Wednesday, July 27, 2011

The National Football League lock-out is over.

The millionaires (the players who also double as their own small-corporations with annual revenues that top the gross national product of third world countries) and the billionaires (the ones who run countries have even more resources, luck and friends in key places) have come to terms.

That means we (the guy who works the third-shift, the swing-shift and the guy who wishes he had shift will once again end up paying the check for the enterprise) will have a football season. Indianapolis will also have its first Super Bowl this February and that's a good thing. It will be an even better thing if I am there.

The NFL is determined to play, and do give them credit for working out the details. I mean, after all a guys got to make his $5 million a year. Some owners are squeaking by with only $50 million per. Could you imagine the audacity of actually expecting a player to work for a living. Maybe Dallas owner Jerry Jones has a bake sale to cover operating experiences or Jim Irsay in Indianapolis hosts a car-wash.

That aside, I don't really begrudge players making lots of money. I'd make it if I could. They do go through a lot to play professional football. I don't have the current data, but I believe the average NFL career is three years. To get a pension from the NFL, something most old-timers don't get, you have to play seven years. You have just a short-time to make your fortune and probably the players will never have that opportunity to earn that much jack ever again.

They, the players, aren't without blame, they are just a little less at fault. They have very little sympathy from me. They have just been able to wrangle a very nice piece of the pie from the owners.

My real issue is the monopoly, the trust, the cartel or whatever term that implies business exclusivity used to describe the NFL. The elite owners in the world's most powerful and most successful sports league, ever.

They've got cash from licensing from the sale of almost every conceivable product or souvenir imaginable. (My favorite is the official NFL team train set you can buy in the Sunday newspaper ads) Like an infinite fountain, only with money, owners have revenues flowing in from every direction: television rights, cable TV rights, satellite program packages, radio broadcast rights, even live updates on your HTC. Let's not forget the basics like ticket sales, personal seat licenses, parking passes,

If you can charge for it, the NFL owners do. They are masters of getting every last dime from we the people.

Hold on. Is it really the owners fault? I mean really. We the fans have blown this game or all our games into something more than a past-time.

Can you blame the owners for wanting more and more money from fans? I mean really, we've been doling it out for years. Far be it for them not to put their hands out to collect it, especially when we are so quick to pay it.

Like the addict buying more drugs after losing yet another job, or unemployed guy using his money to buy lottery tickets. Neither know the, or want to admit they have a problem.

And of course when the training camps open in a few days, including the Colts at Anderson, we'll be there with arms wide open ready to embrace them as if neither has done anything wrong.

It really hasn't. They are just giving us what we say we want with our dollars and our attention.


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Thursday, July 21, 2011

An American Tale: The Shuttle

When the black rubber of the front wheel touched down on the alabaster blanket of pavement, it was over.

Five decades (and seven presidents) packed full of planning and dreaming are now nothing more than memories to be stored.

Through good times and bad times, recession, and maybe depression depending on who you ask, the Space Shuttle was constant. There was tragedy, twice our nation wept over the loss of a shuttle. Challenger was lost on launch in 1986. Columbia was destroyed on re-entry in 2003.

Now Enterprise (just a test unit), Discovery, Endeavor and soon to be Atlantis will just be giant models for display. Other component parts have been dispatched like a NASA garage sale, an engine going here, a few of the orbiter units going to museums there.

These trophies from our limitless youth, mean little without its symbolism.

The space shuttle was another one of the things we Americans hung out hat on. A button-bursting source of pride that made us, even if just small part of us fling our shoulders back and made us proud to be Americans.

The shuttle outlasted Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, another Bush and Obama.

Disney couldn't have dreamed a plan like this.

There may be better engineered cars in Europe, so the argument goes. There may be better technology from Japan. At the end of the day, in the toughest, must unyielding test of all, manned space travel, no one, but no one can do space exploration like the good ole' USA.

We said we could do it and we did.

It wasn't just that We Did it. It was that were able to do it.

We did it first, we did it best. Some 135 times we shook our first, pointed to the sky like a contemporary Columbus and said we can do it. Then cut through cloudy ceiling feeding the fanciful notion that we American's are a special breed.

And don't let anyone tell you anything else, that's what the space shuttle was all about.

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Saturday, July 09, 2011

Fifty years ago Yankee slugger hits 61 in 1961.

Maris Remembered


I guess history is determined by the person who records it.

That is, whoever that gate keeper is, he has the power to make it important or insignificant.

Fifty years ago one of baseball's greatest records was re-written. It's been broken a couple times since so I suppose its not as newsworthy, but no one has really talked a lot about 61 in 1961 - Roger Maris' feat of breaking Babe Ruth's single-second record of 60 home runs.

For the fanfare and attention that historic campaign attracted, its stunning how little its discussed by the man on the street. I don't float in East Coast circles or get a chance to talk to fans in the Bronx some who still say he belongs in the Hall of Fame, but all in all, I think his feat garners little attention.

Little as in never.

Baseball history has moved on. First Mark McGuire and then later Barry Bonds. But, no one even dares to entertain the discussion about how its a different game today then it was when our parents or grandparents went to the ballpark. And no one ever talks about shorter fences, higher altitudes  and lively baseballs and how the game has been diluted by expansion.

Let alone steroids.

That's not just me waxing nostalgic about mythical time when the game was pure or similar Pollyanna nonsense.

During the early 1960s, the Yankees captured five pennants and two World Championships. Mantle and Maris were iconic, but never like they were in 1961. The M&M boys tallied 115 homers, 163 runs scored and 268 runs batted in. BeforeMantle's late September infection, the two were in lock-step waging a friendly battle for the would-be single-season home run mark. Mantle finished with 54 round-trippers.

They were as similar as the day is to night. One loved attention they way you love a visit to the dentist. The other was a quotable as Bartlett's.

Maris, all of 27 years-old, was from North Dakota, and never really got into all the Big Apple offered. He as about as comfortable around the press as white socks are to black wing tips.

His teammate, Mickey Mantle, had an electric smile that would set flashes off for a three mile radius.
Despite his humble Oklahoma roots, Mantle was practically born to be a Yankee.

Maris was a transplant from the west after getting his start in Kansas City, at a time Missouri River was the west.

Never Maris would never hit more than 33 home runs or drive in 100 RBI in a season, 1962. The numbers good enough to win the AL MVP for the second-straight season.

If clothes  make the man, Maris best seasons were ithe seven he spent in Yankee pinstrips (1960-66).

He would only play six more seasons, and retire with only 275 career home runs and 850 runs batted in his 12 year career with a .260 batting average.

His numbers are hardly a case for the Hall of Fame, just like Don Larson's perfect game, Johnny Vandermeer's back to back no-no's, but I think we can agree his place in baseball history is secure.

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