GAME ON!!!: Finally... the subject I have written about more than any other since the inception of this blog has been resolved. After a marathon negotiating session which lasted for nearly 24 hours, the baseball players and owners have agreed on a four-year Collective Bargaining Agreement that will avert the threatened baseball strike. Whether the agreement will accomplish its stated purpose of restoring competetive balance to the game remains to be seen, but what is undisputed is that all the darkness that has plagued the game off the field in the past few years can now be swept away, and the game will finally return to the center stage, where it belongs.
I was glued to the television until I fell asleep at 3 AM last night, and throughout the night I awoke at least once per hour in order to turn on the TV and hear ESPN's Jayson Stark speak the ugly words "no deal yet." The same held once I woke up in the morning, though while listening to WFAN on the way to work, I heard a caller eloquently speak about how he had lost two relatives on September 11, and the only thing that had kept him going was knowing that he could still watch the Yankees every night. I flipped on the radio again at 12:30 to hear the wonderful news that a deal had been reached.
As a baseball fan, I am thrilled by the day's events. And as a Minnesota Twins fan, I'm absolutely ecstatic. Sometime next week we will get to enjoy the great, great sight of the Twins clinching their first division championship since 1991, followed by a sure-to-be-exciting playoff run. (And even if the Twins don't advance to the World Series, perhaps the equally small-market Oakland A's will). The increased revenue sharing can only help the team in the future, and the lack of a strike, coupled with that playoff run, also increases the likelihood of a new Minnesota stadium. And last but not least, the agreement states that contraction cannot happen before 2006. So now that threat is gone as well; guess that proves that Bud Selig was bluffing all along.
Let's hope Bud sees this agreement, the first ever negotiated without a work stoppage, as a suitable legacy and therefore decides to resign as baseball commissioner immediately. Then, our glorious day will be complete.