One Fan's Perspective

“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again.”

Because of my love affair with baseball, I continued watching the game when they came back. Again, I watched my favorite teams with the ebb and flow of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Life was back to normal and baseball was on TBS once again.

I ventured out to play recreational softball with my friends from college. We thought we were pretty good until we realized how bad we were. Instead of relishing in the fact we were out there playing, we got caught up in the results. The best parts were drowning our miseries in copious amounts of beer at our favorite watering holes.

Baseball was good.

Until 1994, when the unthinkable happened, baseball went on strike and canceled the World Series. I could not believe it. The players and the management spit on the traditions that legends have built because of economic issues.

The first strike I blamed the owners because in my young mind, I still thought the players cared about their fans. I still had my picture of me alongside Robin Yount and Paul Molitor. They wouldn’t sell the game out would they?

1994 was different. 1994 I blamed the players and I still blame them today. The modern game just doesn’t work for me any longer. The only fond memory I have of baseball is Cal Ripkin, Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig’s record of consecutive games played. He knew what the game stood for and was lucky enough to stay healthy for that long.

There are no players like that now. We should have been celebrating Barry Bonds breaking the Babe’s record of 714, but I didn’t care at all. Seems to me that he as well as other baseball players thinks taking steroids helps them succeed.

I don’t care about baseball now. Baseball will have to do a lot to get me to believe again.

“This field, this game. It’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good… …and it could be again.”

Tags: Baseball, Sports Movies by pbcoyotes
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‘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.

Tags: MLB, Sports Industry, Sports Movies by pbcoyotes
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