Posted on 10/28/2004 2:52:06 AM PDT by PittsburghAfterDark
It's great that Boston has finally won its first World Series since 1918. It's nice to see 86 years of futility now come to an end and the organization meet with success. Now that that success has come Boston and New England is filled with joy. Generations have come together, tiny Red Sox banners are being placed on gravestones and the city is going to have a massive hangover this morning.
Now it's time to pay the price Red Sox fans. It's time to pay the price of your success. As your Senators and this years Democratic Presidential nominee (Ironically also one of your Senators.) have taught us it is now time to "Pay your fair share.".
Let's start out with the basics. It's not fair that your payroll came in at the beginning of the 2004 baseball season at $125.2 million while the Milwuakee Brewers payroll was a mere $27 million. Since baseball's union and owners decree that there is no salary cap to be had we're going to redistribute your wealth, or in your case, your players. Now don't consider this stealing, don't consider it unfair, we need to balance out the playing field. It isn't fair that your team "won life's lottery" by having such a large population base to market to.
So we'll start out with the basics. Curt Schilling is no longer a player. Medicaid and Medicare have found his ankle injury to be career ending. SSI has been notified and he will now be receiving disability pay. Think of him as being 70 1/2 and no longer able to continue contributing to tax deferred savings pools and effectively retired and now on the "waiting to die" list. No appeal.
Next we're going to comb over your roster and see how your roster needs to be adjusted to make things fair with the rest of the baseball population.
We'll start with WS MVP Manny Ramierez. He is no longer eligble to be a Boston Red Sock. Why? He's not really Boston property, he came up and made his bones with the Cleveland Indians. You are now to surrender Manny Ramierez to the Indians, but since the tribe is rebuilding and only have a $34 million team salary and an average player salary of $1.1 million the Red Sox will be forced to pick up the $9 million plus between the Indian average and Ramierez' contract value. Reason? The Indians are poor and should not be paying above the 10% tax bracket.
Bronson Arroyo and Tim Wakefield will be returned to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who originally gave them their major league starts. Pokey Reese will be returned to the Cincinnati Reds. Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe wer originally drafted by the Seattly Mariners, God knows they need help... so guess what, they're gone now too.
Sounds painful so far no? Well, we're not done. We've only moved 6 players so far on a 25 man playoff roster. Don't you know that a 25% tax bracket is too low? We still have another 4 players to go before we get to 38% tax bracket. But wait, there's more. We haven't included FICA or SSI, we haven't begun to get into your state tax rates either. By the time we're done taxing your team Boston we think 55-60% will be enough. Guess we have another 9 players to go until you've paid "YOUR FAIR SHARE."
Pedro Martinez, well he had great success with Montreal. But, Montreal has no more team. Well, they moved to Washington. What better way to ensure the growth of baseball in our nation's capital than returning your 16 game winner to ensure a healthy team in DC. I mean, it's only fair that they have a decent 1 or 2 starter.
David Ortiz, well it's not fair that his contract outgrew Minnesota's market size. In the name of fairness not only are the Red Sox to give him up to the Twins but since he's going to be a free agent it's only fair the Red Sox pick up the difference between his market value and the $2 million Twins team average. I mean, we can't blow up their payroll just because they can't afford him is it? We want to be fair here.
Well, I think you get the point here. I've only gotten up to 8 players and we still have 5 more to go! So let's just imagine I've placed Johnny Damon, Kevil Millar, Mark Bellhorn, Bill Mueller and Kevin Foulke somewhere. Yeah, I mean we don't need a reason or an excuse to send them anywhere do we? In fact we may not even assign them to a baseball team, we'll consider them part of the overhead of government waste. I mean, so what if they're amongst the best baseball resources this generation? They got lost in the shuffle.
Or wait, consider that reparations for Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Rube Foster, Cool Pappa Bell and Oscar Charleston never getting their shot in the major leagues because of segregation. I mean it's not fair to those 5 players that will never play again, but it wasn't fair to the 5 that never got their shot because they're black.
All this talk of champions, success and money has made the baseball liberals angry. It's time for payback. It's time for the Red Sox to pay "Their fair share."
You know that today Kerry is going to say "How about those Red Sox?" BARF!
(remember the second Presidential debate when he said this in response to the environmental question.....)
GIBSON: Senator Kerry, minute and a half.
KERRY: Boy, to listen to that -- the president, I don't think, is living in a world of reality with respect to the environment.
Now, if you're a Red Sox fan, that's OK. But if you're a president, it's not.
Fair weather fan???
There's still the victory parade; there's still that opportunity for the Sox to choke.
If he had to choose between winning the war on terror or even just in Iraq and winning the White House we ALL know that he would choose power over victory.
If this series had gone to 7 games I figure that many of the young "first time" (but many multi-time) voters would have been too hungover to go to the polls (at least more than once).
Boston is a big college town, despite what Spinal Tap's manager said (60 schools).
Not even a piece like this can dampen the joy of Red Sox fans this morning.
The division title in baseball is quickly losing value.
ff
The collectivists are already doing this in a fashion. For years the trend is to ban school athletics -- especially sports where people win or lose games. After all, it is "unfair" to subject a child to the possibility that he will lose a game. It is also "unfair" to allow children to win a game just because they won the lottery of life and are better atheletes. And a baseball bat can be a weapon -- double-plus bad! And all of this takes away from the "real" purpose of schools, which evidently involves teaching about cross-dressing and trans-gender-benderism. It is only a matter of time before the collectivists try to ban adults from playing baseball, etc. Especially if anyone gets rich from it.
But JFake will do his best to do that:
He'll misquote the score,
He'll misname the winning pitcher,
He'll swear that the memory of being right there at Fenway (or was it at Lambert) to watch them win is seared in his brain.
btw, congrats to the Sox and their fans.
This is a load of garbage....Boston sold out every game this year and it's fans support the team through tickets, concessions and through watching them on cable tv. But, we wind up having to pay revenue sharing every year to teams like Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Kansas City.
Liberalism at its finest
ff
The Red Sox have the 1994 strike to thank for their World Series title. Without that cataclysmic event baseball would not have realigned and introduced the wild card, along with interleague play. Despite selling out every game during the season the Red Sox still finished behind the Yankees in their divisional race and made the playoffs as a wild card team.
Are you content with competing for that wild card berth on an annual basis as your shot at the playoffs? Because the Yankees have financial resources that far exceed those of the Red Sox, and George Steinbrenner is willing to spend more than the Red Sox are willing to spend to acquire the ballplayers necessary for the Yankees to keep winning the AL East.
Somehow sharing revenue has not prevented the New England Patriots from assembling a winning team. And it didn't take 86 years with the playing field being closer to level.
The NFL and MLB are different entities......Salary cap being the biggest. Teams can turn over in 2 years and if you look at the Jets this year or the Pats in 2000/2001 and 2002/2003, one season is all it takes.
The wild card is actually good for baseball for the following reasons:
1) More divisions means better rivalries. Yankees and Sox play 19 games a year in the regular season. Same for Dodgers/Giants.
2) Last 3 WS champs were wild card.
3) Money is not the be all, end all. Marlins were a lower payroll team and the Angels had 1/2 the payroll of the Yankees in 2002. A's got to the playoffs 4 years in a row on a low payroll. Yes, money can help buy you a ticket to the playoffs but it cannot buy the series.
4) sox had 2nd best record in the conference and beat the 1st and second overall best record teams in the post season. No charity there.
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