Dazed and Confused

The baseball lockout seems to be getting to Chicago sports’ columnists, Paul Sullivan and Rick Morrissey in particular. On Monday, Sullivan commented on the demand by some fans to have a seat at the negotiating table. The Tribune columnist noted the obvious, that they don’t have one, while adding “nor should they.” Why? Because, “The only seats fans deserve are the ones they purchase to watch a game.” Thank you very much. Now, get ready for the whiplash. In the same column, Sullivan took a totally opposite position on the matter of the Blackhawks dropping Bobby Hull as a team ambassador. A better question would have been why the Hawks ever thought it was a good idea in the first place. Hull stands accused of abusing two wives, and on at least one occasion he has come off as a fan of Adolph Hitler as well as the idea of eugenics. Though no fan of Hull off the ice, Sullivan thinks “if you’re going to get rid of a man whose statue remains in front of the building you play in, you at least owe it to everyone to explain the reasoning.” But, Paul, didn’t you just say the only thing fans deserve is the seat they’ve bought to a game? Yesterday, Morrissey wrote about the lockout and cited several points of disagreement before adding “guess what?...[ellipsis in original] nobody out here cares about any of it.” What Morrissey means to say is he doesn’t care about the economics. No, that gets in the way of him playing Cubs/White Sox general manager, a game he never grows tired of. All of which brings us to the column Sullivan did today, in which he called the back-and-forth between both sides as so much “blah, blah, blah” and complained, “Negotiations are moving along at a snail’s pace, or worse, at the pace of a baseball game.” Yeah, they are, but that’s because the players and owners are hyper-focused on the bottom line. Sullivan and Morrissey both complained about the mind-numbing duration of a ballgame without venturing how it got that way. Hint: it’s not just because of batters calling time and pitchers taking too long between pitches. So long as everyone wants to be (super) rich, ballgames will keep getting loaded down with commercials. Sportswriters are in a position to shine a light on that unpleasant truth, but they can’t be bothered. Squeeze them, though, and they’ll produce a fine whine.