Violent clashes are a historic part of sport. “Kill! Kill! Kill!” we chant continuously through every televised sporting event, the only sound detectable over our shouts being the opening and closing of the front door as our families leave us for the last time. The attempts to contain the natural brute force and gore of…
Jonah Keri has ably analyzed the Colon trade and its ridiculousness for the Expos. I want to focus on the deal as an indicator of the shadiness and shame implied by the league’s ownership of the Expos.
Baseball ownership groups have for too long resembled Dark Age European royalty–closely related and weak. Hand-picked for convenience and agreeability rather than on any objective basis, they’ve given us undercapitalized owners like Steve Schott, lapdog owners like Jeff Loria, evil owners like Carl Pohlad.
It’s not much of a secret that we’re strongly pro-player in baseball’s labor disputes–a quick look at the contents of the Baseball Prospectus Baseball Labor and Economics page will tell you that. Some of us are more interested in the business side of things than others, but we’ve discussed these issues amongst ourselves and we’re pretty much all on the same side of the fence.
Unlike some of my partners in crime here at BP, I won’t froth about labor issues without some serious provocation. While I believe the owners lie about their financial situation with reckless abandon and wield the relocation/contraction stick with all the subtlety of “The West Wing,” I can’t get too righteously indignant about it.