1981 Split Baseball Season

Okay, back to the baseball rant.

At presstime, the Series is tied at a game apiece, with the Cards' best two starters next in the rotation at home. It looks exciting.

And when it's over, I'll replay the dvr-recorded Cardinal victories regardless of whether they win the Big Kielbasa.

But I haven't returned to the game. I'm not sure I ever will, unless some huge changes take place.

Today's FamilyFirst site focuses on a particularly dark moment for baseball: the 1981 strike.

The strike was about free agency, and owners wanting to return to power over the players, and players feeling ripped off despite being millionaires.

In other words, it was a load of garbage. The owners lost money, the players lost money, and the fans lost a credible world champion.

You see, Bowie Kuhn, the most ineffective commissioner in memory, backed up the owners in a ridiculous split season that kept the two teams in the National League, St. Louis and Cincinnati, out of the playoffs. The Dodgers won a thoroughly forgettable and meaningless World Series over a Yankees team that finished behind Baltimore in overall wins.

The insanity was repeated in 1994, with the Series simply being canceled that year. Oh well. That's better than crowning some sham champion.

Big sports run and participated in by idiots are prone to strikes. Witness the NFL and NHL. But baseball should know better. Curt Flood helped abolish the slavish reserve clause. What's needed now is a much-improved revenue sharing plan more in line with the NFL, along with a genuine salary cap.

NFL teams have much more parity than MLB teams. This despite the fact that feel-good stories like the White Sox and Tigers occasionally rise up from the depths to glory, which is short lived until the Steinbrenners of the league begin buying their players.

Steinbrenner has spent A BILLION DOLLARS on players whose clubs couldn't afford to keep them in the last six years. Ironically, the egos that go with all that talent keep them from functioning effectively as a team, ergo no World Championships in that timespan.

No more strikes, baseball. Real salary caps, and more effective revenue sharing. THAT's what it will take to begin wooing back long term fans like myself.

http://www.answers.com/topic/1981-baseball-strike

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