Major league baseball has been around in its current form for 125 years. It has been through its scandals and down times, but never has baseball been through what it is going through right now, a scathing, public scrutiny of the personal lives of each and every player that puts on the uniform. Never before have the people employed in the league been subject to this thorough examination of their lives. They are constantly bombarded with questions that have nothing to do with the game. All of the sudden they have to have public opinions on subjects they don’t know much about and probably don't care much about. I think its time that people who condemn these players as rich and greedy need to take another look at their revisionist thinking. Things in this league have NEVER been perfect and I will dare to say that they never will be.

MONEY - Oh, the problems this has caused in the last ten years. Baseball salaries are spiraling out of control... ,Players make too much money..., players value money over winning..., etc... This is a bunch of hogwash. Players have ALWAYS made more than the population. In fact they have always made considerably more than the population. The problem now is three-fold, two of which I will discuss now. One is that historically, a baseball player made about 8 to 10 times the national household salary average. Now that average has been upped to about 50 times with much of the increase happening in the last seven years. One can pine about the good ole days when a ball player was a regular 'joe', having to work in the offseason to make ends meet. But you know what, that had nothing to do with the amount of money the sport of baseball made. It had much more to do with who had control over the players and a little section in their contract called the "Reserve Clause". Basically the player had no rights about where he worked. Would you sign a contract that would not let you move if you were given a chance to make a better living for you and your family? Probably not. But, if these guys wanted to play this game at the professional level, they had to sign that contract. Salaries were kept down and the owners were able to make large profits at the expense of their employees. In short, the money was always there. That's why people bought franchises and still do. They can make a large profit. That's the second part of the problem. Owners want a larger part of the pie again so they publicize this escalation in salaries and push it on the public to turn sentiment and pressure against them. The owners can now complain that they are all losing money, but the accounting game has changed now. Now they use the teams as tax write-offs. That's right, as I read it, they can depreciate a player over a certain period of time. Then they make their money when they sell the team and that is usually at a significant profit. So don't cry for the owners. They still make their money; it's just done a little differently than it used to be. The players...  well now they get a bigger cut of the pie. I'm not sure how much bigger, but I would say it's significant, but I can't say that it's wrong and condemn them for it. Just like I couldn't condemn anyone else for taking a better job.

PRIVATE LIVES - Everyone in the world has their flaws. Period (Except my child, but I suppose that could be a bias thing). You and I are lucky, though. Yours aren't dragged out and publicly flaunted at every opportunity that arises. I read last week that people are wishing to take us back to those innocent days of yester-yore...  Well you know what? They never existed. There was never any age of innocence in baseball. It has always been a hard living, hard drinking lifestyle for many players. The Babe and Mickey Mantle lived hard and fast but that was never a public issue. The public issue was that they showed up and played better than anyone else. It didn't become an issue until recently (10-15 years). My thought is basically it's none of my business. As long as they aren't doing anything to adversely affect my family, it's none of my business.

THE THIRD PART OF THE PROBLEM - So whose fault is it that we have these pictures and stories of athletes that we didn't have 25 years ago? My guess is the people who take the pictures and write the stories. That's right the media. They aren't to blame for the actions of the people they report on, but they are responsible for leading us to believe that it is different than it was. The only difference is in how things are reported. Before - there were taboos. There were subjects that were just not broached by the press. Now it's a free for all and we have to hear what Mitch Albom thinks about Michael Jordan's opinions about Nike sweat shops. Number one... why would I care what Jordan thinks about them. Number two...  whoever thinks what Mitch Albom thinks about the situation is either newsworthy or entertaining needs to go pick out their own switch for a beating. Everything, and I mean, everything, is a story. Why? Well as much as I hate to admit it, I think it has four letters... ESPN. The network I love and cherish had to fill 24 hours of sports in the early days and the lumberjacking and strongman contests just weren't getting the ratings. They went what was considered then as tabloid, but now is just "hard-hitting" news journalism. It got worse when more networks got into the fray. Competition is supposed to bring out the best in us, but I believe many will agree that it has degraded the press and media in general greatly in the past fifteen years. The effort to get a story and get it first has led to the unnecessary destruction of many lives. Things we wouldn't hear before are now commonplace and we listen and lose them immediately.

It's never easy to accept that the times we live in are the "good ole days". But I think in this case they are. Sports popularity has remained significant despite the ever-increasing number of outlets for our leisure time and dollars. No entertainment medium captures the imagination as much as sports and no sport has the history of baseball. Are baseball's salaries too high? How can anyone's salary be too high? My guess is, if it's your salary it can never be too high. Comparing athlete's or entertainer's salaries to "workers" salaries is ludicrous. Someone is going to get the money in baseball, there's no way around that. I would rather it be a player than an owner. The players actually do the work. If you want teacher's or other public servant's salaries to rise to what you would consider acceptable, there's only one way and that's raising taxes. Considering we just elected a president whose main campaign pledge was to cut taxes by 1.6 trillion dollars, I don’t see it happening any time soon.

The love of the game...  ahhh, I wish it were that easy. No professional plays just for the love of the game and never did. A family can't live on the love of the game. You can't pay rent with the love of the game. Playing for the love of the game ends the minute you rely on it to give you something. It is then the love of the "get". It is then a tool to a better end for yourself and your family. That's true not only with baseball, but anything. I programmed games for fun when I was a kid. Now I do it for living. Would I do it if they paid me less? Nope, I'd either go somewhere else or do something else. I have four mouths to feed. The love of the game is a revisionist saying made up by those who thought yesterday's heroes were better than today's. I would stack up A-Rod, Jeter, Nomar, The Big Unit, Greg Maddux, Mark McGwire, and Bernie Williams up against the heroes of any era any day.

So it comes down to what do you want YOUR game to be? Gossip, personal stories, "Outside the Lines"? I tell you what mine is. Mine is a sharp crack of the bat, looking like a double in the gap, and Andruw Jones under it before the camera can cut to him. Mine is a sharp side-armed breaking pitch from Pedro Martinez that buckles a batters knees. Mine is Craig Biggio stretching a single into a double using his knowledge of the tendencies of the outfielder. Mine is Joe Torre going against conventional baseball wisdom by bringing in a certain pitcher or leaving in a hitter and showing that all the convention in the world is no substitute for a complete knowledge of your team.

Mine is what happens between "Play Ball!!" and "That’s the game." Mine is not the individual players, but their actions and reactions during a game. Mine is the game and only the game. Maybe that's why baseball is as exciting and rewarding to me now as it has ever been. Maybe that's why tomorrow, when the first game is played, I'll be watching like I do every year. Maybe that’s why this Tuesday, when I take my son to the Astros opener we won't talk about Bagwell's contract.

Hopefully we will just talk about that great hit he just had up the middle...

Article first appeared at www.e-sports.com

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