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You’re Out!

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What a shame that one of America’s favorite past times is going by the way of the NFL. Millionaires haggling over salaries while playing a game while its fans pay the bill. Not me! I don’t watch either.

MLB’s Alternate Universe

By: G. Maresca

As the Russians deployed tens of thousands of troops for an invasion of Ukraine, Major League Baseball’s (MLB) owners and the players’ union agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement.

MLB’s latest contract ended a lockout that lasted more than three months and barely registered a blip on the news’ radar. Their lockout impacted not just the spring training stadiums, but the local bars, restaurants, and hotels throughout Arizona and Florida. According to Seidman Research, these venues lost nearly half of their revenue when spring training was cut short in 2020.

Once upon a time in America, the national pastime was baseball. The once coast-to-coast sporting diversion is long past its time and prime. Baseball is the Pony Express in the era of the iPhone.

A work stoppage should be the last thing any professional league facing declining numbers needs. Billionaires argue with millionaires who disagree on how to divvy up a dumpster full of cash with the remaining fans paying the freight. Players and owners are heading down the Niagara River fighting over who gets to steer. Such unhinged business practices do not bode well for future growth.

When the MLB minimum salary is well over half a million, it is difficult to convince anyone with a pulse that the players are undergoing financial hardships, while the league’s anti-trust exemption remains. Making it to the “show” as players refer to the majors means the last guy on the bench can afford a wine cellar in their self-driving Bentley, while your average fan is fighting growing inflation that will price many out.

The issue is always the almighty dollar and if MLB’s goal is to drive their fans out, they are clearing the bases. Most could care less about salary caps, player minimums, arbitration, and baseball’s luxury tax structure, which parallels the federal tax code. The more they muddle with it, the more incomprehensible it becomes that has even seasoned tax attorneys bamboozled.

As Jason Gay in the Wall Street Journal put it recently, “the nation’s most self-sabotaging sport is once more setting its own shoelaces aflame” and they have been at it for the last half century.

The league’s television ratings and attendance are proof the game remains in a serious funk. MLB is its own worst enemy and cannot afford to keep their fans away. Commissioner Rob Manfred makes his NFL counterpart Roger Goodell seem like a once in a lifetime lottery pick. MLB attendance last year was down to a 37-year low. The final game of the 2020 World Series had the lowest television ratings ever, while last year’s All-Star game was the second lowest. The league saw 45.3 million fans attend regular season games in 2021, a drop of 33.9% from 2019 – the lowest figure in 35-years.

There remains no joy in Mudville as COVID’s ominous clouds still cast a long shadow as unvaccinated players will be barred from Canada to play the Toronto Blue Jays. MLB’s slow suicide picked up steam when the league stenciled BLM on mounds and outfields, while moving their All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver to appease Leftists – an insufferable and impossible task.

For many, MLB could terminate the season and it would have the same impact if the American Ceramic Society cancelled their annual convention. Even a game as superbly conceived as baseball can be so mismanaged that its fan base is doing a MacArthur and fading away. Those who still find the game worth the time and the expense, MLB’s opening day was Thursday, April 7, one week later than initially scheduled with its 162-regular season games in place.

Greed and envy are just two more nails in MLB’s coffin. In the free marketplace, businesses are at liberty to choose and live with the consequences.

Baseball will survive as it is great entertainment at many levels from the minors to college, high school, and youth leagues, where games don’t last three and a half hours and a hot dog and a beer won’t cost you a small fortune.

MLB’s hubris cares little about their fans just like Hollywood. Fans, however, can be heard by using their pastime money to support the millions of displaced Ukrainians – a grand slam in the humanity game.

 

Current Events

The Woke of July

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Well here we are the first day of a new month, a summer month, when folks should be planning vacations to the beaches, the lakes, the mountains, or many of the places this once great nation has  to offer. And what’s even more significant about this month is it includes our nation’s birthday. Personally, I am concerned about the future of its birthday. In fact, this just might be the last time any of us get to celebrate the Republic of the “United” States of America. How sad is that, but then I will have celebrated the founding of our nation 80 times this July 4th. How many my children, grandchildren and  great grandchildren  will be able to celebrate I haven’t a clue. Why? The answer is simple, but if you do not know why, you are reason.

By Greg Maresca

As the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia concluded on September 17, 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government do we have? “A Republic,” he replied, “if you can keep it.”

Stripped to its essence as the nation attempts to celebrate its 245th birthday, Franklin’s challenge needs examination and any newspaper will do.

The nation’s president says: “America is back”— back to the 1970s with increased inflationary spending, high gas and food prices and compounded global threats. Not to be outdone, he also claims the Constitution does not protect our right to own “assault weapons” because “if you wanted, or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

Sen. Dick Durbin’s remarks on the Equality Act was equally as telling. “Catholic” Durbin ran counter to the church’s disapproval to the legislation as it discriminates against Christians and the unborn. Durbin quantified, “I do believe that people who want to blatantly discriminate and use religion as their weapon have gone too far. We have to have limits on what they can do. I might remind us in history that the Ku Klux Klan was not burning question marks.”

Equating those who adhere to biblical morality with the KKK, does not bode well for any reasoned debate about religious freedoms in the future and those arguments are forthcoming.

Welcome to July 4, 2021, where courage is a boy declaring himself a girl and athletically competing against them. It is a place where the Internal Revenue Service denied a Christian nonprofit tax-exempt status because the Bible’s “teachings are typically affiliated with the Republican Party.” This disqualifies them from exemption under Section 501(c)(3), according to the Washington Examiner.

Don’t dare joke about Newark, New Jersey that erected a 700-pound bronze statue of George Floyd or utter “all lives matter.” Do not expect to keep your job at Space Force if you criticize the evils of Marxism, or post on Facebook how the COVID vaccine made you sick.

Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib’s pronouncement that he is gay made national headlines. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell spoke directly to the wokeism cult saying, “The NFL family is proud of Carl for courageously sharing his truth today.” Evidently, the highest leftist virtue is discovering one’s personal truth, and expecting approval for doing so.

A transgender BMX bike rider who qualified as an alternate for the U.S. at the Tokyo summer Olympics said her goal was to win an Olympic medal “so I can burn a U.S. flag on the podium.” In a spirited nation, she would be immediately nixed from the team. Yet, certain folks will lionize her.

Some police departments have stood by as looting and burning goes unabated and where statues of Columbus and Lincoln are toppled, while the law is applied asymmetrically on the basis of ideology and race.

Technology tycoons exploit the cult of woke to attack those who have dissenting views including a former president. In Biden’s America, the Federal Reserve is now telling employees to avoid “biased terms like Founding Fathers.”

Governors and mayors have used a virus to deny constitutional freedoms of assembly, religion and speech. Society can be juxtaposed to the condition of that Miami condominium before its collapse. Cracks in our moral and spiritual foundations threaten our future.

Undoubtedly, you can add to this list – daily.

We have abandoned the concepts of a republic for a democracy.

The Constitution’s framers were adamantly against tyranny of the majority. The Founders framed a representative republic that Franklin’s famous quote underscored with designated checks-and-balances.

Over two centuries ago, English historian Alexander Tytler believed, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury.” The Wall Street Journal reports nearly half the nation is now on the federal dole.

If you believe America is humanity’s noblest construct of nation and spirit, the moment to stand up and be counted is upon us.

Doing nothing will only accelerate the deep-seated conversion from a constitutional republic into a one-party socialist government.

What better time to step-up than the nation’s birthday?

I will attend church on Sunday with my bride, come home, and revel in the fact we are still a Republic that is 245 years old. It may be the last time I will be able to do that, and not because I will have passed, but my Republic did. Sad!