Remember Baseball?

The well-dressed man at the podium is smiling. He appears relaxed and happy, as if he received word his stock portfolio just doubled in value. His posture, his expression conveys an utter lack of concern. Me? Worry? About what?

If you didn't recognize Rob Manfred, you'd never guess he was the commissioner of major league baseball. Or that he was in the midst of a news conference confirming that the three-month long work stoppage is now going to eat into the baseball season.

The photograph is one that crystalizes the divide prolonging a complex and multi-faceted negotiation that pits baseball players against the upper crust of the one-percent.

As a working stiff, I frequently derided both sides. I just didn't care about a tiff between what I saw as billionaires vs. millionaires. But in 2022, I feel very differently.

We are well aware of the monstrous contracts offered the game's elite players. We are less-aware of the ones offered to the game's dwindling middle class. In fact, the median salary in major league baseball is just one-million dollars a year. That means there are as many players making more as there are making less.

I never would have guessed.

What we see happening in society at large (ever-increasing amounts of wealth concentrated into fewer and fewer hands while ever-increasing numbers of people fight for an ever-shrinking pool of money) is also happening in baseball. And that's not by accident. It's a deliberate, on purpose outcome driven by policies put in place by ownership.

This but for a single reason: to make more money.

I ask you: shouldn't baseball owners have the same right to pillage and plunder as your garden variety hedge fund manager? I mean, is this America or what?

So while baseball owners decry their financials (think Cubs' owner Tom Ricketts, who termed his 2020 losses as 'biblical'), the valuations of their profit-sucking ventures continues to soar. Please—tell me the last time you saw the value of a money-losing business escalate like a professional sports franchise.

Answer: you haven't.

And now our billionaire owners have a new revenue stream to frolic in—legalized gambling. It's probably just me, but I can't position my head sufficiently to glimpse the top of their tower o' cash.

And yet these whores are still playing hardball with their talent—the folks you and me and millions of others actually go to see. Or watch. Or stream. Professional sports are—for better or worse—a TV show. And a TV show ain't worth the stink under your arms without a great cast.

Tom? Do you honestly believe three-million people pour into Wrigley Field each year to watch you own?

Really?

You just sign the checks. And to be perfectly honest, I can do that, too. Lots of people can. What I'm not so good at is turning a double play. Or getting around on a wicked curve. Which is why I pay to see the guys who can.

Even apart from your craven, short-sighted efforts, baseball is suffering. It's not connecting with our youth, which is critical to sustaining any kind of endeavor. Then there is the descent into the all-or-nothing gambit of the home run. The endless pitching changes. Shifts. And the torpor with which so many games proceed.

And why is it we never hear of small market NFL, NBA and NHL teams struggling, anyway?

Going on, how is it that in a celebrity-obsessed culture like ours the game's premier players so consistently fly beneath the radar? How to make them sizzle? How to make them snap, crackle and pop like their counterparts in the NBA and NFL?

Wring the neck of the golden goose if you wish. It's “your” game, isn't it? Install a servile lap cat as commissioner; one so far-removed from the game he is able to laugh even as the game creates yet-another degree of separation from its fans.

Seize the day, bro. Have at it.

But I'm fed up with you and your kind. You're ignorant pigs so suffused with gluttony you can't see the approaching train. But not to worry—our body bags feature 24k zippers and are strictly limited edition.

We call them bags, but they'll fit you like a glove.

Money Doesn't Talk. It Runs.

Whenever Illinois leads the nation in something besides population loss or unmet pension obligations, it's something to take note of.  For instance, did you know that Illinois fell for the idea of an elected billionaire two full years before the rest of the nation did?

Yep, we in the Land of Lincoln voted Republican vulture capitalist Bruce Rauner to our state's highest office way back in 2014. And just like our current president's, Rauner's tenure has been a sparkling success.

First and foremost, he has failed to resolve the state's budget impasse, which is the leading cause of our state's population loss and uncertain financial future. In that special way that billionaire businessmen have, Rauner has also failed to forge any kind of working relationship with the powerful speaker of the house, Democrat Mike Madigan.

While I am not a fan of Madigan's in any way, shape or form, Rauner's inability to develop a partnership speaks to his interpersonal ineffectiveness.

Thankfully, his 44 attempts at enacting his toxic Turnaround Agenda have been fruitless. As has his desire to reduce the state's minimum wage to match that of the fed's.

If you haven't already guessed, Bruce is just a real people person. A regular guy. You can tell by the way he rolls up the sleeves of his flannel shirts. And by the way he drops his g's when he says things like this:

“I'm just sayin' you need to get behind what I'm plannin' here, 'cause otherwise y'all are goin' down with the U.S.S. Madigan. I'm talkin' serious change here, folks. I call it the Turnaround Agenda because liberals and Democrats will be so turned around they won't know if they're comin' or goin'! Heh heh heh.”

You suppose he speaks that way at his class reunions at Dartmouth and Harvard?

And despite his family's generous contributions to the city of Chicago, Democratic gubernatorial challenger Jay “J.B.” Pritzker also sports an oily veneer. 

Like Rauner, he is a vulture capitalist. He is a player. He was pragmatic enough to lay with uber sleazeball Rod Blagojevich in an attempt to secure a political position for himself.

Let's face it: Rauner and Pritzker didn't become billionaires by taking the high road. They made deals. They cut corners. They did what they had to do to achieve their goal.

So yes, Illinois will now be the first state to feature two billionaires facing off against each other. Mano a mano. Rauner and Pritzker will throw enormous gobs of money at each other to determine who will call the newly-renovated Governor's mansion home.

So thank you, Citizen's United. Thank you for ensuring that from this point forward we will have the best leadership money can buy. 

And where do we put the statue of Anthony Kennedy, anyway?

In the cynicism which is the unavoidable byproduct of this whoring-out of the electoral process, I propose we who constitute the electorate demand our cut. Instead of billions of dollars going to the production of attack ads, how about the voter getting cash for their vote?

Rauner? Pritzker? How much is my vote worth to you? You're businessmen—I'm sure you appreciate the profit-swelling potential of eliminating middlemen and going straight to the source, which in this case would be me.

Whaddaya think? A grand? Ten? How about fifty?

Sadly, as the distressing figures from Rauner's 2014 campaign make clear, that would be thirty-six. Not grand—bucks. Thirty-six bucks. Yep—that's what each of Rauner's 2014 votes cost.

When you're a billionaire and you can buy a vote for the cost of an oil change and a couple of Italian beef sandwiches at Buona, what's not to like?

As in previous posts, this reminds me of a joke: You know what sucks about being rich?

Nothing.