Why the hell can’t people wait anymore? Seriously.
There have been a lot of stories lately about the “Mommy Wars” and a recent book stating that it is a danger to women if they step out of the rat race to rear children. As with any complex, multifaceted problem, I can’t help but boil it down to a few salient points.
-It is really, really fucking hard (and expensive) to raise a kid.
-It would be a great idea if someone, mother or father, or ideally, both, would be able to stay home, for months, to help raise a baby, like you can in Europe and most civilized countries.
-In America, this is never, ever going to happen, ever.
-Some women are going to be able to leave the workforce for a while. When they come back, their prospects will be diminished, because their value to the corporation will be diminished.
-This is deeply unfair.
-This is never going to change
-Having your children raised by others, no matter how well meaning or skilled, is different than raising them yourself.
-This is also unfair.
-This is also never going to change.
I can’t see my way, logically, around any of these tenets. If I’m wrong, please tell me.
I guess I have to say something about Roger Clemens going to the Yankees. There seem to be a couple of camps on this one-the “how dare he demand all this special treatment” theme, and the “there the Yankees go, buying everything again” theme. Let’s be honest, this doesn’t help the Red Sox at all, so this disappoints me at least a little. But I’m not sure at all how much it helps them, though. Sure, adding a Hall of Famer won’t hurt them. But I’m not sure if Roger is capable of being more than a 6 inning pitcher, especially at his age, and in the American League. (Granted, that is an improvement over the pitching the Yankees have been getting.)
“How dare he demand special treatment?” I remember reading a story about Chuck Tanner and Dick Allen, where Tanner was asked why Allen was allowed to skip batting practice without repercussions. Supposedly, if I am remembering it right, Tanner said that everyone else who hits 30 home runs and 100 RBI can skip batting practice too. Well, all the other 300 game winners have a right to get treated like Roger does. Roger’s deal was clear-if you want me, here’s my price-and that price includes special treatment. If that’s not acceptable to you, then no deal. There’s a refreshing honesty about it.
It kind of makes me wonder about the Torre Yankees, though-supposedly, when Ruben Sierra signed with the team, he came into the clubhouse wearing earrings, and one of the team leaders, Posada or Jeter, came over and told him simply, “we don’t do that here,” and the earrings never appeared again. I wonder how much of that can/will apply to Roger.
“Yankees buy everything”. Well, sort of. I have to admit, if I were a Yankee fan, I’d love it. The team wants to win, and as much as they spend, they have it available because they are so popular. And as a fan, an owner obsessed with winning is exactly what you want.
Roger Angell wrote about this once-when the salaries were orders of magnitude lower, but it’s still the same feeling. He noted that Yankee fans in the Mantle/Maris era felt entitled to victory. If they lost, it was “these bums-they get paid all this money for THIS?” Is it possible that the Yankees are finding that, at a certain point, no amount of money is enough-you can’t buy enough stars, because there are only 9 positions on the field (10 of you count DH) and veteran stars either slump or get injured too much for you to depend on them EVERYWHERE.
I’m coming into a semi-anti baseball period right now. I wax and wane with my baseball interest, and right now I’m waning. Just kind of tired of it. It will pick up again, but right now I’m thinking about less fun, more morbid things.
Which is I guess why I just spent all this space blogging about baseball.
Sigh.
There have been a lot of stories lately about the “Mommy Wars” and a recent book stating that it is a danger to women if they step out of the rat race to rear children. As with any complex, multifaceted problem, I can’t help but boil it down to a few salient points.
-It is really, really fucking hard (and expensive) to raise a kid.
-It would be a great idea if someone, mother or father, or ideally, both, would be able to stay home, for months, to help raise a baby, like you can in Europe and most civilized countries.
-In America, this is never, ever going to happen, ever.
-Some women are going to be able to leave the workforce for a while. When they come back, their prospects will be diminished, because their value to the corporation will be diminished.
-This is deeply unfair.
-This is never going to change
-Having your children raised by others, no matter how well meaning or skilled, is different than raising them yourself.
-This is also unfair.
-This is also never going to change.
I can’t see my way, logically, around any of these tenets. If I’m wrong, please tell me.
I guess I have to say something about Roger Clemens going to the Yankees. There seem to be a couple of camps on this one-the “how dare he demand all this special treatment” theme, and the “there the Yankees go, buying everything again” theme. Let’s be honest, this doesn’t help the Red Sox at all, so this disappoints me at least a little. But I’m not sure at all how much it helps them, though. Sure, adding a Hall of Famer won’t hurt them. But I’m not sure if Roger is capable of being more than a 6 inning pitcher, especially at his age, and in the American League. (Granted, that is an improvement over the pitching the Yankees have been getting.)
“How dare he demand special treatment?” I remember reading a story about Chuck Tanner and Dick Allen, where Tanner was asked why Allen was allowed to skip batting practice without repercussions. Supposedly, if I am remembering it right, Tanner said that everyone else who hits 30 home runs and 100 RBI can skip batting practice too. Well, all the other 300 game winners have a right to get treated like Roger does. Roger’s deal was clear-if you want me, here’s my price-and that price includes special treatment. If that’s not acceptable to you, then no deal. There’s a refreshing honesty about it.
It kind of makes me wonder about the Torre Yankees, though-supposedly, when Ruben Sierra signed with the team, he came into the clubhouse wearing earrings, and one of the team leaders, Posada or Jeter, came over and told him simply, “we don’t do that here,” and the earrings never appeared again. I wonder how much of that can/will apply to Roger.
“Yankees buy everything”. Well, sort of. I have to admit, if I were a Yankee fan, I’d love it. The team wants to win, and as much as they spend, they have it available because they are so popular. And as a fan, an owner obsessed with winning is exactly what you want.
Roger Angell wrote about this once-when the salaries were orders of magnitude lower, but it’s still the same feeling. He noted that Yankee fans in the Mantle/Maris era felt entitled to victory. If they lost, it was “these bums-they get paid all this money for THIS?” Is it possible that the Yankees are finding that, at a certain point, no amount of money is enough-you can’t buy enough stars, because there are only 9 positions on the field (10 of you count DH) and veteran stars either slump or get injured too much for you to depend on them EVERYWHERE.
I’m coming into a semi-anti baseball period right now. I wax and wane with my baseball interest, and right now I’m waning. Just kind of tired of it. It will pick up again, but right now I’m thinking about less fun, more morbid things.
Which is I guess why I just spent all this space blogging about baseball.
Sigh.
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