CHUTZPAH AWARD NOMINEE: Leave it to Vince McMahon to assert that pro wrestling somehow has the moral high ground over Major League Baseball. In a reprise of an ad campaign that they ran during the 1994 baseball strike, World Wrestling Entertainment broadcast a commercial on last night's episode of WWE RAW in which Vince, doing the voice-over himself, lambasts baseball for considering a work stoppage, and not only promises that wrestling won't ever go on strike, but also that his company will "never have an off-season."
As usual, McMahon's logic is transparent to anyone not in his regular 12-to-14-year-old male demographic. Yes it's true that wrestling will never go on strike, and that's because McMahon has long ensured that his company remains a non-union shop- in the process resisting numerous attempts at labor organization, most notably one in the early '80s headed by Jesse Ventura. And if the wrestlers and other employees had any collective bargaining power, of course, it's a pretty even bet that there would in fact be an off-season, or at least some vacation time.
Of course, what's another major issue in the baseball labor dispute? Mandatory testing of players for steroids. When Vince, who of course refuses to conduct drug testing of any kind, produced the original anti-baseball ads back in '94, for what was he on under federal indictment at the time? You guessed it, steroids.