At a time when we should be seeing sports headlines that read “Pitchers and catchers report to spring training” we are instead being subjected to the following crapola:
Quick aside here – the difference between a baseball strike and a lockout is that with the former it is the players who initiate the work stoppage whereas a lockout is when the owners refuse to let them even begin to play. Thus, if the pitchers and catchers did show up to start spring training, they would find themselves locked out.
Any talk of baseball labor issues always brings back a bad memory for me as follows.
In mid-July of 94 the ex and I split up and she moved out. (Actually, I moved her out but that’s a whole different story. Bottom line however, I was in Piney Point, and she was not.)
As for my 4 red heads, they stayed with me. However, iaw the separation agreement, we had to do this visitation malarkey where a couple nights a week they would stay with her, and the rest of the time hang with me in the Point. Needless to say, it was a time of readjustment for all of us.
At first, I hated it, because all of sudden I found myself home alone. After doing 20 or so years of coupledom and kids running around the ole homeplace, I’d grown accustomed to a certain level of rock and roll in the Ridgell household.
Now all of a sudden it was very quiet and still and I wasn’t very happy about it. I remember saying something to my Mom about not liking being alone and she responded, “Let me tell you something honey, there are a lot worse things in life than being alone.” I’ve never forgotten her telling me that and how those words sorta helped carry me thru that home alone-period that I had to and did get used to.
One evening a few weeks into this new arrangement, after everyone had left and the quiet came falling down around me, I turned on the T-V to catch the Orioles. Up until then I had paid very little attention to the O’s what with the marriage coming undone, seeing lawyers and being too wrapped up in all the related bs to think about anything else.
But as I settled in with a bowl of popcorn and my feet up on the coffee table to watch the game, I thought “At least I got baseball to take my mind off things. This being alone may not be too bad after all.”
But after making that discovery guess what happened? The very next day the players went out on strike. When I heard the news about it, I remember looking up and saying to my Higher Power “Really? No wife, no family and no baseball. What did I ever do to piss you off so much?”
And maybe just because I called Him/Her out on it like I did, the baseball strike then lasted the entire rest of the season. They even had to cancel the World Series. (For related story on that strike and others before it click here.)
While it may be somewhat interesting to see how this current baseball impasse plays out, fortunately for me, this time around I don’t really care about any of it. The whole “billionaires arguing with millionaires over money” doesn’t do much for me (click here for that story.) Plus, this time around I have a very “crowded house.” That was just a setup to play this song for you.