Throughout the 40-year history of baseball labor negotiations, most reporters have shied away from covering them. If they didn’t concern hits and strikeouts, the reporters wanted no part of them.
It comes as a curiosity, then, that reporters with little experience covering baseball labor matters have created a false impression of discord between the union and the clubs where no discord exists. There have been two recent examples.
With much gnashing of teeth and shaking of their heads, baseball fans in the United States bid adieu to the second World Baseball Classic their team didn’t win. There’s nothing wrong with their reaction except that it demonstrates their provincialism. But at least they care.
Because the Classic has arrived late on the baseball scene, it has been dismissed by many fans as unimportant, irrelevant and unnecessary. I disagree. I have long liked the idea of a world baseball tournament, like soccer’s World Cup, and I believe it was overdue.
The name of the book is “The Rocket That Fell to Earth.” The author is Jeff Pearlman. The publisher is HarperCollins. It goes on sale March 24. It is about Roger Clemens and, in fact, is subtitled “Roger Clemens and the Rage for Baseball Immortality.” But for a few pages it is also about Mike Piazza.
Those are the pages that intrigue me. Those are the pages some readers of this site might want to read. Or not, if they want to go on denying that Piazza and steroids might have had a relationship during his surprisingly productive playing career.
