, in Buffalo, was batting .291.
* Cohen did follow with better: In Angels’ starter Ervin Santana’s past five starts, the Angels have been shutout. That is incredible.
* Reader Justine Kneipher has a reasonable request: During televised news conferences with players, managers and coaches, can’t audiences know what the reporters are asking before the questions are answered? As things are now, she writes, “It’s often like a weird version of Jeopardy!”
* Give NBC, and now its Comcast partner Golf Channel, credit for persistence. They keep pushing the TPC as “the fifth major.” If rights belonged to a competing network? Not a chance. Wouldn’t even make NBC’s weekend sports news updates.
* That guy, Scott, the Scot on Scott’s lawn products commercials (and suspiciously similar to Groundskeeper Willie on “The Simpsons”), is starting to wear on baseball fans like Giuseppe Franco.