Working Life

I’ve always chuckled a bit at the annual baseball debate over the rich teams versus the “poor” teams. Face it: it’s not your family business anymore. It’s big business running these teams. And, lo and behold, the vise of greed is tightening around the national past time.

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One of the most powerful weapons used against unions is to essentially write them out of history: children don’t learn about unions in schools. Most politicians only mention unions when they are slumming for a check for their campaigns or they promise to put on sneakers and walk picket lines when elected but somehow that promise is forgotten once the election is over; they talk great rhetoric about the “middle class” but you almost never hear, unprompted and certainly not in front of crowds outside a union hall, a great speech about unions and their central place in making a healthy economy. Which is why the despicable refusal to elect Marvin Miller to baseball’s Hall of Fame matters–and it should matter to every person who cares about unions, even if you’ve never watched a minute of baseball in your life.

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A digression from the usual politics and all things economic. Derek Jeter goes down.

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   Here was something to celebrate: Pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report on Friday, February 13.

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   My other obsession besides the triumph of workers over the running dog employers is baseball. Let’s see if we can do this with the following rules: talk about what you see your team doing WITHOUT trashing another team.  If you want to say something about another team, it’s got to be nice. This is [...]

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    Yes, I know, there are a lot of issues out there that need addressing but today I just want to put in a few words on Marvin Miller. For those of you less inclined to follow sports, Miller was the man who transformed the baseball players union into a real force. Granted, most people [...]

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    Yes, I know, there are a lot of issues out there that need addressing but today I just want to put in a few words on Marvin Miller. For those of you less inclined to follow sports, Miller was the man who transformed the baseball players union into a real force. Granted, most people [...]

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As I wrote last year, I was glad to see the Red Sox win—at least it would end the sorry whining each year from their fans. But, as I documented, then, the image of the poor downtrodden team that appealed to progressives seemed odd compared to their large payroll, all-white fan base (compared to the [...]

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Well, baseball is on my mind today, as I pack up to journey south for spring training (which may put a crimp in my minds attention to the blog Beast). I don’t know whether Mark Mcwire did the juice but at least he did the stand up thing, refusing to pull an Elia Kazan and [...]

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