Slush Funds

For the second time in a week, the weather forecasters got their predictions wrong. No accumulation of snow last night into today. Just wet slush, kind of like a little kid finger painting and leaving big blobs of white and brown on the paper in random spots.

This weather reminds me of when we played a "spring training" game in Cleveland about 5 years ago to help open up their new stadium. Late-March in Ohio can still be cold. This day, it was about 35 degrees. Not cold enough for snow. Certainly cold enough for slush. Of course, a rainout can be commonplace in the spring, but slushouts are very rare. The team and league would do almost anything to avoid both.

The grounds crew did their best to keep the field clean, but what they should have done was take a massive hair dryer and aim at toward the outfield. That's the game where Omar Viscaye snapped his fibula sliding from center into left field against his will (both the sliding and the snapping). When you miss a whole season because of a spring training injury, it kind of puts a bad taste in your mouth for the great slushy white north. (Strange how Omar just signed a minor league deal with Minnesota last week. It's even colder up there. Maybe he prefers ice to slush.)

The whole reason for our playing in Cleveland - 2 games, not just 1 - at the end of spring training was because their ownership had cut a deal with the league. Two additional sell outs were good for everyone's pockets but ours. We have fixed, basically, contracts (incentives, weight clauses aside). But ownership goes into a season with projected revenue streams. They know what their costs are going to be. They know the revenues they'd like to earn. If they can garner a little cushion before the season even begins, even better for them.

It's like how this year, the season starts - actual games that count - on March 23rd. Cincinnati plays St. Louis in neither Cincinnati or St. Louis, but in Tokyo. Two games on the 23rd and 24th, then a week off before playing two more games against each other in Cincinnati April 3rd & 4th (by the way, Cincinnati's in Ohio too, where it's still cold on April 3rd & 4th). At least in Tokyo, they're playing in a dome.

The fact is, these two teams are playing in Tokyo not for the sake of the players and their incomes, but for the league and its foreign investment. Meaning, the league will benefit financially from this almost immediately. The players benefit to a degree, but not as much in the short term. If we eventually include Japan into our divisional structure and have real games against Tokyo and Nagasaki and Hiroshima, then we'll get lots more revenues from ancillary streams, meaning merchandise and other things I don't know about.

So why the rant? Guess I'm just a little peeved at my local weather man for making me think I could miss a workout by being snowed in. Yes, I'm supposed to be hungry to compete and make myself better and be the best I can be blah, blah, blah. But I'm also a human who gets sleepy. On days when I can't, I'd like to sleep in. That means I'd really like to sleep in on days when it snows, and I supposedly can, only I can't because it doesn't snow which makes me more tired.

I could just go to bed earlier.

Nah. It's more fun to watch The Weather Channel and hope for slush in Cincinnati. Maybe my friends can get an extra day off when they return from Japan and spend some of that league money on boots and parkas and earmuffs. Then when we strike later in the year, we can blame it on the weather. Not on the money.