GOING OUT OF BUSINESS?
Here's why there's so much at stake for MLB, Astros with lockout in full swing
Dec 2, 2021, 6:51 pm
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS?
By locking out their players, Major League Baseball owners may not just kill their golden goose, they risk wiping out the whole gaggle. And, yes, I had to ask Siri, “What do you call a group of geese?”
Baseball’s lockout started precisely at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. Until team owners and the players’ union knock out a new collective bargaining agreement, there will be no free agent signings, no trades, no workouts or medical treatment at team facilities …
Essentially, America’s national pastime shut down tight. And like so often when multimillionaires get into a spat, it’s the little guy, the poor shnook who buys tickets and T-shirts, who roots roots roots for the home team, who gets screwed.
This is a tough one – whose side are we on? The players who make oil baron money for playing a kids’ game, who stay in 5-star hotels on the road, who get $100-a-day meal money even though stadium clubhouses put out a spread worthy of a Beverly Hills bat mitzvah, (the visitors clubhouse at Yankee Stadium serves steak and lobster), make a fortune scribbling their name at autograph shows and still leave 10-percent tips at Hooters?
If the visitors clubhouse at Yankee Stadium serves steak and lobster, what’s going on in the home clubhouse – wenches in togas feeding grapes by hand? Tough life these players lead.
Or the owners, even the skinflints who field last-place teams, who make millions by selling beer and hot dogs at six times what they pay at wholesale even on Dollar Dog Night. Jim Crane and his buddies bought the Houston Astros for $680 million in 2011. The team is valued at $1.8 billion today.
As usual, it’s all about money. Money can’t buy you love, but it can keep a Cy Young winner in Houston. Major League Baseball is a $10 billion-a-year industry. Players want to make more. Owners want to keep more. There you have it. Meanwhile Francisco Lindor, making $341 million, makes “thumbs down” gestures at his hometown Mets fans?
Poor Carlos Correa now has to wait for the players and owners to reach a new agreement before he can sign with another team … or the Astros. In the meantime, perhaps he should wear a Hazmat suit everywhere he goes and boil himself at night to keep from incurring an injury. And stay off the massage table, we know how dangerous a rubdown can be.
Analysts are saying it could be a long lockout, like the last baseball stoppage in 1994-95, when they canceled the 1994 World Series. Which brings up the question, how stupid is baseball? The game’s popularity is waning, young people don’t seem to care anymore, attendance is dwindling … and the owners and players, the two sides that benefit the most from baseball slap a “Closed for Business” on the locked front door. Keep it up and that sign may read “Going Out of Business.”
It took several years and a home run battle between two steroid freaks to revive baseball after the ’94-’95 players strike. That’s not going to happen next year. They hand out Dixie Cups now.
The hope is a settlement in by Feb. 1 so spring training can start on time, or at least by March 1 so teams can play their completely unnecessary 30-game spring schedule. Funny how NBA teams need only four preseason games, the NFL only three games and college football zero games. And those teams actually require players to be in shape from the get-go.
Baseball players are among the most pampered humans short of Halle Berry getting ready for the Academy Awards. Team owners make millions, in some cases billions, for sitting behind home plate and watching their team flop come crunch time. The New York Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2009. The Yanks are worth $5.25 billion. The Chicago Cubs have won one World Series in Betty White’s lifetime …$3.36 billion.
It’s time for the players and owners to get this lockout over real fast. At some point fans won’t care when and if it’s time to “Play Ball.”
Adding a player of Kevin Durant’s caliber was too valuable an opportunity for the Houston Rockets to pass up, even though it meant moving on from Jalen Green just four seasons after they drafted him second overall.
Durant was officially acquired from Phoenix on Sunday in a complicated seven-team transaction that sent Green and Dillon Brooks to the Suns and brought Clint Capela back to Houston from the Hawks.
General manager Rafael Stone is thrilled to add the future Hall of Famer, who will turn 37 in September, to a team which made a huge leap last season to earn the second seed in the Western Conference.
Asked Monday why he wanted to add Durant to the team, Stone smiled broadly before answering.
“He’s Kevin Durant,” Stone said. “He’s just — he’s really good. He’s super-efficient. He had a great year last year. He’s obviously not 30 anymore, but he hasn’t really fallen off and we just think he has a chance to really be impactful for us.”
But trading Green to get him was not an easy decision for Stone, Houston’s general manager since 2020.
“Jalen’s awesome, he did everything we asked,” Stone said. “He’s a wonderful combination of talent and work ethic along with being just a great human being. And any time that you have the privilege to work with someone who is talented and works really hard and is really nice, you should value it. And organizationally we’ve valued him tremendously, so yeah very hard.”
Green was criticized for his up-and-down play during the postseason when the Rockets were eliminated by the Warriors in seven games in the first round. But Green had improved in each of his four seasons in Houston, leading the team in scoring last season and playing all 82 games in both of the past two seasons.
Pressed for details about why Green's time was up in Houston, Stone wouldn't get into specifics.
“It’s the NBA and you can only do trades if a certain amount of money goes out and a certain amount comes in and there’s some positional overlap or at least overlap in terms of on ball presence,” he said. “And so that’s what the deal required.”
In Durant, the Rockets get a veteran of almost two decades who averaged 26.6 points and six rebounds a game last season and has a career average of 27.2 points and seven rebounds.
Houston loves the veteran experience and presence that Durant brings. Stone noted that the team had arranged for some of its players to work out with him in each of the past two offseasons.
“His work ethic is just awesome,” Stone said. “The speed at which he goes, not in a game … but the speed at which he practices and the intensity at which he practices is something that has made him great over the years and it started when he was very young. So of all the things that I hope rubs off, that’s the main one I think is that practice makes perfect. And I think one of the reasons he’s had such an excellent career is because of the intensity with which he works day in day out.”
Durant is a 15-time All-Star and four-time scoring champion, who was the Finals MVP twice. The former Texas Longhorn is one of eight players in NBA history to score at least 30,000 points and he won NBA titles in 2017 and 2018 with the Warriors.
Now he’ll join a team chasing its first NBA title since winning back-to-back championships in 1994-95.
“Everything has to play out, but we do — we like the fit,” Stone said. “We think it works well. We think he will add to us and we think we will help him.”