Labor Pains Really Starting to Hurt Now

Here’s my message to the owners, who are certainly no angels, but whom I’ll side with any day of the week over a group of unrealistic, overpaid, swelled heads who live in Fantasyland and clearly don’t get it and whose average salary is an obscene $2.4 million: Break them! If they strike, do whatever it takes to break the union, and start from scratch. Enough is enough.

Steve Smith

San Gabriel

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“Everybody is a winner if we can get through this thing without setting a strike date,” Colorado’s Larry Walker said.

Memo to Larry Walker: “Everybody” but the fans. Frankly I think I can speak for many of us fans who are completely disgusted by having yet another strike date hung over our heads. We’ve felt that way since ’94 when the World Series was taken from us.

Personally, my disgust with the game of baseball as it is today goes beyond the players and owners. Lately, I am getting disgusted by the fans as well. Why do fans, including myself, continue to support this game that ultimately belongs to us?

With a little organization, we could set our own strike date, complete with demands such as revenue sharing.

Once every ballpark in America starts looking like Olympic and Pro Player Stadiums on a good night and television ratings go down to “Joanie Loves Chachi” rerun levels, we’ll see who’s the real boss. Is it us (the fans?) or is it Larry Walker, Bud Selig and George Steinbrenner?

I think it’s time for us fans to unite. Are there any of us out there who want to step up to the plate?

Kevin McDermott

Los Angeles

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There may be a deal and no strike. But at whose expense? I took my family to Dodger Stadium a week ago and paid $50 for four cheeseburgers, four orders of fries--in the paper cups, not the souvenir helmets--and four drinks at Carl’s Jr.

Now I’m all for free enterprise, and I have no problem paying a small premium for ballpark food, but 50 bucks for what would ordinarily cost me about 20 outside of the stadium? You guys lost me after the ’94 strike, and it wasn’t until recently that I came back to the game.

As you settle your differences, bear in mind that for many of us, it is just getting too expensive to support the game. If the solution to your present differences is to raise ticket and concession prices, resharpen your pencils and figure out another solution or you’ll lose me all over again.

Mike Kichaven

Sherman Oaks

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Please tell me Angel pitcher Scott Schoeneweis is not as naive as his comments about steroid use in baseball made him sound (Angel Report, Aug. 11).

If he is just spouting the union line that is one thing, but if he really believes the problem “could just go away” he is beyond naive. Schoeneweis opines that 5% or 3% of players using steroids doesn’t seem like a problem to him, but 40% would be. Where is the cutoff, Scott? Ten percent? Fifteen percent? Schoeneweis’ stance further illustrates how far major league players are removed from reality and the feelings of baseball fans.

Patrick Mallon

San Luis Obispo

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If baseball players go on strike and then return to play ball, and nobody is there to see it, would whiny millionaire athletes really care?

Eric Goldman

Mission Viejo