It is very likely that the baseball players will strike, and have even set August 30^th as a tentative date, according to current news reports. My opinion on the current development with “America’s Favorite pastime”: So what? You have a bunch of baseball playerswho are upset over various things that the owners want to change in this year’s contract, most of them revolving around players salaries,and distribution of money so that the poorer teams can have more money to lure better players. Frankly, it disgusts me.

     The way I see it, professional athletes just need to grow up. Athletes are people who are doing for a living what I presume they did as a hobby or pastime as a child, and therefore presumably LIKE doing, who are getting VERY LARGE sums of money to PLAY. Our country is spending billions of dollars to line the pockets of these players who have a non-job. Don’t get me wrong, I agree players can be injured at their work, and they do have very strenuous hours with training, etc., but they do not provide any productive service to our society. People will argue that they provide entertainment for the rest of the poor huddling masses of Americans who don’t have easy-life jobs like their sports heroes.

   What about the rest of us Americans? There are those of us who are struggling to make ends meet with jobs that we only tolerate because we need to eat and live. There are those of us who have the undesirable, low-paying professions that help keep our society running. There are teachers, who are the best shapers of our nations future in the way they influence our children, who have to take second jobs in order to subsist in our economy. There are doctors who spend their days saving lives that make less than our so highly prized athletes. When I compare these everyday workers who make our nation actually function to our sports players and entertainers who exist in the most part to give us an escape from our hum-drum lives, I get ticked off that these multi-millionaires have the gall to argue over if there should be a salary cap, or how to make the system fair, so all teams can afford the extremely over-paid players.

     What of those deserving people who can’t make ends meet, even working as hard as they can, taking second and third jobs in order to just survive? That’s why I just can’t care if “America’s Favorite Pastime” dies, or suffers miserably. And that’s why I’m a little ticked off that this has made the news day after day, instead of stories that impact our lives a little more, like political and economic policies, or education and environmental issues.

   But you know what I’ve realized as I’m writing this rant? It is American society that allows,nay perpetuates, the importance of such issues as baseball players’ salaries. It seems to me we are so desperate to have people we can look up to and to use as an escape from our own lives for a little while, that we don’t realize that the money that goes for these entertainers salaries could be used to improve the condition of our society and our lives so they would not so desperately crave such an escape.

The views of this article are absolutely the views of the creator of this website, but they are just personal opinion. If you don’t agree with the views expressed here, tough cookies. Ain’t freedom of speech great? If you have another perspective on the topic above, you may feel free to e-mail me. (Please include a name so I can give proper credit for the submission.) I may, depending on the number of responses, time constraints, and how I feel on any given day, post other people’s opinions on the topic.