Sunday, December 24, 2006
Trades in Baseball - The Jason Jennings Saga
I know, I am a theologian, and this blog is supposed to talk about serious stuff, but stick with me...the trade of Jason Jennings this past week by the Colorado Rockies says something important about our culture.
I am dedicated Colorado Rockies fan. I grew up a NY Yankees and St. Loius Cardinals fan, became a Braves fan after watching them stink of WTBS everyday for years thanks to cable, but when the Rocks were born, they became my team. The past thirteen years have not been pretty, but lets be honest...its baseball. Empiress do not rise and fall based on the ouctome of sporting events, and so cheering for a team is the safest and most guitless of all pleasure (people cheering against their own country to lose a war...now that is serious).
I have loved the Rocks committment to players with “character” (Christian or not). Jason Jennings is one of those guys. From all I heard a quality person, and he took the ball and pitched well all of his years here. The Rocks are committed to build from within, and he was on of the first “within” chips to come in. So when they traded him for three quality major league ready players the fans in Colorado went balistic. “We were lied to!” “This team is just cheap!” “We will never win!” “We need new owners!” You get the picture.
Look, there are financial realities, aside from the Yankees and Red Sox, no team can keep all their current players they want. The Oakland As and the Minn. Twins are two classs organizations the Rocks are trying to imitate, and every year they part by way of trade of free agency with one of their players. That is the way things go. The Rocks actually made themselves a potentially better team thanks to the trade. That should count for something.
What really bothers me though about the fans is two things. First, the assumption that the owners are out to “screw” the fans. Come on guys, if they traded Jennings for a pair of old dancing shoes, yes, you would be right. They got back the #1 prospect from Houston, a center fielder, and another potential hard thrower for their bullpen. Get over it...fans don’t know everything (the interesting note is that around baseball the writers and other GMs think that Houston got taken to the cleaners).
But the real issue is the expectation that the Rockies owners should spend whatever it takes to buy a winner or sell the team. Now, personally I think they do need to spend another 10-20 million, but you know what, it is neither my team nor my money. I love the way fans spend other people’s money. This is the same thing that we see when people demand the government give them this or that. We saw it in the recent vote to increasse the minimum wage in Colorado. People could vote for it because it wasn’t their money (hey I don’t have any employees). Of course these same people will complain when the prices for the things they buy go up (as they will have to now that everyone is making more). We see this in sports - ticket prices go up and fans complain...well, duh, you think that your star player’s salary was going to be paid by thin air?
We really saw it in this last election because people clearly didn’t read the initative because if they had, they would have known that the exemption for tip employees - wait staff mostly - was removed, meaning now that you waitress is making over $6 an hour before you tip her. Guess what just happened to the price of a meal....way up. But hey, voters weren’t spending their money, so no problem. The same thing come from older senior citizens who complain about any touching of Social Security because “that is my money” even though their contributions long since have been paid out. And of course, the fact that any changes in SS will only affect people who are under 40? Doesn’t matter.
So, the complaints about Jason Jennings are just another case of people wanting something that they do not have to pay for. Jason you are a great player and I wish you well, and I hope you know this wasn’t about you, it really was all about the money.
