Sunday, August 07, 2005
It's not our game
Let's get one thing straight. I never played Major League, minor league, NCAA, NAIA, NJCAA, high school or American Legion baseball. Primarily because I never enjoyed an at-bat in MLB, I cannot claim ownership of the game. As Joe Morgan said during tonight's Cubs-Mets game, "the game doesn't just belong to the current players; it belongs to yesterday's players." The context of the comment was the tired argument on steroid use. But Morgan's point of view bypassed the people who mattered most: the fans. It instead was about how it has screwed people like Joe Morgan and his buddies like Tony Perez and Johnny Bench.
Omitting the fans from the discussion is no accident with Joe Morgan. One of his favorite devices when losing an argument is falling back on the fact that he was a Hall of Fame second baseman who played on the Big Red Machine, blah, blah, zzzzzzzzzz.
Let there be no doubt that Morgan was a Hall of Fame player. He was a big part of the Reds in the 70s, the 1980 Houston Astros and the 1983 NL champion Phillies.
But this isn't about Joe Morgan the player.
Omitting the fans from the discussion is no accident with Joe Morgan. One of his favorite devices when losing an argument is falling back on the fact that he was a Hall of Fame second baseman who played on the Big Red Machine, blah, blah, zzzzzzzzzz.
Let there be no doubt that Morgan was a Hall of Fame player. He was a big part of the Reds in the 70s, the 1980 Houston Astros and the 1983 NL champion Phillies.
But this isn't about Joe Morgan the player.
