Turning Of The Seasons

So, yes, I stopped writing part way through the World Cup. It was too distracting, but I enjoyed the tournament, though I wish the US had mustered more resistance against Ghana, and that Holland had not played such an ugly game in the final against Spain. The kick to the chest that Nigel De Jong administered to a Spanish player lost the Dutch any sympathy I had for them, and they were deserving losers of the final.

I watched the final in the Civic Center Plaza with 15,000 other soccer fans, and the atmosphere was wonderful. Everyone was in good spirits, but they were there to watch soccer, so the crowd was paying close attention to the large screens, so there were no distracting elements.

The Spanish team was Barcelona at its' heart, in style of play and in the roster, as a majority of the starters were from the team from Catalonia. But word has it--from Marina's cousin who lives in Spain--that Catalans were rooting for the Dutch, presumably for the same anti-Spain reasons that caused the region to recently outlaw bullfighting. Fascinating how sports and politics interweave like that.

The Giants are surging into August, in the playoff hunt, ahead of the Dodgers, behind the Padres, fighting off the Reds and Phillies for the wild card spot. But I'm not going to write about that. I'm going to write about the business of basketball.

So, LeBron James and the move to Miami from his hometown of Cleveland. There was a lot of heavy rhetoric about his signing with the Heat. Cleveland has been portrayed as completely angry and betrayed; the owner was fined for calling LeBron a coward; another story of a homegrown superstar comes to a close with a whimper.

That's not what I have a problem with, LeBron leaving. The truth is that he is a basketball player who wanted to play in Miami; a free agent. He had completed a contract with Cleveland and was free to play anywhere he wanted, just like any worker in our society. Even though the decision by LeBron and ESPN to stage the announcement in a one-hour prime time special called "The Decision" was tacky, silly, cheesy, insensitive to the Cleveland fans, and just plain vain, that's not enough to work up a good hatred for LeBron and Miami.

What is enough to work up hatred for Miami is the fact that they fired 30 people from their ticket sales staff yesterday, after they sold out all the season tickets for the upcoming year. After spending millions upon millions of dollars to assemble a triumvirate of James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh, and after selling out the season already, ensuring a huge revenue stream in a tough economy, they cut loose 30 people who helped get them that sellout.

Granted, if you look at it objectively, if there are no more tickets to be sold, then what would these 30 people do all year? And also granted, the Heat say they have hired a placement service to find jobs for the fired workers. This is the business side of sports. But here's the thing: if each of those 30 people were kept on and paid a $50000 salary, that would come to $1.5 million. That doesn't look like much when you look at what a single player earns in a year.

It just looks callous and New York Yankee-like. And that's why I can now hate the Heat, even though I don't really care about the NBA that much in general.

Now it is time to forget about the NBA and the false drama stirred up by pretending like LeBron James means something in the larger world--outside of Cleveland, a troubled economy where having a homegrown icon was of real value. It's time to get ready for the new English Premier League season, with Newcastle United coming back up, looking to consolidate its position and avoid being relegated again.