Go the Distance
‘Man, I did love this game. I’d have played for meal money.”
I moved to Florida in 1981. We left the friendly confines of Milwaukee County Stadium and my beloved Milwaukee Brewers for warm weather, no snow, football, and NASCAR.
We lived on the east coast of Florida where television reception was not good and cable was a necessity. In Milwaukee, you could receive all the major stations without cable so any household that had cable was a rarity. We got cable television just in time for the start of the new baseball season.
Cable in Florida brought me the Turner Broadcasting System. Therefore, with TBS, I saw the Atlanta Braves play almost every day (or it seemed to me anyway). The side effect of having TBS in our cable lineup was Georgia Championship Wrestling with Gordon Solie, but that is a subject for another time.
I started watching the Braves on opening day in 1981 and started to learn the players on the team. I was still a Brewers fan, but since I could not see them on television, I slowly adopted the only team I could support. I kept score, watched the Braves struggle, but still absolutely loved the game of baseball.
Imagine my surprise as a 11 year old seeing my favorite game suddenly stop. The players went on strike in the middle of the season. My favorite game was replaced by issues that I didn’t understand. It was heartbreaking. Why would players who got paid to play the game go on strike?
Baseball came back later that summer and because of winning streaks and play off formulas, the Milwaukee Brewers lost to the New York Yankees in a divisional playoff. For a while, I dropped my allegiance to the Braves and rooted for my former team, but it didn’t work out.
However, baseball was back, and I was happy. I forgave my sullen heroes as they fought for the economic landscape that I didn’t understand as a child, because my favorite sport was back. I said to myself, “Hopefully, they won’t strike again, but if they do, I’ll stop watching.”
My father, who had his cynical moments, said, “The only way baseball and the league will stop this labor disagreement is if the fans stop supporting them.” I still watched anyway.
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