Some Thoughts on Baseball (But Not on the Strike).

I like baseball, in the park, not on TV.  On TV it is boring.  At the park it is fun.  But if for some reason major league baseball folded, my life would go on pretty much as before.  So I really don't care much if the players strike or not. I have no opinion on who is at fault for the "problems" of MLB.  If you told me the players are greedy, I would agree.  If you told me the owners are greedy, I would agree.  Yeah, so.  MLB generates a certain amount of revenue and each group wants to maximize its take.  Both sides want to get more money.  But here is what I find interesting.  When it comes to baseball (and I suspect other things also) conservative writers and thinkers (can I say conservative thinkers in the same sentence, or is that an oxymoron?) abandon their conservative/free-market rhetoric and become socialist contortionists.  That is, the substance is socialism, the rhetoric is twisted into sound free-market economics.  To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, Take George Will, Please.

But first a digression.  My favorite memory of George Will was years ago when both Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft and Andy Grove, CEO of Intel were guests on "This Week with David Brinkley."  George Will was on one of his jeremiads about the evil of government interference in the marketplace and was going to prove this conclusively to us lesser lights by asking the Great and Powerful Grove his opinion.  (First Will worshipped at the feet of Gates, who looked like one those 16-year olds who discovers himself in front of a TV camera and can't resist waving and saying, "Hi Mom.") Years back, when the US seminconductor industry collectively made horrible business decisions that nearly drove them out of business, they sought, and were granted protection as well as dollars from the US Government.  George asked Andy the leading question if Intel didn't really need that protection.  Oh yes we did responded Grove.  Without them Intel would have not survived.  George must have thought the spirit of Marx (Karl not Groucho) was temporarily inhabiting Grove because he asked again and got the same response.  Will, for the first time ever, was nonplussed.

I got this picture from a Microsoft web site devoted to the wisdom and good works of Bill Gates.  I think he is the devil.  I also think Microsoft should be broken up for no other reason than it is too damn big.

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