TERRY MOSHER
TOP OF THE TOWN – Money rules the world, as you know. It is why pro sports leagues are twisting and turning and bending backward and forward in the hopes of pinning COVID – 19 to the mat and restart their mammoth multiple -billion dollar profit-making machines. Billion dollar owners are all over the map in MLB with Radio.com showing Cleveland Indians owner Larry Dolan and his family worth $4.6 billion, which tops the 18-known billionaire owners in baseball (the Mariners John Stanton ranks near the bottom of this group at $1.1 billion). Baseball reportedly was losing $75 million collectively a day because of the virus shutdown. I’m only guessing here but it’s likely baseball owners feared losing a considerable fan base if they didn’t do all the contortions possible to save baseball this season. Would fans lose interest in the sport if there was none? Don’t laugh. Think about it. If baseball didn’t return, as it is slated to do with spring training beginning next week at respective home ballparks and a 60-game season beginning later in July, would you really care if it showed up at all in 2021? I believe we would all survive nicely without it. I covered the sport for nearly 30 years and I would not miss it. So the owners jumped in and said, hey, let’s get going. These billionaires didn’t want to be millionaires. Players were worried about it, too. The top half of them have made plenty and likely could survive nicely if they had squired away their money. But the bottom half and the rookies and the 12 percent that traditionally survive and advance through the minor leagues to the big leagues were probably getting a little jumpy. After all, at last report there were over 40 million out of work in the country because of the virus. The one good thing – or maybe bad thing depending on how you look at it – of a 60-game schedule is that a bad team like the Mariners are likely to be might get lucky and rise to the top and make the World Series. Wouldn’t that be something? It usually takes 60 games before the real good teams begin to separate themselves from the poor teams like the Mariners, so again don’t laugh. It could happen. If the Mariners win the World Series would baseball put an asterisk next to the feat like it did when Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth’s home run record with the help of an additional eight game schedule (Maris played in 161 games that season and did hit 61 homers in 698 plate appearances, according to baseball-reference.com. He lost one homer because of a rainout against the Orioles. Ruth played in 154 games and hit his 60 in 691 plate appearances). Anyway, baseball has been saved by billionaires and somehow I don’t feel for them when I’m surviving the virus on many billions less. … I normally don’t root for sports teams or sports figures (we are conditioned on not rooting by virtue of our profession. As writers we are supposed to be neutral. There is no cheering in the press box, for example). So I won’t root for Sawyer Racanelli. I will just hope he shows the promise he showed in a shortened high school career at Hockinson (near Vancouver, WA). He suffered a torn ACL before his senior season in 2019 and missed that season. Before then, Racanelli was as special talent and led Hockinson to consecutive state football titles. He had 1,764 receiving yards and 32 touchdowns his junior year, (11 of them rushing scores), and is a Washington Husky recruit that will be competing this season against a slew of good, young receivers that just need a quarterback (that is yet to be determined) to perhaps produce some of the best pass-catchers in school history. So I’m about as excited as a sportswriter is allowed to get to see this. If the virus allows it. In the meanwhile:
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.