Strike 10

Today (8/12) marks the ten-year anniversary of the start of 1994-'95 baseball strike, which wiped out that year’s World Series and is generally considered the second-most calamitous event in baseball history (after the 1919 Black Sox scandal.)

In fact, there have been lots of shameful anniversaries in baseball this year: 85 years since the Black Sox, 30 since Ten-Cent Beer Night, 25 since Disco Demolition Night, 15 since the Pete Rose banishment, and 10 since the strike.

If there was anything that destroyed my innocense as a baseball fan, this was it; for that entire nine-month off-season I listened to people say "oh no, I don't miss baseball, and I'll never watch it when they come back," knowing that I DID miss it, and that I WOULD watch it when they came back.

I’ll put it this way: when I was a kid, the last day of camp was always August 12. Friends of mine have gotten married on August 12. I've dated women whose birthdays were August 12. Yet long after I forget all of those things, I will still remember that the '94 baseball strike started on August 12.