Players, Agents and Greed Ruining Baseball

I can’t believe I came home from work Tuesday night with a rented movie instead of watching the Pirates-Braves playoff game. This is coming from a die-hard fan who once ended up in the principal’s office in second grade for sneaking a transistor radio into class and listening to the 1962 San Francisco Giant-New York Yankee World Series. I’ve had it with baseball. I can count the number of Padre games I went to this year on my left hand. It’s not the cost of tickets, parking or concessions that has caused my disinterest. It’s the free agency, overpaid players and greedy, self-centered agents.

Fans used to be able to identify with teams and their drawing cards: Clemente and the Pirates, Mays and the Giants, Gibson and the Cardinals. Successful teams were built with intelligent drafts, good farm systems and an occasional gutsy trade. Now Jack Morris can beat you in October and start for you opening day in April, if your owner is the highest bidder. We also have to put up with overpaid .230 hitters like Tim Teufel complaining about how the team is run and threatening to “leave” if things don’t change.

Maybe it is time for the owners to give the players and their narrow-minded agents a year off to think about what their greed and arrogance has done to the grand old game.

ANDY GUYER, San Diego