A Separate Reality; Of Hoops and Sox

"Every professional athlete owes a debt of gratitude to the fans and management, and pays an installment every time he plays.  He should never miss a payment."  Bobby Hull

Two sports related stories got me to thinking lately about how professional athletes just don’t get it.  Bear in mind, this isn’t a revelation.  I didn’t put down an article, slap myself in the forehead and exclaim, “Gee, these guys are really clueless.”  Let’s just say that these stories served as a reminder that pro athletes seem to exist in their own separate reality.

First, is the story of the National Basketball Association, “work stoppage.”  Who comes up with the phraseology that makes it sound like these guys are coal miners or plant workers just trying to get a square deal?  The NBA, errr, “work stoppage” had been brewing for some time; at least a year I suppose.  I couldn’t say for sure how long it’s been percolating since I don’t particularly like professional basketball to the point that I simply accept a hiatus during that short sports Dark Age between the end of football and the day pitchers and catchers report.  What I’ve gleaned is that the owners and players can’t agree on how to split the basketball related income (BRI).  According to an article in Forbes; “The players have come down from 57% they were making under the old agreement to 53%; the owners have moved from 47% up to 50%.”  The BRI for the 2010-2011 season was 3.817 billion dollars.  And so loyal fans and the disinterested yet disgusted among the rest of us sit back and watch millionaires haggle with millionaires over 3% of nearly 4 billion in coin of the realm.

If the Forbes article is to be believed, the two sides, owners and players, are simply engaging in the proverbial “pissing contest” in which the real object is to not be the side that “capitulates.”  Meanwhile players are crying the “woe is me,” and blaming ownership for the impasse.  Derrick Rose, average salary 5.6 million dollars, said recently, "It's very sad, but everybody knows it's not our fault,"  Kevin Durant of The Thunder, who averages 17.2 million dollars a year complains that the owners are at fault and the players have “sacrificed a lot.”  For their part, the owners are crying poverty saying that 17 of 30 teams have been losing money.  It all seems so simple to me; owners run your business better and players maybe you aren’t entitled to a salary that rivals the GNP of a small nation.  Lost among all of this are the “little people."  You know, those behind the scenes folk who work for the teams in ordinary jobs for ordinary pay trying to just keep up and the arena workers who’s part time paycheck might be keeping the wolves at bay; all of whom are probably having a hard time relating to millionaires just out their teens who are wondering where the next Bentley payment is coming from.  Do you suppose that Kobe or Lebron are frequenting the watering holes around their home arenas that are going dry for lack of a basketball season?  Are Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade checking in on that guy who would normally be hawking programs at the arena to see if maybe they can help with the food bill?

The other story, published in The Boston Globe came out of the ruins of the Boston Red Sox season ending collapse.  The article describes more than a few distractions during the course of the season; the manager’s separation from his wife, his alleged problem with pain meds and players taking it easy on their conditioning regimens.  But it was two other distractions in particular that caught my attention.

                According to the story in the Globe, “As Hurricane Irene barreled toward Boston in late August, management proposed moving up the Sunday finale of a weekend series against Oakland so the teams could play a day-night doubleheader either Friday, Aug. 26, or Saturday, Aug. 27. The reasoning seemed sound: the teams would avoid a Sunday rainout and the dilemma of finding a mutual makeup date for teams separated by 2,700 miles.  But numerous Sox players angrily protested. They returned early that Friday from Texas after a demanding stretch in which they had played 14 of 17 games on the road, with additional stops in Minneapolis, Seattle, and Kansas City.  The players accused management of caring more about making money than winning, which marked the first time the team’s top executives sensed serious trouble brewing in the clubhouse.  After sweeping the A’s, the Sox commenced their death spiral “and owners soon suspected the team’s poor play was related to lingering resentment over the scheduling dispute, sources said. The owners responded by giving all the players $300 headphones and inviting them to enjoy a players-only night on principal owner John W. Henry’s yacht after they returned from a road trip Sept. 11.”

                Through September, the Sox were in contention but fighting for their post-season lives but a trio of frontline pitchers, Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, and John Lackey, decided that game time was better spent buried in the man cave that is the club house; “Boston’s three elite starters went soft, their pitching as anemic as their work ethic. The indifference of Beckett, Lester, and Lackey in a time of crisis can be seen in what team sources say became their habit of drinking beer, eating fast-food fried chicken, and playing video games in the clubhouse during games while their teammates tried to salvage a once-promising season.” “For Beckett, Lester, and Lackey, the consequences were apparent as their body fat appeared to increase and pitching skills eroded. When the team needed them in September, they posted a combined 2-7 record with a 6.45 earned run average, the Sox losing 11 of their 15 starts.”

                 For the record, in 2011 Beckett’s salary was 17 million, Lackey’s 15.9 million and Lester, poor destitute guy, a paltry 5.75 million.  Yes that would be U.S. dollars; these boys aren't living paycheck to paycheck. 

And so what, you ask, do these stories have in common and why are they, to coin a popular baseball phrase, giving me a case of the red ass?

Part of the answer can be found in a CBS News story from June of last year which reports that only 45 percent of Americans are happy in their jobs.  Sure it’s a dated story but let’s go out on a limb and figure that with an economy that’s remained stagnant the rate of satisfaction hasn’t appreciably increased. In fact I’ll go further out on that limb and venture to say that if this survey were taken today, the percentage of dissatisfied workers would be even higher.  Chief among the reasons cited are; jobs are uninteresting, incomes haven’t kept up with inflation and health care costs are eroding take home pay.  About 64 percent of workers under 25, around the age of your NBA millionaire, are unhappy in their jobs.  What a lot of this likely comes down to is that in an economy with an unemployment rate stubbornly hovering just a smidge below 10 percent people are taking whatever work they can find; like it or not.

What NBA players, Red Sox and just about any professional athlete you can name all have in common is that they just don’t know how good they have it and their self-centered, entitled antics are a slap to the face of the working stiff who can only dream of what it would be like to be able to do what you love to do and get paid six, seven and eight figures to do it.

American workers today are being overworked as companies understaff either because they can’t afford to hire or they’ve discovered that employees don’t have so much mobility within the job marked so they can work them like so many oxen and make a tidy profit.  The day that my employer offers me a set of 300 dollar headphones because he senses that I feel ill used over having to work on  weekends is the day that I’ll have, as Fred Sanford used to call it, “the big one."  But I wouldn't expect headphones, a bottle of scotch or any other perk because as a salaried worker I expect that there are times I'll be putting in 12 hour days or logging in on weekends from home.  I can’t imagine that there are very many American worker bees feeling sorry for the Sox players who had to “tough out” a double header.  And while we’re on the subject of that double header let’s consider the accusation by the players that management was more interested in making money.  I guess those boys never took Business 1A where you learn that making money is the chief interest of management.  Baseball is a business.  I know that because players stress that fact all the time to justify holding out for another few million dollars or for breaking the hearts of loyal fans by jumping to another team for a better deal. 

One worker who was questioned in the CBS survey lamented that, "There is no sense of teamwork in most places anymore."  Well friend, if you’re looking for teamwork don’t look to the Red Sox, where part of the team takes the field, another part watches from the dugout steps in support and the front line pitchers sequester themselves to eat chicken and knock down a few brews. New allegations in the Red Sox story now include tales of drinking in the dugout itself, something the players vehemently deny.  The story has grown legs, hit sports talk and generated angry reactions. 

This is the kind of story that puts folks off whether they’re sports fans or not.  It violates that traditional notion that American success is a product of teamwork.  It’s a notion that may be more romance than substance but it’s one that Americans hold dear nonetheless.  Be it 18^th century barn raisings or its 21^st century descendent, The Habitat for Humanity, church or school fundraising activities, ordinary people pulling together to help out in disaster relief or simply getting together to help a neighbor move or paint the house, Americans cherish teamwork.  They teach it to kids in sports and they try to instill it in executives through activities that range from classrooms to whitewater rafting to wilderness trips.

These stories repulse Americans because try as they might, many can never seem to grasp that illusive American Dream and these days many who thought that they had finally grabbed a piece of that dream are seeing it slip away.  How, they ask, can young men who have achieved an American Dream beyond wildest dreams so take it for granted?  How can those who make so much money playing games never seem to be satisfied with the riches they have?

And so when we’re presented with images and stories of professional athletes holding out for yet more money, whining about a double header or treating the notion of teamwork with seeming disdain, Americans get angry and offended.  Or course these stories are nothing new.  Cluelessness among pro athletes and their kin in other entertainment industries seems to be a cherished tradition. It could be Latrell Sprewell spurning a 7 million dollar a year salary because, as he put it so diplomatically, “I have a family to feed,” Barry Bonds absenting himself from his team when he just didn’t seem to be in the mood to be at the ball yard, Randy Moss telling a reporter that he plays when he wants to play, or any of the many incidents involving strip clubs, fire arms or getting in trouble in the wee hours at places that most thinking people avoid.  The NBA, errr, work stoppage and Red Sox-gate are the 2011 versions of athletes existing in a separate reality. We’ll see what drama 2012 holds.  Meanwhile I’m still waiting for that set of headphones that I’m certain my boss is going to give me for all those Sundays when I’m logged into the office trying to keep up with the workload.