Konspiracy Korner: Class Warfare
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Charity game next Friday!
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Bill James-style free association piece on society follows. Sports Is Life. Feel Free to skip it if you're so inclined.
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Sheryl Ring writes the Commissioner a piece of hate mail on Fangraphs. In it, she points out a quote of his:
“[d]rawing a line in the sand based on a perception that [their] market value is different than what the market is telling you your value is,” and that doing so “doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
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... and growls that this little statement amounts to nothing less than --- > a dare for the union to disband and file an anti-trust suit, using the quote above as Exhibit A for the prosecution. (Perhaps this is correct and perhaps it isn't; a spirited debate occurs in the comments. The degree of Ring's correctness is irrelevant for the purposes of this philosophical article.)
Dr. D's main reaction is that it seems to be okay for enraged players and agents to say inflammatory things this offseason; why do we get a single line from the other side and it's "off with his head"?
But Dr. D's second reaction is that this country does not think a whole lot before it takes the side of the "little guy." In this case, the "little guy" averages $4,097,122 in annual salary, and if you (gentle citizen) bump into him in the street and say "Hi" you are going to be considered a geek, a nuisance, or something worse. It's not like these guys are your chums.
I've never quite understood why the class-warfare shtick extends to sympathy for major league baseball players. It must be the world's most extreme example of class warfare, in the sense of our always taking the side of the person making less, no matter how much they make. Or something.
Finally we'll point out, in passing, that the Players' Union, as a group, doesn't care a whole lot about AA players earning between $3,000 and $7,500 per year. That is per YEAR, kiddies. A McDonald's worker starts at twice that.
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Ring's piece is not a rant and is not the source of our societal downfall. Still, these guys making $4M and $9M and $25M salaries per year, they get pretty blinkin' angry arguing about money and the fans are only too happy to step up briskly to their causes. This induced Dr. D to think of something that, in Konspiracy Korner pieces, other Denizens seem to be interested enough in thinking about also.
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A TV host the other day asked an interesting question: many of us grew up in houses with guns, but weren't concerned about our school days ending with 17 people shot dead. The number of American households owning guns is way down since the 1970's, per capita, but the shootings are way up. When a homicidal maniac like Nikolas Cruz spends 6 hours a day reading the rage-bots on Twitter and watching the intolerant rants on YouTube, where is his mind going to go after a few years' worth of "you're either with me or you're a worthless piece of gum on my shoe"?
At what point do we ask, "When does our CULTURE gentle down?" If more kids were raised at the dinner table and fewer by their smartphones and by cable TV hosts, wouldn't the petri dish breed fewer tragedies? ... oh well. Just something to consider. Don't we all bear some responsibility for the cleanness of the waterhole?
Ok, that is quite a ways off Ring's argument against Manfred's argument about unsigned free agents, about 20 degrees off at the least. The point is, it is open season in the USA to be angry. It's open season to be as angry as you want to be, about anything you want to be, and this doesn't seem to be getting us anyplace all that good.
As the Dalai Lama says, you can focus on a headache until you are in tears if you so choose, and you can focus on anger more and more until you become simply a furious person totally out of control.
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Manfred himself is a lawyer, and lawyers by their nature FIGHT other people for what's theirs, or what they perceive to be theirs. This runs counter to the philosophical notion of karma: the meek (the non-self-assertive) shall inherit the earth; the less aggressive person leads the happier life. Is it good to set a goal, and to push through difficulty to get there? Sure. We'd just like to point out that it's possible to have a friendly game of softball and drink lemonade together after.
Baseball is supposed to be a vicarious substitute for actual gladitoral combat. Here is one vote for keeping the whole culture as friendly as ... possible.
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Bill James once pointed out that the best defenders are the nicest guys, like Kyle Seager; they work on things that don't get them instant recognition. Dee Gordon seems to be in this category.
BABVA,
Dr D