Boston To Boycott?

And the MLB still sucks. (But the picture I'm including in this post is pretty cool. I hope she's at least 18.) At least their brass that decided it would be a good idea to reneg on the $40,000 pay day bonus that was originally promised to coaches and staff members of the team does. The players have all voted unanimously that they will not get on the plane to Japan to play their opener against the Oakland A's if the MLB doesn't hold up their end of the bargain on these payouts to the staff.

This may initially appear to be a bunch of greedy, overpaid baseball players intentionally sitting out because something isn't going their way, but if you have half a brain you'd realize they are sticking their necks out for a group of people that aren't protected by one of the most powerful sports unions in history. The MLB pretty much promised them everything under the rising sun to get them to go over their to open the season. Why would you want to anyway? I'm pretty sure I'd be more worried about starting my season off the right way rather than spreading the goodwill of baseball all over the world at the expense of my well-being. Maybe I'm just a self-centered asshole.

The fact will be that no matter what baseball decides as an organization, the Sox will be on a plane to start their season on March 25th. Maybe if the players are really sore about it they could pay the stipend that the MLB is backing out of themselves. I'm sure they could afford it. I highly doubt this happens though. The problem with me is that this is no way to start off a season while looking to repeat last year's success. Curt Schilling is out for at least half of the year, Beckett is having issues getting out of training, Ortiz is coming back from knee surgery, Crisp vs. Ellsbury in center (although I don't really see this as a problem), Bartolo Colon and generally mediocre play so far. Questions in the starting rotation don't help a whole lot either.

The big problem here with this situation is that Bud Selig is a giant dickhead with ears. Always has been, probably always will be. The guy owned and ran the Brewers for Christ sake. What did you expect? Anyway, $40k for the hard workers in the Sox organization in the grand scheme of things for this little venture are peanuts compared to what they (Major League Baseball) are probably making off of it. This could split the team a bit, since it was not a unanimous decision to go to play in Japan in the first place, or it could bring the team together even more in the face of King Bud. The only thing that can happen now is to get the season underway and see where the chips will fall on the season. If everything comes together the Sox have the potential to at least win the division. If the situation splinters and these problems are compounded by more problems, I wouldn't bet against a collapse like in 2006.