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“Sports & Society”

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This has been such a hard weekend to be an American.

Today instead of writing about what I see in sports, I will write about what I feel about society.

I will bypass writing about the MLB-Union civil war in baseball; the NFL’s attempts to open campus; the NBA-NHL schedule; NASCAR; player moves and other things that normally take up my day.

I will write about Atlanta and Washington, DC…Philadelphia to Los Angeles….Minnesota…what I saw…what I feel.

It feels like the worst days we have ever experienced.  Worse than 9/11, watching the Twin Towers come down.  The horrors of Newtown and all the other shootings.  Beyond the grief of the JFK and Martin Luther King assassinations.  The crushing loss of the Challenger crash.  Uglier than what we saw as Watts-Hough-Detroit-Little Havana burned to the ground.

I feel heartbreak, rage, shame, sadness.

This is more than the 1st Amendment-right to protest.  A criminal element has taken over our society.  Young Americans, with the decision to make, ‘right-vs-wrong’, rioting, looting, vandalizing.  Giving the finger and F-bombs to anyone-everyone in law enforcement.

In the midst of what I watched in the evenings, I thought about people taking knees.  The dirty cop with the knee on the neck of George Floyd, suffocating his life away.  And the knee Colin Kaeperneck and then other NFL players took, to protest racial intolerance.  Nothing has changed in our society, it has only gotten worse.

The most sacred things in our society, St-Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and Jewish synagogues there, broken into, desecrated, vandalized.  Here in San Diego, they set an American flag on fire and ran it up a mast-pole ablaze.

America has seen the horrors of life over the decades, and our President’s have stepped front and center.  Close your eyes and remember:

..George Bush standing with 1st responders in the midst of the smoldering embers of death around the Twin Towers.

..Obama singing ‘Amazing Grace’ at the memorial service for the shooting victims in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

..Ronald Reagan giving the emotional speech in the aftermath of the Challenger Tragedy.

..Bill Clinton walking into the bombed out building in Oklahoma City surrounded by death.

..JFK and his press conference about the Cuban Missile Crisis on the brink of World War III.

..Martin Luther King and his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech as they sang ‘We Shall Overcome’ crossing the Selma Bridge.

And these days, with nearly 105,000 dead from the Virus…43M-unemployed, and now our cities burning down, the current President sits and tweets 32-times in an evening, criticizing one and all.  Everything about him right now is about politics, his needs and wants and desires to be re-elected.

I sat to jot some notes about the Trump era, and the more I wrote, the more upset I became about what the White House has become.  When I think of the last 3-years, these things flash into my mind.  I closed my eyes, and the sounds, sights and the tweets came rushing back.  Non-stop from the person who could pull the country together, but instead is content to fan the flames…watching it get pulled apart;.:

..Pandemic Press Conferences…Lies…Half Truths…Misinformation…Uniformed comments…Degrading attacks.

..The ‘Looting and Shooting’ tweets
..We have’ Vicious dogs and ominous weapons’ tweets
..’I am not to blame’
..’Liberate your state’…against advice of doctors
..Kids in cages locked up at the border
..Insults to veterans including the late John McCain
..Name-calling tweets about any and all politicians who question him
..Degrading comments to women
..Charlottesville and his ‘good people on both sides’
..All his people, the ones he hired, sent to prison

..The continued across the board firings of people he put in place
..The pardons he handed out to those convicted
..His ‘fake news stance’ towards all in the media
..Insults to our long time allies
..Condemnation of NATO and the World Health Organization
..Blame China..Blame the CDC..Blame the Governors…Blame the Democrats.
..Russia-North Korea

America deserves a leader who is caring and compassionate.  Not someone who believes he can attack Constitutional law, and has the right to offend,  because he lives at 1600-Pennsylvania Avenue.

Leaders of great countries, can change the world.
This leader has taken us to chaos and conflict and divisiveness.

As we sit here and hurt, sit here and mourn, sit here and pray for a Loving God to give us direction out of all that is wrong, I have just one feeling beyond today.

America deserves better.

This is Donald Trump’s America….all this ‘on his watch’.

To borrow the President’s phrase:  Make America Great Again

To use my phrase:  Make sure you vote, your chance to change things.

November’s elections cannot get here fast enough.

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“Do You Like the Padres–Would You Do This Deal?”

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it is the prerogative of the worker to dislike the boss.

It is the reason we have unions, and the age-old employer-vs-employee fight.

So the battle lines are drawn in the sand.  They may be blood in the water.

The owners salary cut proposal is massive, that coming on top of the decision the players would give back at least half their salary for half the season being cancelled.

But I am not taking a 67% pay-cut just so I can put on the Brown & Gold Padres colors this year.

That is what Commissioner Rob Manfred and the club owners (Ron Fowler-Peter Seidler etc) have presented to the Players Association.  Massive pay-cuts.

I did the math, with the help of a Player Agent, to determine the specifics of the 2020-Padres payroll, if players accepted what the owners proposed on Wednesday.

Are you ready for this?  Sit down.  Hold on.  Curb your tongue.

The Padres were projected to have a (144M) payroll this coming season.  If the players agreed to what was delivered to them by the Commissioner, the Padres major league payroll would be (33.8M) when baseball starts up..

That’s right.

The top 10-players on the roster, the big money stars from Manny Machado-Eric Hosmer-Wil Myers thru Craig Stammen and Drew Pomeranz, could make (24.8M).  They were supposed to make (112.6M this coming season.

Do you think Machado wants to go from (30M) to (4.97M)…Myers (20M-to-3.9M)…Hosmer from (20M-to-3.9M)….Garrett Richards (8.5M-to-2.1M)….Tommy Pham (7.9M-to-2M)?  And it goes on and on.

The mid-level players, from Austin Hedges to Luis Perdomo, 8-players in all, would get (5.4M) total in salaries instead of the original (13M) they were due..

The 14–players at the bottom of the roster, from Fernando Tatis to Trent Grisham and in between, would wind up with (3.6M) total in salaries.  Each of those players makes the minimum salaries of 285-to-300,000 a year based on service time.

Get your calculator out.  You do the math.

The Padres would be paying their players just 42% of the payroll they were supposed to get if we had a regular opening day.  The scoreboard reads…we pay you (33.8M)….not (144M).

So now we have all the rhetoric flowing from the players and the union.  Words stretching from ‘disrespect’…’livid’…..’corrupt’….’thieves’ etc-etc.

Baseball has to be played, and I am not talking just about the well being of the fans and the emotional needs, but the true reality.

If there is no revenue this year, next year’s revenues likely drop.  The free agent market plunges as bad as Wall Street just a month ago.

The givebacks and rebates to the TV partners will be huge.  They are not such good friends to give you truckloads of money with no games to be televised.

The NFL and College Football pull away farther in popularity.  Everyone between the lines will be a villain, including those people upstairs.

So now that everyone has had something to say, if I am the Union, I help the owners out, not be to be a good friend, but because we both know what we need, players on the field, games to be played, televised, and an expanded fall postseason.

I tell the owners, no further cuts.  We agreed on a pro-rated deal based on the 82-game schedule.  Because there will be no fans in the stands, we will take a 10% additional cut per player from the pro-rated shared.  But you pay us 50% of salary this year, and the other 50% to be paid to us in 2021 when things come back.  And we do get a cut of  the 1-B Television money for the expanded playoffs, and you pay us half of that this year, the other half next year.

The owners want the players to be partners, but the owners don’t want to open their books across the board to show the Union what the total revenues for baseball are.

You know things like Skybox revenue, stadium signage deals, MLB media income, non baseball stadium revenue.  That should all be part of the pie, if we are partners.

The NHL-the NBA did, they opened the books,  and they have labor peace.

You think an angry Donald Fehr went from hated in baseball to beloved in hockey?  He got to see it all.

David Stern did the same with the NBA Union, and you know how many 40M a year players there are now-everyone cashes checks.

Once the football players rid themselves of Gene Upshaw, DeMaurice Smith delivered the wealth to players. The NFL has a formula too that shares enormous amounts of money with the Union.

If I were King, that’s what I’d do.  I like the Padres, but I am not taking a 67%-pay-cut to play for you.

I will await your replies.

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“In This Town-Shutdown-But Operating”

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In the midst of everything going on, the Pandemic, Politics, the Baseball-Union salary war, and leagues trying to get up and running…a couple of candid comments.

PADRES…Hats off to this organization.  No one is talking about it, but the Padres ownership, despite the layoffs and furloughs of from office employees, guaranteed all employees ‘health care benefits’ for them and their families, thru December 31st, whether they are brought back or not.

The Padres also decided they would continue monthly payments to all 220-minor league players, including health benefits, thru August 31st, which normally would be the end of the minor league season, a season now not likely to be played.  The first wave of payments to all minor leaguers, was to end this Friday night.  The Padres are the first team to announce this plan.  Others like the Orioles, A’s, White Sox are releasing truckloads of lower minor league players.

At last count, according to employees from within, the Padres furloughed or laid off about 110-of-230 employees, a couple of weeks ago.  Some will be brought back once the season starts up in July.  If fans are allowed back in stadiums, sometime in season, other employees could be recalled.

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AZTECS….Facing the loss of 43M in university moneys because of the school shutdown, SDSU Athletics has stood by all their employees.  No one in athletics was asked to take a pay-cut over the last three months.  No employees in the Athletic Center have been laid off or furloughed either during the campus-wide shutdown.

Still on schedule is groundbreaking for the new football stadium, now likely in August, if City Council approves the signed sales agreement in its special session on Friday, called to review SDSU’s agreement.

If approved, SDSU takes over operation of SDCCU Stadium on July 1st.  An outside operator will be hired to run the facility, but it will not be JMI, hired to oversee the construction of the new Aztecs Stadium.

Despite the university wide money-crunch, SDSU will not cut any varsity sports programs, unlike what has happened at Akron, Bowling Green, Furman and other Group of 5-schools with serious money issues.

Target January 2nd on your Aztecs calendar, that’s when the school says football players will be allowed back on campus.  That coincides with the start of the 2nd Summer School Term.  To be decided, would student athletes be required to take on-line summer school courses to be on campus for conditioning drills?  SDSU maintains Coach Brady Hoke wants-needs 6-weeks of preseason camp to get ready for the start of the season.

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GULLS…They are making plans for the 2020-21 AHL season.  Taget date to open would be October 9th, but no one knows if fans will be in the stands.  Of grave concern, of the 31-AHL teams, 19-are owned outright by NHL teams (Gulls-Anaheim), so those clubs are not as reliant on gate receipts, as some of the other 12-teams, run by independent owners.  If there are no fans in the stands in places like Syracuse-Rochester-Charlotte, what happens to those franchises?.

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“War Fare in Baseball”

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It’s getting worse, rather than getting better.

Talking about baseball’s civil war between the Owners and the Union in the midst of the life and death struggle the US-vs-Virus Crisis.

The next 7-days are may be the most critical baseball has faced ever, with the potential canceling of the 2020 season and postseason, if the two sides cannot come to a financial agreement on the salaries for the 82-games baseball wants to play.

A history of distrust is there now, more so than ever before as the Union questions the documents Rob Manfred presented about the money all the owners are losing with half a season…with no fans…or no season at all.

And then baseball make a new financial offer.  Not one involving deferred payments to all players.  Not one that allowed just ‘pro-rated salaries’.  Not one with revenue sharing.

Instead Manfred wants more cuts in salaries for the 82-games to be played on the schedule.  They promised the players a bigger cut of the TV-playoff pie for the expanded wildcard games and World Series.  The old TV deal was worth 777M to baseball.  The new deal with the expanded playoffs will be worth 1B for this fall.

But the formula of pay-cuts will be massive….especially for the star players.

Here in San Diego, Manny Machado and Eric Hosmer, both slated to make 30M this year, would have earned 15M in the new schedule.  Now according to this proposal, they would be forced to take another M-cut, meaning they play for 7M this season.  It’s a 60-percent paychop overall.

Do the math on the other big stars.

The Angels Mike Trout goes from 37M-to-11MM
The Yankees Gerrit Cole was to earn 36M-now-10M
The Phillies Bryce Harper’s 33M deal will be worth 8M likely.

There will be pay-cuts, maybe not as high as 60%, to mid-level players.  The players making the major league minimum, 580,000 will take as little as a 10-percent cut.

It is a huge giveback..in some cases 65%..

Owners are bleeding money, lots of money.  But asking players to take a 60-percent cut, should be matched by every big name executive, from the owner, to the CEO, to the President, to every GM and VP on an organizational chart.  They should take a 60-percent cut too.

What’s right for one, should be right for the other…right?

The health of the game is at stake, and we are in the midst of warfare.

Not just Republicans-vs-Democrats
Not just Medical Science-vs-the Virus

But now Baseball owners-vs-Union over how much to pay..whatever number of games to be played.

This looks like World War 1…Trench warfare-both sides dug in-both sides suffering massive casualties.

This has the catastrophic look of the end of World War II when the bombs were dropped if there is no season at all.

This next week of talks might look like the Paris Peace Talks in the aftermath of Viet Nam..with lots of talks involving people who do not trust the guys on the other side of the table.

It is baseball warfare at the worst moment in our society.

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“Sports As We Know It”

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Everyone is trying to move forward, but it surely was a strange weekend, and we don’t have solutions to anything anywhere right now.

We are entering Week 12-of the Pandemic in America.  Countries, doctors, researchers are working around the clock to try and find the right medical balances in research to a Covid-vaccine.

 

In the world of sports, where stats are special, these numbers today, shocking.  Nearing 100,000-deaths in the last 100-days.

President Trump implores sports to return the their facilities, stadiums, workouts and seasons, even if there is no slowdown of sickness or death.  It’s amazing he has time to pay attention to this, considering his tweet to the public schedule, and his desire to play golf as the death toll marches to unimaginable numbers now. .

This was a strange weekend.  For the 1st time since the late 1950s, there was no Indianapolis 500 to pay attention to.  No ‘Gentlemen-Start Your Engines’…no ‘Greatest Spectacle on Earth’….no ‘Back Home in Indiana’….no ‘Kissing the Bricks’ or ‘Swigging the Milk’ in Victory Circle.  I first became aware of the Indy 500-listening on radio, measmurized by a first lap fiery crash that killed drivers in 1955.  It felt strange not to have a race.

There was the NASCAR-Charlotte 600, and 4.3-million viewers watched it.

There was Tiger-vs-Phil….Brady-vs-Manning golf, and it was fun at times to hear the verbal gunfire back and forth.  An impressive 5.8-million viewers sampled that.

This will be an important week in MLB-baseball, as the billionaires face off against the millionaire, in the Owners-vs-Players debate about how to pay the players when baseball starts up in July.  The owners will make a new financial proposal, not for more payouts, not for revenue sharing, but maybe deferred payments of a portion of salaries, to be delivered in 2021 rather than in July.

The NBA is negotiating with Disney World-Orlando, to house a 16-team playoff in a bubble, to start in July, dumping plans to try and finish the season.  The massive hotel complex would house, feed, and allow players to workout and play post season games without fans.  The NBA would dump the Conference alignments, and just seed teams 1-thru-16 and begin playoff series.  Who knows if they would be bet of three, best of five, or best of seven series to start.

The NHL has settled on a 24-team playoff series, in possibly two city hubs…12-teams in the East….12-teams in the West, but the cities have not been chosen, because you need hotels, practice rinks, in addition to the empty main arena.  Still to be decided, the structure, with first round byes for four teams in each division, and the need to shorten the ‘play-in series’.  Challenging too, getting travel restrictions eased to cross the US-Canadian borders, and getting European players, from infected countries, back to their teams and thru a quarantine schedule.

The NFL is forging ahead, needing to finalize plans to get facilities opened, 90-players in camp, and the testing protocols for probably 150-people a day who would be in camp.  That has to happen by late July, if the season is to start in September.  They do have the ability to push the season start back to October and play into January, with the postseason into late February, if need be.

The CFL has enormous problems north of the border.  Camps did not open, no June start to the regular season, no 18-game schedule, and a request for a Canadian Government financial bailout.  They may wind up with an 8-game season and a Grey Cup title game in December in the cold-white-north weather of Canada.

NCAA…Depending on who your Governor is, what state you live in, what college President’s are saying, there is no guideline on what may happen.  If students spend the fall in on-line classes, do you still open campuses to student-athletes?  They say they will in the SEC and Big 12.  They haven’t said that in the Big 10 or PAC-12 yet.  And we still have alot of hot spot states in some of college football’s hot spots.

Sports as we know it-very different right now.

A new norm?  No one knows what normal will be like going forward.

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