As the countdown to March 27 rolls on, whereupon obstructedview.net will unleash its discredited fury on Cubdom, I thought I'd do a little housekeeping by finishing posts I had started and left unfinished. And by "some," I mean, "at least one." I'll probably post a favorite or two (as ACB and Aisle 424 are doing) and maybe some posts I wish I'd written. But for now, since the NFL has chosen to test the work stoppage waters, it seemed like a good time to dust off and finish up this post originally scheduled as a Day-Off Reflection in 2010.
At Shea Stadium on opening day in 1995, three fans wearing shirts that read, "GREED," tossed dollar bills onto the field then gathered near second base, clenched fists raised in protest. Baseball had returned after the worst sports work stoppage of my lifetime, the strike that cost 1994 its World Series.
One image sticks with me from that year: Shawon Dunston, sitting in the dugout, arms folded across his knees and head bowed in disbelief. It was the last game of the year, one that had already been drained of any hope of being The Year for Dunston and the Cubs and their fans. But you could see how it affected the O-Meter man. He was sad. He was angry. He was not going to be playing the game he loved because his fellow players and the MLB owners couldn't agree on how the proceeds should be distributed.
Some people blamed the greedy players. Some people (myself included) blamed the greedy owners. I was mostly just greedy for baseball.
So in 1995, I attended my very first Cubs home opener. The Cubs gave away free magnet schedules. The fans gave a whole lot of them back. You see, the thing about magnetic schedules is that those suckers have serious aerodynamic efficiency about them. One fan from the upper deck managed to hit home plate umpire Mark Hirschbeck with one. (I don't know who the home plate umpire is, but I'm trying to finish up a year-old post on a dying blog, so I'm too lazy to look it up. And yes, I don't know for sure it came from the upper deck, but doesn't that make the story more interesting?)
It was dumb of the fans to throw those schedules, but not nearly as dumb as it was for the team to say, "We understand you're angry over the strike, so to make it up to you, we'd like you to have some projectiles. Enjoy."
So on this or any other day when I'm unable to enjoy a Cubs game or baseball of any kind, it seems extra stupid to intentionally avoid playing baseball when there's an opportunity to play it. Especially when, as Shawon clearly displayed, the players want to play as intensely as the spectators want to watch. I'm sure the owners don't object to making money whilst playing real-life fantasy baseball, either.
Get along, people. Coalesce. Stop screwing over each other. Be greedy for baseball.
