Posted by Rich DeLeo
on 12/19/2003, 10:32 am
Board Administrator
The Major League Baseball players union showed us yesterday that it has way too much power. The union put a stop to the blockbuster trade that would have sent Ranger SS Alex Rodriguez to Boston For Manny Ramirez. This would have traded a $26 million/year contract for a $20 million/year contract. Who cares, right? Well, it seems that the players union wants all of the green, and more. The deal hinged, apparently on the hope that the Red Sox could restructure A-Rod's contract, which still has $179 million to go, to scale it back by some $30 million. But the union, being the greedy slobs that they are, said, we are giving nothing back to baseball by allowing this trade to happen. Since when did the union acquire this much power? Since the stupid owners allowed that clause to be part of the collective bargaining agreement. This was probably thrown in to get the deal done, so that baseball could go about its business. Well, it turns out that now owners can't even complete a trade without the players permission. Again, this is a case of the inmates clearly running the asylum, an asylum that is known as Major League baseball. Players just keep getting more and more, and the owners pretty much are relegated to the dugout. I thought it was the other way around!! Guess I am wrong! Players already have free agency, they have no trade clauses, they have the 10-5 rule, 10 years in the majors, and 5 years with the same team which allows them to veto any trade to another team. What the owners need to do is simply quit signing these guys to these contracts that rival the wealth of the ancient Egyptian kings and their fortunes of gold! But then the players will sue the owners and accuse them of collusion. Remember that one....The players won that court case, and the owners had to pay some $30 million more into the players retirement fund. The owners are pretty much hog tied in baseball. And they have nobody to blame but themselves. The players and their union are stronger than the teamsters, and that's scary!! I don't really care if the trade happens, but what we should care about is that baseball is headed for a path of destruction that will come close to killing, if not kill the game altogether. This cycle of destruction will not stop because owners want to win, and to win you must have the best players out there. And the only way to have the best players, is to sign them to multi million dollar deals, which later come back to haunt like no ghost in a deserted mansion can!!
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