Former Atlanta Braves first sacker says if it’s only money play ball

As the Atlanta Braves await the start of a season, one highly paid former player says money can’t be responsible for baseball shutting down until 2021.

Atlanta Braves former first baseman Mark Teixeira spoke with Mike Golic on his morning radio show and later appeared with Jeff Passan and Mike Greenburg on ESPN’s Get Up.

In both interviews, they discussed the possibility of playing baseball in 2020, the current disagreement over-pay, and what it would take to have baseball this year.

The interviews sparked a firestorm of angry, cheap shots on Twitter, and in at least two online written media sites.  Listening to and reading the criticisms made me wonder if they were paying attention to what was said.

I know that’s rare in today’s media frenzy, but some of the things attributed to Teixeira were said or implied, while they accused him of not saying the things they wanted him to say.

Their primary gripe/complaint/whining cry came in the form of a logical fallacy called a false cause. It seems that because Teixeira made money as a baseball player and now an analyst for ESPN, he no longer has the best interests of players at heart.

However, Teixeira was absolutely clear about his position on the radio

". . . from a players standpoint, I want 100 percent of my salary for every game played. However, these are unprecedented times. . unfortunately these are unprecedented times, and the owners 50-50 split is not unreasonable . . ."

He went on to make the point that, had the season gone as planned, the player split of revenues projects at just over 47 percent of revenues,

(This quote is from the interview included in the Tweet that follows.)

"“. . .  I think players need to understand, just this one time, one time in the history of the union – since Curt Flood – they can bend a little bit, and say, you know what, we’re going to do what’s best for the sport – what’s best for the country.  There’s people out there risking their lives in the front lines, they’re people that are losing their jobs, that’s losing their savings, and we know this might not be a great deal for us, but it’s better than sitting home and not playing baseball . . ."

The radio interview got the ball rolling, and the TV interview should have clarified his position and ended this ado about nothing. Naturally, it didn’t.