Tony Larussa and Kenny Williams Can Eat Shit

Over the course of the past week two of baseball’s most outspoken and identifiable crotchety bastards made some statements that can most accurately be classified as “super bitchy.”

It began when Tony Larussa, head coach of the St. Louis Cardinals, threw out all kinds of unsubstantiated accusations about how the MLB players union was hypnotizing his star player, Albert Pujols, with the allure of cash-money-hoes in an effort to get him to refuse to re-sign with the Cardinals in favor of hitting the free agent market next winter. The idea being that Pujols will make a lot more money on the open market, thus driving up player salaries as a whole.

Then White Sox GM Kenny Williams ran his mouth about how “asinine” it was that a player like Pujols could potentially make $30 million a year, adding that he would be in favor of having MLB “shut down” for a while in order to rein in player salaries.

So I like to crush brews and drive, big deal.

Normally I wouldn’t really care a whole lot about what a drunk driver who bats his pitcher 8th and a GM who seems to covet strikeouts have to say. In this case, however, I was bothered by the fact that each of these statements seem to boil down to the same basic implication:

These players are making too much fucking money.

It is the above assertion that is most likely going to take center stage when the owners and players sit down next December to re-negotiate the league’s collective bargaining agreement. The owners would love to find a way to reduce player salaries in the next CBA, possibly through the institution of a salary cap. If the owners push for a salary cap, shit is going to get very real very quickly between them and the players union, and it is very likely that we will see a lockout or a strike

The owners will be much more likely to come out on top in the event of a work stoppage if they can control the public discourse surrounding the negotiations, and whether they are aware of it or not, Larussa and Williams have just kick-started the owner’s propaganda machine, which will soon begin lurching forwards.

In the coming year you can expect to see a lot more owners, coaches, and GM’s making similar statements as they try to sway public opinion to their side. The hope being that when the lockout eventually does come, people won’t be saying logical things like, “Hey, why is it that these ultra rich owners need more money?” Instead, they will be saying things like, “Duuuurrrrrr, if those spoiled, overpaid, prima donna players would just get some gat dang sense in their heads, we could play ball!”

If the discourse does indeed head in this direction, logic and reason will be dealt a tremendous blow and Baby Jesus will cry a thousand tears of blood, because player salaries are not spiraling out of control, they are just becoming a hindrance to teams’ abilities to make a fuckload of money without actually having to spend any of that money on baseball players.

One only has to peruse these leaked financial documents, or be made aware of the fact that many “small market” teams are actually run by some of the league’s richest owners in order to understand that most major league teams are more concerned with profit margins than they are with winning.

That is why it’s so disappointing to see Larussa and Williams taking such a strong anti-players union stance, because they are directing their ire at the wrong people.

Yes, it is possible that a salary cap would make it easier for the Cardinals to hang onto Pujols and for the White Sox to field a better team, but these benefits would require the players to take a big, fat, unnecessary knee to their financial scrotums.

If Larussa is really worried about losing his star player to free agency, he should be publicly admonishing his team’s executives for their unwillingness to pay the best baseball player on the planet the money that he deserves.

Yeah, tell me how many K's Dunn
and Konerko had last year.
Yeah...that's it...don't stop...oh God!

If Williams is really upset about higher salaries making it harder for him to put together a competitive team, he should be asking his owner for more money to spend on good players. He should then look in the mirror and say, “Hey dipshit, if you want to win, you shouldn’t give $56 million dollars to Adam Dunn and $37.5 million to Paul Konerko.”

Instead, these two pricks have decided to take the easy way out and cast their lot with the owners, because after all, it’s always nice to be on the side that has all the money.