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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 18, 1980)
Page 10 THE BATTALION FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 1980 DIETING? Iven though we do not prescribe diets, we make\ it possible for many to enjoy a nutritious meal\ ihile they follow their doctor 7 s orders. You will\ le delighted with the wide selection of low\ :alorie, sugar free and fat free foods in the\ )Ouper Salad Area, Sbisa Dining Center Base-\ lent. OPEN Monday through Friday 10:45 AM-1:45 PM QUALITY FIRST Plasma Products, Inc. 313 College Main in College Station Relax or Study In Our Comfortable Beds While You Donate —Great Atmosphere — 10 Per Donation Call for more information 846-4611 Address yourself to a new lifestyle You’ve made it through another semester with flying colors. Now treat yourself to a better lifestyle. You deserve it. □ A new ad dress that has campus conveni ence. Patios or balconies for outside entertaining. Wooded seclusion or lively atmosphere. □ Southwest Village has a quiet atmosphere perfect for heavy studying. And you’re only minutes from campus via the shuttle bus. Southwest Village offers four floorplans, furnished or unfurnished, for families or adults. In your spare time, try our tennis courts, pool, wooded picnic area, and clubhouse with saunas and game room. □ Country Place caters especially to your needs: walking distance to campus. Semester leases. Lively all-adult atmosphere. Six floorplans, from efficiencies to two bedrooms ideal for roommates. To lure you away from too much studying, Country Place has a large swim ming pool and recreation room. □ Next semester, address yourself to a new lifestyle. No one deserves it more than you. isalH Country Place 3902 College Main. 846-0515 Southwest Village 1101 S. W. Parkway 693-0804 Now accepting applications for summer and fall semesters. - COMPASS PROPERTY MANAGEMENT, INC. Big-league baseball Players' abilities outweigh tendency to gold-brick MAKE FREE TIME Pay Off Help Supply Critically Needed Plasma While You Earn Extra CASH At: United Press International NEW YORK — Baseball enters the 1980s with a new relationship among the players, the owners and the fans. The change, created by a decade of convulsions during the 1970s,re volutionized the 100-year old struc ture of the game. The big question: where are the parties involved — the players, own ers and fans — likely to go in the 1980s? Where is this great sport heading i — this game that for more than 100 At the start of the 1980s, it is reasonable to suggest that base ball will flourish. years has survived the people who play it and run it? At the start of the 1980s, it is reasonable to suggest that baseball will flourish. Its ailments can very accurately be compared to those of the motion picture industry between 1920 and 1950. This was the Golden Age of Hollywood. Tinsel Town cap tivated America. It made shopgirls and auto mechanics into the goddes ses and gods of the entertainment world. It didn’t make any difference whether Harlow worked for Para mount or Gable for Goldwyn-Mayer. An intoxicated public turned out to see its heroines and heroes perform and catapulted them to pedestals of gold. The Harlows, Gables, Flynns, Coopers flitted from studio to studio. Their escapades made headlines which normally would have ruined people. But the public adored them. They excused the indiscretions be cause the guilty had brought them pleasure — and man has always been willing to pay a high price for plea sure. An exciting decade during which Babe Ruth’s career home run record was surpassed and a team other than the New York Yankees won three consecutive World Series, the 1970s will nevertheless be remembered for its off-the-field confrontations. These confrontations covered the whole range of the players’ relation ship with management and the pub lic. It brought about, first, a crucial alteration in the reserve clause and, second, a free agent market which some purists said threatened the foundations of the game. Average fans earning $15,000 to $20,000 a year were aghast to learn that the average salary of a baseball player in 1979 was $121,000. They marveled at multi-million-dollar contracts won by such players as Nolan Ryan, Reggie Jackson, J.R. Richard and Bruce Sutter to name only a few. They guffawed, as they had done during the 1950s when the players claimed they were slaves, when the owners said they would go broke. The fans chuckled at the players and owners alike. No one doubted the truth when Marvin Miller, ex ecutive director of the Players Asso ciation who is on the longest winning streak in the history of sports, noted, “if the owners ran their other businesses the way they run their baseball teams, they would all be HAPPY BIRTHDAY AGGIE! $g5C Send a personalized birthday cake to that special someone. /Student price: (Price includes delivery in Bryan-College Station area) Please make checks payable to: A&M Birthday Service P.O. Box 5613, College Station, Tx. 77844 Phone: (713) 779-3705 (Please call after 6 P.M. or on weekends) PCKIMG CHfltCSC RCSTAURAKT fp- STUDEITT SPECIAL SPECIAL COMBINATION DINNER NOON BUFFET — MON. thru FRI. SUNDAY EVENING BUFFET 3.50 2.98 3.95 All You Can Eat! S:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. OPEN DAILY — 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. 1313 $. College Ave. 822-7661 FREE FREE FREE paupers.” Ray Kroc, mercurial own er of the San Diego Padres, got the same reaction when he commented on Dave Winfield’s demand for a contract worth $18 million over 10 years, “if he wants to run the club, why doesn’t he make me an offer to buy it?” Some outraged voices were raised but, for the most part, the public viewed such antics with amusement. Sports writers, duly concerned with the wretched state of the world they saw around them, pontificated that baseball might be in the process of destroying itself. What other end could one predict for a summer sport which played its showcase World Series in the winter-time weather of Baltimore and New York while a winter sport like pro football staged its showcase Super Bowl in the sum mer-time weather of Florida and California? Now, in 1980 it is true that it is absurd for a baseball player who hits .230 to earn $121,000 a year when a It is pointless to tell today’s base ball players about Pete Reiser. They think he was a jerk. Reis er, a Brooklyn Dodger in the 1940s, was so dedicated that he smashed into walls nine times — and almost lost his life twice — chasing fly balls. man who helps build hotels by walk ing on girders 60 stories above Man hattan’s sidewalks makes $25,000. But life is full of absurdities and the men who walk the girders go to the ball parks and cheer for their heroes. More than 40 million people paid their way through the turnstiles to see big league baseball in 1979. They paid an average of $6 a person, con sidering parking lots and conces sions, which means the ball clubs had an on-the-spot income of about $250 million. Add to this an esti mated $75 million in radio and TV contracts and it is obvious that the sport is flourishing financially. And what do we have here with our baseball player of the 1980s? He is a businessman ballplayer, far re moved from the farm-breds of the 1920s or the depression-products of the 1940s. He is more at home read ing The Wall Street Journal than the Sporting News. He follows the buck. He couldn’t care less whether he plays in X-City or Y-City. The old College Station - Houston TRUCKING SERVICE — LET US TRANSPORT YOUR BELONGINGS HOME FOR THE SUMMER — CONVENIENT DOOR TO DOOR SERVICE TO HOUSTON! CALL: LARRY, 693-0225 WEEKDAYS BETWEEN 7 AND 9 P.M. 32 OZ. PEPSI/pepsi WITH 16" PIZZA — 2 QUARTS FREE! WITH 14" OR 12" PIZZA — 1 QUART FREE! 846-7785 concept of identifying with a city never enters his mind. Nor, to be honest to him, does it enter the minds of the modem cor porate owners. One, who sings a siren song of identification with his city, is, in fact, considering transfer ring one of the greatest of all franch ises to a neighboring state. This modem ball player is in the top one percent of the nation from a standpoint of income. He has a pen sion plan that is the envy of millions. He has such long-term contracts, with built-in clauses, that he can gold brick — and does — whenever he wants. The fans won’t find any Pete Reis ers among the modem lot. Reiser, a Brooklyn Dodger in the 1940s, was so dedicated that he smashed into walls nine times — and almost lost his life twice — chasing fly balls. To day’s players take the caroms off the walls and live to start the next day’s game. It is pointless to tell them ab out Reiser. They think he was a jerk. At the same time these insatiable brats are playing baseball better than it has ever been played before. The pitchers throw harder. The fielders field better. The hitters hit the ball farther. Everybody can run faster. They are the products of a bigger manpower pool. They were brought up from childhood on better diets. They had better coaching. They keep in shape during the off-season. They are superior in every way to the ancients of their sport. They are obnoxious but they are good. And they flaunt it. Boy, do they flaunt it! The greatest stories of the 1970s involved one man — Hank Aaron — and three teams — the Oakland A s, New York Yankees and Cincinnati Reds. Aaron, a splendid hitter who was not an activist in the black commun ity, topped Ruth’s home run record when he hit his 715th in the opening game of the Atlanta Braves’ season in 1974. His approach to the mark had been accompanied by a campaign of vilification. White America did not want a black man to break Ruth’s record and told Aaron so. He still bears the scars and no less a responsi ble person than Baseball Commis sioner Bowie Kuhn doesn’t s« understand why. The A’s, Yankees and Red;; polized the headlines. Tlie)i outstanding teams but in then the A s and Yankees theyn sented their time and in then the Reds they represented i something out of the past. The A’s, owned by contra: owner Charles 0. Finley, wot! The greatest stories of the involved one man- Aaron — and three (earns Oakland A’s, New York Ita and Cincinnati Beds. 'he Tex H » straight World Series —ans ment surpassed only by the II and 1949-54 Yankees. TheywAn trave irritating crew, however, kpete in the they wore handlebar mustack SCoach Bi sideburns like players of the : a tune-up f and fought among themselveqn Austin, clubhouse. They became ask ‘‘Most ev for what they did off thefieHiNix. “The b their accomplishments on it team s com Even an adoring baseball [|e ready and the cynical New YorkcmBeks.” cations media didn’t desen: s«Nix, whr Yankees ofSteinbrenner. He: Baylor, in crew of mercenaries, gather perimenti man obsessed with the dt Brown wil prove he was No. 1 in basebal»|| as in everything else he tri hand at, who violated every? of baseball’s long-time image . son, Thurman Munson, Mick® ers and all the rest — yes,theg^ __ fine ball players. But they-^|Ij.f Steinbrenner and his hyper^F ger, Billy Martin — wrote a • Texas At in baseball history that can eam described as shabby. n g f) ve l et | The Reds were an enctMifng \f c team and won two Worlds Two of t ! They were led by future Hallkojich Cher ers like Pete Rose, Johnny [he team ir George Foster, Dave ConsQ.]^ recorc and others. In a way, theysfC'ord and soj give baseball a certain amounir ‘They j ia> hility during the turbulent the best i On the other hand, theyalf With the the money and ran and "1 Rapp plans opportunity presented itsef running ch Where have you gont.Jgre Kelle DiMaggio? IOC may gran OK for hopefti United Press International GUNNISON, Colo. — Former world record holder and two-time bronze medal winner Dwight Stones says some American athletes may try to enter the Summer Olympics in Moscow, if given that opportunity by the International Olympic Com mittee. And, Stones says he believes the IOC will change its bylaws in an effort to offset the effects of an Amer ican-led boycott of the games. “I think the IOC will make it possi ble for everyone to compete, ” Stones said. “Lord Killanin (president of the IOC) will want to have as large a representation as possible. He has tunnel vision just like most Olympic officials do.” At present, no athlete can com pete in the Olympics without the sponsorship of the National Olympic Committee in his or her country. The IOC meets this weekend in Switzerland, and Stones says the Olympics governing body may vote to change its bylaws to allow for indi vidual entries. Stones, who was hop ing to make the American team for a third time, says he will not defy the U.S. Olympic Committee'skf' to boycott. ^ “I’m for the boycott andtis'j for it all along,” said Stones, bronze medals at Munich M treal in the last two Sumn® I pics. “There’s something ab body having a party in I yard and beating up some!* their backyard that just doessf with me,” added Stones, iij ence to the Soviet invasion o[| nistan. “Tl Stones, 26, said he others that the boycott will vere blow to amateur athleW United States but “the deci serve a greater purpose line. ” Stone also said while lies the decision by the U.S. 1 Committee to go dent Carter’s boycott pn feels the decision made sooner. Pot Va should ha'j “I think they (USOC)wW'j into making the decision, a« should have endorsed the t from day one,” Stone said MSC Arts Committee PRESENTS CRAFTS FAIR APRIL 19 RUDDER FOUNTAIN 9:00-5:00 p.m. S< Wt Roll or C BRI ‘ file Boll or C