Dave Neuman was thrown for a loss after he said:
 DN> Whereas the players "bent over backwards" to accomadate those greedy
 DN> owners, right?  Gimmee a break.  You'd think the players were Ghandi or
 DN> something.
Dave, what IS a strike? It's a player's/worker's reaction to management's 
resistence to their proposal's/demands. If you consider players greedy then 
you must consider ordinary union workers greedy because strikes are there for 
the same purpose whether it's an *ordinary* union or a *sports* union.
 DN> It all comes down to money.  Show me how any thing the players fought
 DN> for doesn't, in the end, mean money.
Gee, Dave, if that's the case then show me the same thing in *ordinary* 
strikes. More importantly, Dave, tell me when it wasn't the OWNERS/MANAGEMENT 
of sports/businesses who were the ones concerned with money. Remember, a 
strike is a REACTION, not a first strike weapon. Before 1969, players in MLB 
had no *rights* in the eyes of ownership to hire agents (An NFL example of 
this practice was a player sending his agent to deal with Packer's head man 
Vince Lombardi. Lombardi excused himself, went into another room and came 
back later to let the guy know that he had been traded). Prior to the use of 
agents, players were screwed by reserve clauses, funny language and what 
amounted to slavery. Now, before you consider my words as hyperbole, consider 
that compared to society back then, players had NO rights. They HAD to sign 
with their old teams and even if they sat out for several seasons, their 
rights STILL belonged to their old team. The only way that they could move to 
another team was for a rival league to form so they can play out their 
contract and jump to the new league. It didn't change the fact that if the 
new league folded, their rights still belonged to their old team but it did 
give the players in the old league leverage to change these rules over time.
Want an example? How about medical coverage and keeping the owners from 
getting rid of a player before he's fully healed. It was a common practice 
for the owners to dump a player who was probably useless to his sports 
forever before or shortly after he started his rehabilitation. The owner 
would dump him before HE had to pay money for surgery, drugs, treatment, etc. 
and unions in all sports got them to stop that reprehensible practice.
In every strike or lockout, MANAGEMENT was either trying to deny benefits or 
rob the unions of hard won benefits. The NBA's recent strike shows the 
lengths that the OWNERS will go to CHEAT the players. Before the 1984 season, 
the players had agreed to help ownership by allowing a salary cap system to 
be put into place. As part of this agreement, the owners agreed to an 
independent auditor to oversee their books in order to make sure that there 
was no funny business. Despite that AGREEMENT, owners did their best to 
circumvent this process. An audit before the most recent agreement talks by 
an independent auditor found that the owners had shorted the players by 
MILLIONS and their new agreements overseas would short them by millions more. 
That NEAR strike was a multitude of concessions by the players and after 
every round of concessions, the owners came back for MORE. Stern and the 
owners didn't want to win, they wanted to crush the union. Not only did they 
try to cheat the active players, they DID cheat the legends and even got them 
to turn on the very players who GOT them the money that the owners were 
claiming as THEIR generous offer to the old timers.
You can argue all that you want about how every issue comes down to money, 
however, it's OWNERSHIP'S money needs that we're talking about. Free agency 
was never about money but the ability to CHOOSE where a player could play. 
Money has been a secondary issue for many of the players but it's always the 
first thing that people focus on (Never mind the fact that quite a few 
players go back to cities near their home town or where they played college 
or near their wive's home). Strikes by players are reactions to management's 
refusal to bargain even in bad faith (When the MLB players promised not to 
strike if ownership promised not to lock them out, ownership's response was 
at best, laughable). Greedy players? Maybe you should take a close look at 
what the strikes were about, even the most recent ones, before you align 
yourself against the players and their *greed*.
--- TrekEd 1.00
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