Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
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And the Chicago Sports Review published it.
Perry wrote the linked article taking the Major League Baseball Players Associations to task for not acting like a "genuine trade union" and not supporting the umpires when they went on strike or organizing the minor leaguers.
First of all, the MLBPA is not a trade union. It's a company union. It's an entirely different animal. A trade union, such as the United Auto Workers, tries to get the best deal for all types of people doing various jobs in an industry. A company union, like the MLBPA, can only represent people who are employed by one entity, Major League Baseball. And all of those people have one job: they play baseball. This also means that MLBPA can't organize minor leaguers either. They're in the wrong company. If this were something like "The International Association of Baseball Players" then you might have a case. But it isn't.
Second of all, Perry tosses this line out "Genuine labor unions -- the ones fighting for the living wages and workplace safety of plumbers and stevedores-are fellow travelers with other unions, often marching in one another's picket lines."
Hmm, I'm a union member. I know I've crossed picket lines. I've known a lot of other members of my union who have crossed picket lines. Some people care about such matters. Others don't. We seem to get by OK.
Perry seems to think that labor unions are only groups of blue collar workers who work against gritty backdrops like in "On the Waterfront". But there are a lot of white collar unions. And there are still company unions, like MLBPA. And their aims are entirely different from what the AFL-CIO, SEIU or the Teamsters have.
Somebody has seen Norma Rae a few too many times.
It all makes sense now.
Most companies let its employees form company unions to be nice to them and have an easily pliable group to work with.
'Bout a hero named Homer and a devil named Burns
We'll march till we drop, the girls and the fellas
We'll fight to the death or else fold like umbrellas.
So we'll march day and night by the big cooling tower
They have the plant, but we have the power.
"Barry needs steroids!"
"Dental plan!"
"Barry needs steroids!"
I'll get my revenge when monorails are discussed.
They're not sad at all. They're actually singing!
They sing without juicers.
They sing without blenders.
They sing without flunjers, capdabblers and smendlers"
9 What the heck is that from? It's very familiar, but I can't place it.
Monorails do not work out. Ask the good folks of Ogdenville, North Haverbrook, and Brockaway. That's from "Marge vs. the Monorail." Leonard Nimoy makes an appearance.
Yes, I am embarassed that I know all this from memory.
Hope that covers everything.
I'm at a disadvantage; I've never seen a single entire episode of the Simpsons. Not out of snobbishness; I just never got the habit. There must have been something else on at the same time when it began, and I just never got the habit. Someday I should get the DVDs and watch them; I miss a ton of cultural references.
Great. Now play, "Classical Gas."
16 Indeed, 'twas a Golden Age.
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