Baseball, Kenny Rogers, arbitrators and more...
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JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
I swear sports arbitrators must all be morons...
But lest you think I'm only targetting them, understand full well that I have a special amount of scorn (and maybe a little hatred) for baseball's incompetent Commissioner Bud Selig.
In many ways I used to be in favor of the players in the players vs. owners fights, but those times have long passed. Salary levels in baseball have gotten completely ridiculous, mostly because of idiot arbitrators that have so many times made decisions leaning toward the players that oodles of mediocre players have benefited by watching their salary levels reach ever skyward.
Ineffective journeymen players get literally millions of dollars for bringing a 5-15 pitching record with 6.79 ERA to the table. (Not real numbers, but probably close to the averages you can find by looking a bit...) Crappy hitters who can barely hit in the .200 range make $4 - $6 million a year (or more) while striking out like crazy. Wouldn't you love to be able to do the same?
Getting back to in-effective Bud Selig and one Mr. Kenny Rogers, I would say I'm shocked and severely disappointed in seeing that an arbitrator reduced the suspension of Kenny Rogers, but I knew it would happen. You could see the decision coming from a mile away. In his haste to finally do the right thing, Selig had finally handed out a suspension that seemed to be close to what was deserved (in my opinion, Rogers should have been given a 60 day suspension for his behavior, but I knew that would never happen...) Though the 20 games seemed to be about the best that could be expected, Selig bypassed his usual hanging judge and that apparently helped to hand Rogers what he needed to argue was a breech of the collective bargaining agreement and also helped the arbitrator decide that an unduly harsh punishment had been handed down.
I wonder if the arbitrator had been one of the cameramen or if he/she was related to the cameramen that Rogers accosted would the punishment have been reduced?
My own opinion is that King Bud should have let his own disciplinarian hand down the punishment, perhaps with a whisper in the ear that the punishment needed to be at least 30 days, but not with any sort of paper trail that would have fouled up the plan and resulted in any reduction in the suspension. (Baseball really needs to learn to avoid collusion cases, and needs to make sure that there's no potential evidence around that could be used to make such a case). With that done, when Mr. Rogers appealed to the commissioner, the suspension could have and should have been doubled, though that couldn't happen because I'm sure that the players union has negotiated their collective bargaining agreement such that the loser in an appeal could never have their punishment made more harsh, rather than less so.
I still love the game of baseball, despite it's many flaws, especially in the labor area, the imbalance of talent and money that lets large market teams, or those with deep pockets spend freely while keeping teams in smaller and poorer markets payroll restricted and barely competitive over the long term. Watching and following the Washington Nationals this season has drawn me back to the game more than I thought I might let myself go for. Yet baseball's labor situation, which lets the inmates, in most cases, run the asylum frustrates the hell out of me.
The players continue to let their union frustrate efforts to take steroids and other performance enhancers out of the game. The punishments that are handed down are a joke. Players can apparently lie, deny and stonewall about whether or not they are using performance enhancers (potential example: Rafael Palmiero) and they actually get cooperation and collusion from the owners and MLB management who let tested guilty parties go on to rack up more feel good statistics that might eventually be used as justification for why someone deserves to be in the hall of fame.
We live in a time where all fans are going to have to look at the stats of baseball players, the career accomplishments, and be very, very skeptical. We'll have to discount the "juiced player" era, and wind up downplaying accomplishments that might otherwise deserve attention. Instead, we'll be watching the numbers and in our own minds will have to calculate the "real stats" so we can perhaps compare them to their predecessors.
It all the more makes me angry and frustrated that a player like Roger Maris is not a hall of famer, having been discounted so badly as never being a great player, yet knowing now that if it wasn't for performance enchancers his numbers would stand on a pillar next to Babe Ruth's as one of the all-time great single season performances. Don't get me wrong, I cheered McGwire and Sosa as they both raced to 60+ homeruns, but I know that both were juiced and used the best science they could to help them in their quest. Never mind Barry Bonds, he of the massively swollen head to match his massive ego. His numbers are so obviously out of whack with his career statistics that it would take a complete moron to not see that Bonds has done it with help.
The good players, those that aren't cheating themselves and the game, need to take back the union and force their leadership to make a much more transparent testing program with real punishments that set examples for others not to take enchancers. The tests need to be more frequent, more random, something on the order of at least once per month in the season, with 2 additional random tests during the season, and 2 tests during spring training, and tests after each round of the post season. Failed tests should be made public, including detailing the information about what substances were found. The players should then be subject to prosecution by the feds for trafficing in controlled substances, including perhaps giving the players jail time during their suspensions. Perhaps that would clean the game up once and for all, but sadly, it will probably require an act of congress, which is another mostly incompetent outfit....
But lest you think I'm only targetting them, understand full well that I have a special amount of scorn (and maybe a little hatred) for baseball's incompetent Commissioner Bud Selig.
In many ways I used to be in favor of the players in the players vs. owners fights, but those times have long passed. Salary levels in baseball have gotten completely ridiculous, mostly because of idiot arbitrators that have so many times made decisions leaning toward the players that oodles of mediocre players have benefited by watching their salary levels reach ever skyward.
Ineffective journeymen players get literally millions of dollars for bringing a 5-15 pitching record with 6.79 ERA to the table. (Not real numbers, but probably close to the averages you can find by looking a bit...) Crappy hitters who can barely hit in the .200 range make $4 - $6 million a year (or more) while striking out like crazy. Wouldn't you love to be able to do the same?
Getting back to in-effective Bud Selig and one Mr. Kenny Rogers, I would say I'm shocked and severely disappointed in seeing that an arbitrator reduced the suspension of Kenny Rogers, but I knew it would happen. You could see the decision coming from a mile away. In his haste to finally do the right thing, Selig had finally handed out a suspension that seemed to be close to what was deserved (in my opinion, Rogers should have been given a 60 day suspension for his behavior, but I knew that would never happen...) Though the 20 games seemed to be about the best that could be expected, Selig bypassed his usual hanging judge and that apparently helped to hand Rogers what he needed to argue was a breech of the collective bargaining agreement and also helped the arbitrator decide that an unduly harsh punishment had been handed down.
I wonder if the arbitrator had been one of the cameramen or if he/she was related to the cameramen that Rogers accosted would the punishment have been reduced?
My own opinion is that King Bud should have let his own disciplinarian hand down the punishment, perhaps with a whisper in the ear that the punishment needed to be at least 30 days, but not with any sort of paper trail that would have fouled up the plan and resulted in any reduction in the suspension. (Baseball really needs to learn to avoid collusion cases, and needs to make sure that there's no potential evidence around that could be used to make such a case). With that done, when Mr. Rogers appealed to the commissioner, the suspension could have and should have been doubled, though that couldn't happen because I'm sure that the players union has negotiated their collective bargaining agreement such that the loser in an appeal could never have their punishment made more harsh, rather than less so.
I still love the game of baseball, despite it's many flaws, especially in the labor area, the imbalance of talent and money that lets large market teams, or those with deep pockets spend freely while keeping teams in smaller and poorer markets payroll restricted and barely competitive over the long term. Watching and following the Washington Nationals this season has drawn me back to the game more than I thought I might let myself go for. Yet baseball's labor situation, which lets the inmates, in most cases, run the asylum frustrates the hell out of me.
The players continue to let their union frustrate efforts to take steroids and other performance enhancers out of the game. The punishments that are handed down are a joke. Players can apparently lie, deny and stonewall about whether or not they are using performance enhancers (potential example: Rafael Palmiero) and they actually get cooperation and collusion from the owners and MLB management who let tested guilty parties go on to rack up more feel good statistics that might eventually be used as justification for why someone deserves to be in the hall of fame.
We live in a time where all fans are going to have to look at the stats of baseball players, the career accomplishments, and be very, very skeptical. We'll have to discount the "juiced player" era, and wind up downplaying accomplishments that might otherwise deserve attention. Instead, we'll be watching the numbers and in our own minds will have to calculate the "real stats" so we can perhaps compare them to their predecessors.
It all the more makes me angry and frustrated that a player like Roger Maris is not a hall of famer, having been discounted so badly as never being a great player, yet knowing now that if it wasn't for performance enchancers his numbers would stand on a pillar next to Babe Ruth's as one of the all-time great single season performances. Don't get me wrong, I cheered McGwire and Sosa as they both raced to 60+ homeruns, but I know that both were juiced and used the best science they could to help them in their quest. Never mind Barry Bonds, he of the massively swollen head to match his massive ego. His numbers are so obviously out of whack with his career statistics that it would take a complete moron to not see that Bonds has done it with help.
The good players, those that aren't cheating themselves and the game, need to take back the union and force their leadership to make a much more transparent testing program with real punishments that set examples for others not to take enchancers. The tests need to be more frequent, more random, something on the order of at least once per month in the season, with 2 additional random tests during the season, and 2 tests during spring training, and tests after each round of the post season. Failed tests should be made public, including detailing the information about what substances were found. The players should then be subject to prosecution by the feds for trafficing in controlled substances, including perhaps giving the players jail time during their suspensions. Perhaps that would clean the game up once and for all, but sadly, it will probably require an act of congress, which is another mostly incompetent outfit....