Big news everyone! Billionaire baseball owners don’t want to pay their athletes previously agreed upon prorated salaries and want to cut salaries even further for the absolute privilege of playing an abbreviated season amidst a global pandemic!

And guess what?! Boy oh boy, I bet you can’t guess….but the players don’t want to take a pay cut and be paid based on revenues earned in the truncated season. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?!

It’s billionaires arguing with millionaires about how many millions they’ll all be paid, while the rest of us have been sitting in our filthy hovels for the last three months wondering when we’ll ever be allowed into Target again without face masks.

Fuck baseball. Fuck the owners for being greedy pigs. Fuck everyone involved squabbling for money.

I tend to side more with the players in this situation, because they’re taking all of the risk. They’re playing in a pandemic, they risk contracting the virus, they have to perform in an uncertain future. All John Middleton has to worry about is if the dip in annual revenue will force him to forgo a weekly toupee tuneup in favor of a bi-weekly alteration.

Hell, and don’t forget about the minor leaguers that aren’t even going to be paid moving forward. They’re basically paid in shiny trinkets and heads of cabbage in the best of times, so cutting them off completely just feels like pushing over the casket of a mortal enemy during their funeral. It’s insult to injury.

But again, does anyone really care? The players union and the MLB do this posturing horseshit every few years, chipping away and shaving off pieces of all that remains of the decrepit and calloused baseball fandom glob in this country.

It’s going to be a rude awakening for America’s past time when it finds it’s not the only game in town moving forward in the summer, and nobody involved with the money squabbles seem to realize it. Are you going to watch Vince Velasquez struggle to get through four innings again the Mets in late August, or are you going to watch the NBA playoffs in full swing? Are you going to want to listen to Phillies management defend their decision to nickel and dime J.T. Realmuto throughout the summer, or are you going to want to watch the Flyers compete for another Stanley Cup?

Baseball has had no competition in the summer. Now it’s facing off with a much more popular league in the NBA and a local team in the Flyers that has the best chance to win a Stanley Cup in decades.

If they were smart they’d start roiding up Mike Trout and Bryce Harper now for another home run chase, because it’s going to need a big hook to bring back fans who are sick and tired of listening to people who will lose more money playing blackjack in a night than we’ll make in a year.

It’s the same old song, but this time it’s remixed with a global pandemic. It’s remixed with people losing their homes, their jobs and their family members.

It’s not going to exactly rocket up the Billboard Charts and I’m not sure people are going to care all that much if it’s a failure. It’s easy to see the direction it’s going, but is anyone involved on either side smart enough to see it?

(But hey, you what is smart? Buying Phillies gear! That will show those billionaire owners. Click through the banner below)