Labor Pains
February 20, 2005
On Wednesday, February 16th, the NHL announced the cancellation of its long dormant 2004-2005 season, the first of its kind for a professional North American sports league. With his smug, no-neck, rat-like superiority, NHL villain Number One Gary Bettman waxed philosophic about two sides of millionaires who can’t come to compromise over a few silly details and a salary cap that most leagues get along fine with. For a long time now, hockey has been a joke on the sports landscape- a league of rich goons bashing each other’s brains out over a glorified tin beer mug. So be it, but I for one have always loved the league, and have always stuck by the Sabres, even when they sucked, which was most of the time, and now that the NHL has the dubious distinction of being the only league unable to resolve a petty labor dispute, I’ve grown weary of all involved. The players are a bunch of brats, and the owners should have known better in the first place. These are rich people squabbling over minor details that just happen to be in the millions of dollars, while commoners struggle to pay the phone bill, batting an eyelash rising gas prices, and shrugging off the improbable, but highly usual occurrence of losing a 25 dollar 20 to the dealers ridiculous 4-card 21. Wake me up when these guys have something legitimate to argue about, not whether a team should be allowed 42, or 45 millions dollars in which to pay their players.
On the same day as Bettman’s press charade, I happened to watch one of the great sports movies about corruption and ethics, John Sayles’ period drama “Eight Men Out”, a 1988 production about the rigging of the 1919 World Series by the Chicago White Sox, arguably one of the greatest teams of all time, tarnished by a few greedy players and gamblers. Watching the film for the first time in years, I noticed a striking coincidence in today’s sports world, where labor issues now have the very real possibility of destroying a once mighty sport- that be it 1919 (coincidently, the last year the Stanley Cup was not awarded), or 2005, in the end, the shiftiness and greed of the players and the owners only results in one thing: fan disappointment. Who lost out when the White Sox tossed the series in ’19? It wasn’t the fat, greedy, pathetically cheap Mr. Comiskey, or the ringmaster, Arnold Rothstein, and it wasn’t even the 8 players, including famed victim Joe Jackson. No, it was the innocents; Coach Kid Gleason, the diehard bleacher creatures, even the cynical beat reporters, whose faith in the game bleeds black in every daily column. And then there’s that little kid on the courthouse steps who may or may not have asked “Shoeless” Joe if it wasn’t so. I’d ask the same: Say it ain’t so, Gary, say it ain’t so. It’s so, Adam, and I wish I could say I’m sorry for it, but, like the staunch position of the owners and the players alike, that would be asking to give in too much. Too much, you see, in professional sports, is apparently never enough. When it comes to money anyway.
by Adam Suraf