So then why do they feel that they have to have another work stoppage in order to get things done here? The answer si simple. What you have here are two sides that have absolutely no idea about the real world. They have lived in their own insulated world for so long that they don't know what the fuck is going on. The baseball players of today have grown up thinking that it is their right to become millionaires by playing baseball. They never knew the day when baseball players weren't well-paid high society pop culture icons. Since these guys knew that they had a chance to do this for a living, they always expected to be very highly paid. The vast majority of them never had to worry about getting a traditional job, they have always concentrated on being baseball players. So they have never had any experience working at a job for regular type salaries in their lives. These guys started out at around 200,000 dollars and went up from there. So they have no idea of a regular pay scale. They say that they don't want to lose what they have gained, but that can never happen. The genie is out of the bottle. Things could never be rolled back to the indentured servant days no matter what. So the players are worrying about nothing. But they worry about it because they are told to worry about it from their union leaders. These guys take full advantage of the fact that these are athletes that have been brought up on the concept of team spirit and all that. The players all say that they are united on this, that the players of the past went on strike for those that came after them, and now they have to do the same, and so forth,. As I said, there is no chance of a rollback here, and the vast majority of players know it too. So why do they say that they are willing to go on strike if this is the case? Because of the way that their union does business. The union always points to the strike votes taken by the players and they always crow about how it was a unanimous vote and all that and say that shows union solidarity. However, it is far from a secret ballot mailed to all the players or whatever. These votes are taken by shows of hands in the locker rooms before a game. The players are asked if they want to strike and they raise their hands. Those that are opposed then are asked to do the same. All of this right in front of everyone. So these athletes that have been raised on the concept of team solidarity will only raise their hands when their teammates do and so on. That basically ensures that everyone raises their hands at once, because those that did not would be immediately identifiable and none of them want that. So you get a unanimous vote from a system that would have done the old USSR proud. The union heads look like big time leaders that have total support. That is what this is all about, the union leaders. That Donald Fehr fucker. He wants to get himself on the news as much as he can, and he loves these work stoppages because he gets to do that a lot during them. The players have more than they will ever need now but Donald does not. His mega-ego needs ever more to sustain his ego trip. He is using the players to promote himself basically. He wants them to go out on strike so that he can look like the big American hero and get them back to work. He does not seem to like the fact that the Pigs and firemen are considered the big American heroes now, he wants to have his fat fuckin' face in on that too. So the players need to go out on strike again so that Donald Fehr can get what he wants for himself. That is the world of the players, one not of reality, and that is why they are in this situation that they are in today.
However, the world of the owners is no better. These are high powered businessmen, the epitome of Mr. Businessman himself. These are the corporate boardroom dudes, the high-rolling big spenders of the business community. These are the men of windfall profit fame, the ones with tax shelters and the like over in the Bahamas and other such island nations and Swiss bank accounts that don't reveal the name of the person that has them. High finance and big money are their ways of life. As such, they are used to being feted by many sectors of American society. Like the politician. These are the men that give large and tax deductible contributions to the politicians of their choice, the politicians that they feel that they need to put in their pocket. These businessmen are part of the legendary "special interest" groups that lobby the politician about various issues. These owners are the corporate dudes that have profited immensely from all that corporate greed and corruption that the President now says that he abhors. These are the men that have bought elections around where they do business by making sure that the politician of their choice got elected and they spent as much money as they needed to make sure that this happened. Once it did ,those politicians of their choice made many a decision that benefitted these businessmen, they saw to that. The politicians saw that their political careers were based on the money that these businessmen gave them so that they could afford to get elected. So they did what the businessmen wanted them to do so that the rich businessmen could get ever richer and eventually buy baseball teams and use their political pressure tactics to get new stadiums for themselves too. These are men that are used to getting their way, these baseball owners. Not only that, they are so out for themselves that they view each other with suspicion and mistrust. Every owner is out to trump the other owners in some way to prove that he is the richest and coolest of them all. These individual ego trips have been exploited by the player's agents, who have ruthlessly played one of these rich egomaniacs against the others to raise the stakes and get his client the best contract that he can. That has helped to raise player salaries as much as anything, the simple fact that these owners are just out for themselves and trying to outdo everyone else, even their so called partners, all the time. This sheer vanity on the owners part is no one's fault but theirs. Now they want t be saved from that. Some of them that let their egos get away from them and spent shitloads of money now want a work stoppage so that they can look like they are mean and rough and that they are not as responsible for the position that we are in today as anyone. That is the world of the owners, one that is equally as far removed from reality as the world of the players.
So these are the two world colliding here, the two worlds that have to come to some sort of an agreement to end this work stoppage. Since these two world are so distant from reality in different ways, it should invariably take a long time to get this done. It will be a while before we see more action from the baseball diamond. It sure looks like we will be seeing "action" from Donald Fehr and Bud Selig as they preen, pose, and posture. The rich will get richer, and the poor will lose out, and in this case, the poor are the baseball fans of America who will have to endure more of this bullshit just like they have eight times previously.