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Dear Editor, About twice or so a year we are privileged to view in the local paper an advertisement reporting that CMS will ask the Public Service Commission to recover costs or to readjust the rate they charge consumers. Some of us can barely pay our heating bill, yet we read that William Mcormick, former chairman, will millions in severance and base salary. With Tamela Pallas and Alan Wright also receiving huge amounts, are we looking at another Enron that needs a house cleaning? Cliff James, Saginaw ALMOST LONG GONE Dear Editor, Would baseball have been missed in Detroit if the players did strike? It's been missed already, going on 10 consecutive losing seasons. The Tigers this year are plunking along at a winning clip of .376 and 83 losses. Since Ilitch bought the Tigers, they're 214 games under .500. This team has the audacity to charge $30.00 a seat and $20.00 to park your car to witness a team with no relief pitchers, one decent starting pitcher, one all-star, no future players of note coming out of the minors, and an every day knack of blowing leads to lose ball games. This team is the bad and the ugly. Kentucky, the winner of the Little League World Series, would most certainly kick their collective butts. Mr. Ilitch pays these bums $55 million to play baseball. Dean Palmer has been to bat 12 times this season with no hits, and he is paid $12 million for the year. For $7,250,000 we have Jose Lima with four wins. We would be better off with Tony Lima. Damion Easley, who gets $6,250,000 is hitting a robust .218. Bobby Higginson makes $5,850,000 and cannot pay child support. Bobby is scheduled to make $12 million next season, and he whines daily that he would play better if he were on a better team. Isn't that comforting to know. As of late the Tigers have traded away most every quality player they've had: Hideo 'No Hit' Nomo, '57 Home Run' Gonzales, Juan 'Two-Time MVP' Gonzalez, John 'The Best Relief Pitcher in the World' Smoltz, and 2001 World Series hero Danny Bautista, among others. I love baseball and even these god-awful Tigers, but the greed has long since replaced the purity of it all. Many of today's players are not fan friendly. I have seen major league players turn down autographs to young kids when it's just one on one, but players like Cal Ripken can find time to charge $200.00 for his at a national sports show. The fans are joining in. When Babe Ruth hit his 700th home run in Detroit, he paid a kid $20.00 and got it back. Last month a fan came up bleeding with Barry Bonds' 600th home run ball and he wants a million. The minimum for a rookie to put on a major league baseball uniform for the first time is $300,000 a year. The average major leaguer takes home $2 million a season. These sorry Tigers average $1.966,000 a man and the Yankees pay out $4,342,365 a player. A Road gets $136,000 a game. Ticket prices over the past five years have increased 35 percent. A family of four spends an average of $145.26 to attend a major league game. There has been a 67.5% increase from 10 years ago. When does it end? The players expected the Twins, Expos, and Rays to stay in business even though they're losing money. Drugs have enhanced production numbers for many players. So much so even the records have become tainted. The players have said the owners are unfair. The truth is owners used to be cheap, as in Charles Comiskey's 1919 White Sox cheap. That team threw the World Series because they weren't paid their worth. Comiskey would not even wash their wool uniforms for the entire season just to cut down on cost. The owners kept the players under literal slavery, until Curt Flood challenged the game's reserve clause in court. Curt died of cancer six months before the reserve clause was found to be illegal. Today, most of these overpriced characters do not even know of the man who scarified his career to give them the financial freedom they enjoy today. Since then the owners have lost their collective minds by bidding up outrageous salaries to players in an effort to win the most games. They have been less than brilliant, and they've often painted themselves into a proverbial corner. The players, on the other hand, have pushed greed to an unrealistic level. They play a game on freshly cut grass, travel the country first class, stay at the finest hotels, get the best meals, get paid more money than a person can spend in five lifetimes, date the most beautiful women, get to do Viagra TV commercials like Rafael Palmeiro, and are idolized by millions. Yet they feel slighted. Slighted is having worked for Enron, Bill Knapps, Jacobson's US Air, and a litany of other companies sending people home without a job since 9/11/01. The International Olympic Committee is considering dropping baseball and softball in favor of golf and rugby. Think about it. I asked Kandy 'Buhl' Raney about her Dad's outlook on baseball when he played. "My father played for the love of the game, not the money," she said. That doesn't happen today. If baseball players and team owners keep fighting over who gets the most of the fans money in the future, they will go the way of the American circus, passing from America's pastime to America's past. If the players strike in the future, ball fans will replace baseball with ESPN classic games on TV, or be reading baseball books of the past, when the game was played with a passion and players wanted to win for their fans. It will not take long for fans to shift over to supporting football, hockey and basketball - and baseball will become a memory. Next time bring on the replacement players. Richard Curry, Thomas Township
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