Lies, damned lies and baseball myths

Before Major League Baseball reaches its supposed Armageddon in the coming weeks, some myths need debunking.\n1) If the players strike, fans will not show up for games anymore.\nThat is easy for a fan to say right now. But when a Red Sox, White Sox or Cubs fan begins to see their long-suffering team in a pennant race, good luck seeing them resist.\nSt. Louis is mad with affinity for its Cardinals. Will the Cardinals loyalists stay away? What about Reds fans as they see their dream outfield of Austin Kearns, Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey, Jr. take shape? Will they be able to abstain?\nFans came back after the 1994 players' strike resulted in the cancellation of the World Series. Can anything worse happen?\nFurthermore, what if somebody takes a run at a legendary record the way Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in tandem broke Roger Maris' single-season home run record in 1998? McGwire and Sosa took credit for saving the game after the 1994 strike damaged it. What if Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki goes into the final game next season hitting .399?\nThe sanctity divined on its records will always last in baseball no matter what. When a player approaches those records, people will pay attention.\n2) Ballplayers are a bunch of whiny, crybaby millionaires.\nWell, the average salary for an MLB player is $2.4 million, so the "millionaires" part is about right. On the other hand, MLB does not have an Allen Iverson. MLB does not have a Ray Lewis or Rae Carruth. MLB does not have a Mike Tyson. MLB does not have a Tie Domi.\nI have never seen the players in these other sports referred to as whiny, crybaby millionaires. Why is this?\nAs usual, our societal lust for controlled violence has an impact. Ballplayers are perceived as wimpy. Compared to the gladiators that play in the National Football League or the pituitary freaks that Allen Iverson challenges when he drives the lane, they don't seem that tough. If Torii Hunter gets hit in the ribs with a 95 mph fastball and then hurls the ball back at Danys Baez, he is somehow less of a man. Listen to a sports talk radio station and the callers will just tell Hunter to take his base and stop crying.\nAs if they have taken a 95 mph fastball to the midsection.\nBaseball, in fact, is more mentally demanding than anything. Players try to maintain their consistency and concentration through temperatures hot and cold. At the highest level, small mistakes like missing the cutoff man or failing to lay down a sacrifice bunt can be the differences between winning and losing.\n3) Baseball players aren't the way they were "back in the old days."\nIf we looked it up, I bet we can find evidence of players missing a cutoff man, failing to lay down a bunt, striking out with the bases loaded and getting doubled off a base after failing to watch the liner go through throughout history. In fact, I bet we could find bad pitching back then as well. Of course, this goes back to Cap Anson 100 years ago at least. The new generation of ballplayers is never as good as the last.\nIn reality, this is driven by increasing player salaries making players less identifiable. "Back in the old days," players didn't make nearly as much, and not until the 1970s did players stop looking for offseason work to augment his income. Your local third baseman in July could well be your Fuller Brush salesman in December.\nAs a result, when players showed up at spring training, they often would use it to get into shape. Today's players already show up to spring training in shape. A player who shows up to camp not in shape begins the new season behind the curve and especially prone to injuries.\nGiven how much money today's players make, they should show up to spring training in great shape. But when players who make eight times the average American's salary and are tied down under the reserve clause in the 1950s now make at least 50 times the average American's salary and can choose where they want to work, as the memorable statistic from Ken Burns' Baseball documentary series stated, the average fan no longer identifies with the average player.\n4) MLB suffers greatly and needs a massive overhaul, which would include the Yankees getting only two outs an inning and the Powerball lottery being rigged so Royals owner David Glass wins it biweekly.\nThere is nothing wrong with baseball that a labor agreement couldn't fix. Commissioner Bud Selig's constant badmouthing of the game is the worst kind of marketing. Would the CEO of Proctor and Gamble ever publicly say that Tide can't clean your clothes?\nWhy go to a game if Selig says the day after the All-Star Game that two MLB teams were on the verge of not making payroll but then declines to name the teams? A fan might think that maybe he is talking about my favorite team.\nSimply put, Selig and the owners want to cut down on player salaries, and since even they now realize that a hard salary cap should remain the NFL's folly, they have to be creative in order to protect themselves from their own incompetence and overspending. That's like buying Britney Spears implants and then complaining that it makes her look too fake.\nWell, then, don't spend so much. While bad old myths can be debunked, bad guaranteed money spent leaves a bitter aftertaste.