An open letter to baseball fans…
Matthew Pickut
Saturday July 13, 2002
Let me be the first to formally invite you to get on board with the AFL. That’s right, the Arena Football league, you know, where the cost for the entire roster’s is less than one average MLB salary. With the AFL you get a chance to be a fan in a league where each fan matters. Each fan has to matter because the AFL is still fighting for place on the national radar – that gives you the leverage.
Imagine… it matters weather you, the fan, actually shows up each and every game. You can get in on the ground floor, you can say that you became a fan before the league got big (and it will, NBC will make sure that it will, there chance for a real profit guarantees it), you can make put your money where your mouth is and show baseball just how profitable doing the right thing can be.
What other league gives its fans a Bill of rights? What other league mandates its players must hang around for autographs and even provides the sharpies for players to sign with? What other league lets you see and hear everything like the AFL? None.
I’m not saying give up on baseball, but as a baseball fan you can show MLB owners exactly what you would like to see return to the game: the player accessibility, the fan focus, the reasonably priced tickets. It may be the only way to change baseball for the better. If all owners and players care about is money than its time that we the fans started, if you pardon the expression, showing them the money. Specifically, showing them the money going somewhere else.
Think about it: you’re ex-girl/boyfriend suddenly gets more attractive when she/he starts dating again, especially if you haven’t. When people stop talking about what’s wrong with baseball and start talking about what’s right with a league like the AFL, well then maybe Bud and the boys will get the point.
Just to help you make up your mind I’ve even compiled a list:
The top ten ways the afl is better than MLB.
10. MLBPA and baseball owners have never reached a collective bargaining agreement with out a work stoppage. AFL players formed a new union when the season was threatened three years ago. Right now the players and owners are doing business first and working under a compromise cba until a more permanent agreement one can be settled on.
9. Two words: Jill Arrington. Peter Gammonds is not that cute.
8. In the AFL there is enough time between plays for great riffs of great songs, at major league baseball there is enough time between pitches to play all of “In-a-gadda-da-vida .
7. Baseball: more crotch grabbing than a Michael Jackson retrospective, AFL: “adjustments” on field kept to a minimum. I know it’s an 80’s joke, but I’m an 80’s kind of guy. I actually wang chung on a regular basis and I don’t care who knows it.
6. Catch a baseball ($5.00 value); Catch a football ($60 value)
5. George Stienbrenner has never owned an Arena Football league team.
4. Take your pick: Rich Players holding out for another million dollars or players who have second jobs playing for the love of the game . I’ve actually had players get a little emotional when I’ve asked them what the game means to them. The only time most mlb players probably get emotional is when their valets are late bringing them their Mercedes.
3. There hasn’t been a tie in the AFL in years Some of the best overtime rules in professional sports encourage risk taking rather than punish it.
2. Bud Selig: pasty old guy vs. Commish Baker: cuddly big guy Now that’s a cage match I think we’d all pay money to see!
1. “Dodgers, we don’t need no stinking Dodgers!”
So come on over, you’ve been invited.
Sincerely
Matthew Pickut
Matthew Pickut is a pastor in northern Indiana and a long time AFL fan. He also writes for his own website: The Brown Paper Blog. He graduated from Taylor University in Upland Indiana (class of `96) with degrees in Biblical Literature and Sociology as well as a healthy respect for the medicinal properties of coffee.
