Tag Archives: Back to work campaign

Not missing the fans

Posted on by

I’m okay with no fans in the stands for MLB & the NBA. What anyone will quickly discover is that much of the bias in umpiring & officiating disappears when the fans are removed from the equation. So when I hear an announcer begin by saying, “We miss you– the fans in the stands,” I don’t identify with that. That’s mostly just what they are made to say, but there is some truth in their words. They miss the revenue, They miss the adulation.

I don’t miss the noise. I don’t miss the drunken & abusive fans, especially at places like Fenway Park & Yankee Stadium. I like the Rays/Yankees games much better when idiots like Yankees manager, Aaron Boone, can’t start provocations by throwing at Rays hitters, and then incite the home crowd. No home fans, diffuses Boone’s cheap-shot antics. With no fans in the stands, it makes it MUCH easier for umpires to do the right thing, and throw out a Yankees pitcher in Yankees Stadium, for throwing at opposing hitters. It removes a LOT of East coast bias, and makes the game much more fair.

All sporting contests should be between the players and coaching staff (when allowed) only. If you are a player who needs the crowd to “pump you up,” then what are you doing out there? Too much of sports is hype. Too many athletes, teams & organizations well-past their prime are held up as dynasties. Sponsors want the marquee names, and the biggest-market teams playing for championships. It’s what drives ratings, as well as corporate & league profits. This is why the Boston Red Sox don’t get punished by MLB for sign stealing, the way the Houston Astros did. The Red Sox are old guard, and therefore have all the bias in their favor.

With no home park advantage, and no Mookie Betts & David Price either, the Red Sox aren’t so intimidating at Fenway. They are going to finish last in the AL East in 2020, and will be second-division for awhile, as they have a barren farm system & lots of veterans with hefty contracts. This is an organization that needs fans back in the stands more than anyone. They are screaming for it behind closed doors.

I’ll bet if you asked the NBA & MLB players privately, they would share these same thoughts & narratives. The NBA is the most manipulated game in sports, as a home court advantage is worth 8-12 points for the host team. That’s the crowd influencing the calls, and in tough arenas it can be even more extreme. Now, in the Disney bubble, there’s none of that. These 7-game series don’t shift back & forth between host cities this year. It’s going to come down to who has the best team in the playoffs, and nothing else, which is the way it should be. My perspective is that of a real sports fan.

When these professional baseball & basketball seasons’ end, there’s going to be serious discussions about next season. Money, viability & safety are all issues that have been put off, but linger into our uncertain future. The NFL is going to try fans in the stands for its upcoming season, and that will be a social disaster. When I see fans in the stands these days, I’m turning it off. That’s my message to NASCAR, MLS &  football.

It’s the same with these fake protests, led by the Black Lives Matter campaign run by the Democrats, against the fascists incited by Trump. If you don’t have a good reason to be out, then you should not be mingling with others, especially without wearing a mask. When I see people intentionally misbehaving, I just don’t want to meet them. I don’t miss seeing them, and running into them at the ballgame either. Neither do most of us.

No fans in the stands means Next Gen players completely rule. Next Gen fans want to see Fernando Tatis, Jr.– ‘mic’d up’ again. This is a 21-year old phenom, playing MLB shortstop, wearing an earpiece & mini-microphone, listening to & answering questions between Chris Paddack pitches. Paddack had lost command of his fastball, so Tatis had to be ready– and he was, with laughable ease. He shows everyone why he is so great, right from the start, talkin’ back to Eric Karros about his dad’s feat. More of that makes MLB more marketable to fans. Notice that fans in the stands (AKA, haters) interfere with that. It’s much more like a video game experience, without fans in the stands. That’s the youth appeal.

San Diego Padres manager Jayce Tingler is good with all this, which makes him an asset– a rare bird in a MLB dugout. Tingler has been the target of some unfair East coast bias, cited on Wikipedia, which is deep-state controlled by now. On August 19, 2020, Padres manager Jayce Tingler publicly (& mildly) criticized SS Fernando Tatís Jr., for breaking an “unwritten rule of baseball,” by hitting a grand slam on a 3-0 pitch while the Padres were leading the Texas Rangers 10-3 in the top of the 8th inning.

Jayce Tingler faced a hailstorm of fake media criticism for his remarks, when he was simply trying defuse a tense stand-off situation with his former team. Tingler & Padres GM A. J. Preller, both came from the Texas Rangers organization. That’s why Preller hired Tingler to replace Andy Green, after a disappointing 2019. I still think Green is very good, but Preller needed a bi-lingual dugout manager, so he hired Jayce Tingler, whom he already knew. Tingler played college baseball in his home state, at the University of Missouri, and later managed teams in Latin America for the Rangers organization. He is fluent in Spanish.

 

Jayce Tingler’s current Padres team responded to this fake media criticism of its young superstar, by hitting grand slams in the next three games to “grand slam sweep” the Texas Rangers, and set a MLB record with slams in four consecutive games. Shown below is a screenshot of the current Wikipedia page for Jayce Tingler, and it doesn’t add any of this further context in his San Diego Padres section. It criticizes Jayce Tingler as being weak, but I ask, “Who is really weak here?”

To indicate how unserious this is, Wikipedia uses a fan tweet as a link (#20). In short, it’s very shoddy & disrespectful. East coast bias for sure.

…………………….<><><><><><><><>…………………..

Sports propaganda round-up

Posted on by

Preface: I cover the big three US sports: football, basketball & baseball– as well as NASCAR, because I live in Florida. This gives a fair cross-section of American athletics & values. Sports are king in Florida. Republican governor Ron DeSantis has declared its facilities are available to any league or event series that needs a venue. UFC & WWE events have already been held in Florida, as lockdown restrictions were lifted. Everyone knows DeSantis is Trump’s puppet in Florida, and Trump wants sports, because they are essential to his survival.

The back-to-work campaign is a bi-partisan propaganda offensive designed to lure & coerce workers to operate under unsafe coronavirus conditions– permanently. Neither political party has done anything significant to see that an adequate number of tests are being done to isolate hotspots, to break the chains of infection. Getting sports leagues, circuits & tours going again, is part of this deep-state campaign to make us feel safe about working again.

The NBA & collegiate hoops were the first to shut down, and have their respective seasons cancelled. The NBA is still currently trying to work out a play-off model the players will accept, but apparently it’s hopeless. The NBA players got most of their seasons’ salary, so they are good, and mostly unwilling to risk their health, and that of their families. That’s the player chatter I read. October is a long way off, but the question already hangs– will there be a 2020-21 NBA season? What about free agency? Signing bonuses to draft picks? Etc…??

Final edit: On June 5, 2020, it was announced by ESPN that the NBA will return, to be played at Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex located outside of Orlando, FL. Star players were forced to give in to the sponsors & ownership. It will be a disaster for all the reasons I’ve discussed.

As for college hoops, what do you do about eligibility, since March Madness never happened? Will the universities even be open by fall? This quickly bleeds into college football. As far as the NFL & NCAAF go, there is no way to ‘social distance’ these games. Football is where two sides with 11 players each, line up and smash each other in the mouth to impose their will-to-win. Only one side can be victorious, unless it’s a tie.

American football starts with training camp, and practices on a field where young men go chest-to-chest in the hot sun. With an unchecked COVID-19 pandemic still raging through its first wave, every team’s training camp will have coronavirus infections by the second or third week.

This has probably already happened in NASCAR. The angle for the owners of all these sports operations is to keep tight control of information, so no news of athletes testing positive gets to the media & public. The ‘protocols’ being set in place are to keep athletes, trainers, coaches, staff & all other workers tight-lipped, and in-the-dark as to the whole truth. This safety model also applies to auto workers, meat packers, Amazon hub workers, delivery drivers, grocery clerks, etc. There’s trillions for Wall Street, but nothing for worker safety, or those 40 million workers thrown out of work since mid-March.

The truth is ugly, and well as scary, because it’s real. But big business owners don’t care, because it’s not their lives that are being put at risk, and they got their bailout money already. But, these moguls need these leagues to operate, otherwise all their profits will disappear, and they will go bankrupt. Just like that. That’s the ‘labor value of athletes in sports’ by Karl Marx.

Here’s another observation from a fan turned sportswriter. Getting these traveling circuses operational again, without fans in attendance, is a loser. Television is being turned off by everyone, and streaming is very easy to walk (or click) away from. People have to be there, and show interest (by paying money to attend), otherwise it just isn’t the same.

For instance, I watched Kevin Harvick (pic above) in his video interview after he won the initial comeback race for NASCAR at Darlington, and he was shocked at the joylessness of it all. No fans cheering. No celebration with teammates. Just an interview with masks on for those watching ‘live’ on television (or streaming later), and then go home. If athletes don’t get to enjoy the win, what’s the point– besides money?

Major League Baseball was the sport that never got started, so they occupy a unique position. Since COVID-19 shut everything down in March, baseball never got through its spring training, meaning only one or two player paychecks went out in full before the shutdown. MLB players get paid bi-weekly during the season. So in professional baseball, we have athletes who were ready to go, signed to guaranteed contracts, but aren’t allowed to play.

Like everything else, it’s going to come down to money. Here’s the pay scale MLB ownership proposed, and the MLBPA rejected: Player salaries at $563,501 to $1 million paid at 72.5%; $1,000,001 to $5 million paid at 50%; $5,000,001 to $10 million paid at 40%; $10,000,001 to $20 million paid at 30%; $20,000,001 and up paid at 20%.

There is no way MLB superstars are taking a prorated 80% pay cut, as these are the players with the strongest union support. Furthermore, the logistics of playing baseball are impossible. The players & owners are too far apart. There will be no MLB in 2020, and the ‘guaranteed’ contracts of all the MLB players is going to be a HUGE fight. Look for it to end up in court.

Also, many minor league players have been cut off from their paychecks, and are about to be unemployed permanently, as MLB is scaling back the minor leagues to save money. The Oakland A’s have already stopped paying their minor league stipends.

Miscellaneous stuff:

An unidentified white male broke a window to ex-Cleveland Cavaliers guard J.R. Smith’s vehicle, so he beat his ass, and then let him run away. My thoughts on that, are that if someone broke the window to my vehicle in front of me, I’d do the same as J.R. Smith– as any man would. The problem is that police don’t serve & protect the public, so people are now taking the law into their own hands. America (and everywhere else) is about to break out into civil war– workers vs rich people. The cops & military are the stormtroopers for the ruling class.

I recommend that you don’t rely on icons & celebrities. Stop all hero worship. When I see stars from the past posting muddled & reactionary thoughts, I feel an urge to expose them. They preach peace & equality, just don’t take away their mansions & status. The problem is capitalism, and Michael Jordan is a capitalist. So is LeBron James, and anyone else paid over $20M a year. So don’t expect any substance from them, as they’re all pawns of the Clinton-Obama Democrats.

Blowback is a bitch. And it comes quicker & harder than ever– with global warming, COVID-19, and everything else we have going on. So don’t be talkin’ all gangsta, when you don’t know the situation & circumstances. It just feeds ignorance & hate. Black Lives Matter is toxic black racialism, the same way Blue Lives Matter is sick white supremacy. Everyone with an ‘authorized’ media voice takes one reactionary side, or the other, but they are all losers.

The only way to defeat Nazis is to reject identity politics in all forms. Democratic party leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton & Barrack Obama are black Nazis, along with OJ Simpson, Bill Cosby & Kanye West. They conspire with white Nazis such as Bill & Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden & Donald Trump to unleash police violence and COVID-19 upon us.

You never hear sports celebrities speak like this, because they can’t. The sponsors have them all by their gonads & bankbooks, so they can only issue timid blather– that feeds either into the Democratic or Republican party. As if Joe Biden will save us! This isn’t leadership, it’s a celebrity pacification campaign, and we are the targets. We deal with the realities, while they sit it out in their mansions, private islands & yachts.

If you aren’t out in the streets, talking to real people, and seeing what’s really going in your area, then you are useless in this process. You are letting others tell you how to think & act, because they are so good at dunking basketballs & throwing touchdowns. Some may think that’s the pinnacle of human achievement, but it isn’t.

There are far more important activities than professional sports, and none of these games are essential to our economy. We can get along without them for a time, until we resolve all these issues of class inequality & violence. Sports never take precedence over class politics, and in a revolutionary period such as now, they lose much of their social significance. That’s an unreported sports truth you need to know, during the coronavirus shutdown.

………………..<><><><><><>……………