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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 13, 1999)
The Battalion O PINION Page 9 • Tuesday, April 13, 1999 : appear in ad). This s: ills or you get an adds is scheduled to end!; irly. ROOMMATE te 2bdrm/1b8lMuplei bid lenced battyad pi 64*8521 Say it ain’t so Proposed advertising on uniforms ells disaster for national pastime imale summer. Ownb enced yard. $22Sbn>« jmmef'M I iutlle*ft S2S Doug SHILLING ASAP ar bus d ( ajor League Baseball just does not now when to quit. Many people bought that baseball vas brever doomed n 1P94 when players lecided to go on trike during the mid lie bf the season. *b**^***bb* Consequently, the owners decided the eason was not salvageable and can- eled the remaining games in the sea- on, This meant the World Series was lot played for the first time since it be- ;an play in 1901. Some people viewed this as a mortal vound to the sport and said it would lever be the same. However, in 1995 Cal Ripken Jr. re- itored some of the fan hopes when he broke, former Yankee great Lou Gehrig’s ecord for consecutive games played. .flyhen came 1998, quite possibly the greatest year in baseball’s illustrious dea , listory. There was the duel between '.mo c«i>ffl*o dark McGwire and Sammy Sosa to see — vho would could break one of the most mo pl"$i/!-.•' sought after records in all of profession- —jlsports — Roger Maris’ record for '""'S, (*{£• tome runs in a single season — a battle dcGwire ultimately won. -f- However, in 1999, Major League Jaieball owners and officials are set to SERVICE" in ^° ever Y t hing the sport has done to iirther its image since the strike in one ■eDmr. >iant, fell swoop. it is not really giant, it is small Fn(6pnv8(m| U t- t J °. ’ , vae-.i -i n fact; one inch by one inch to be ex- Lowest pnc 1 According to an article published on iiSPN.com, the men who run baseball ■ considering a proposal to add ad- r ertisements to the baseball uniform in to Austin/ Round Rooi d @ 779*2624. ef to snare 3tdn-. tt/Sbls. near TAM 30pm| j/cash 318 217. 846-6117 Repairs and Upgrades and Services Corrpasv ^Wtoi.nd.TT 1 way to bring financial parity to the ipenenced stylistfror^iplrt and offset the rising costs of play- '^lUudy'^- ‘ r SalarieS - _The fans of baseball out there have bribing, typing, et£ 9)775*8989 ust one thing to say to the men who ire considering that proposal: For the : r"TTa ove of all that is sacred, do not do it. other popular name Dud HlOVe SUCh 3S that WOUld SllOW 0 www viamallcc-. , L . i . .1 Clark accessories fflt owners care nothing about the sport and competition of baseball but TUTORS lust about one thing: money. That is the bottom line. d Tutor■ specialtyc«sb•jjj span s have already been forced to Sciences. Average test j r sage 690*7928 ' swallow corporate sponsors of pro sta diums. No longer do names such as WEIGHT LO&Jack Murphy Stadium and Candlestick Park grace baseball parks, but now fans ..ttsTpZIeiea^ are forced to swallow names such as eeded available at PostC- pf Qualcomm Stadium and 3Com Park. Originally slated to be named The Ballpark at Union Station, the Houston Astros new stadium now will be called Enron Park after the Enron Corporation, who shelled over 100 million dollars for that right. With all that money being handed out just to have a company’s name on a field, regular fans have trouble believ ing teams are in financial trouble. Baseball has always been a tradition alist sport and slow to change. Only re cently have the owners been brave to change parks’ names and move ads to the outfield and behind the plate and so forth. To try and move ads to the base ball uniform would be unacceptable. The uniform is a sacred thing and should not be tarnished. It should be used as a way to distinguish one team from another. As of now, the only things that are on a baseball player’s uniform is the team name, the player’s number and the logo of the manufactur er of the uniform. That’s it. Commissioner Bud Selig said on an interview with Jim Rome on” The Last Word” that baseball wants to keep the ads small on the uniform. However, with something like this, fans have to worry about the snowball effect. If the decision is made and is “suc cessful,” who is to say that they would not try to add another ad. Then another, then another, then another until eventu ally, a baseball player will look more like a NASCAR vehicle than a ballplay er. Who is to say that they would stop at ads on uniforms? Why not sell off team names to corporations? If this trend continues, the Texas Rangers will soon become the Texas Instruments Rangers while the Houston Astros will become the Shell Oil Astros. Selig also said that the owners want to use the ads to offset rising players salaries and the financial disparity be tween major league clubs. One solution to rising players’ salaries is very simple: Quit overpaying players and paying them outrageous salaries. Do not give an aging pitcher with a mediocre career record a 100 mil lion dollar salary because he has two good years in a row. There are only a few people in the history of sports that should be able to command that much money, and even then that would be pushing it. As far as bring the clubs together in terms of competitiveness, there are ways such as revenue sharing and im plementing a salary cap that would be much more effective in getting teams from smaller cities up to par with teams from the larger cities. There is also a question that arises: Wouldn’t advertisers rather have their ads shown on a big market teams uni forms rather than a smaller market team? Wouldn’t an ad on a Yankee uni form get more exposure than an ad on an Expos’ uniform. Unless a plan was drawn up, the ad vertisers would stick to the bigger mar ket teams and send the small market teams back to square one. In Little League, the teams always have some kind of sponsorships from local businesses’ displayed on their uni forms. One famous example is the Bad News Bears being sponsored by Chico’s Bail Bonds. The difference is those teams need the sponsors to actually field a team and buy equipment. The only reason for major league teams would be to facilitate the owners’ greed. The ads would in no way help out the team. But hey, at least fans could look forward to that World Series between the Texas Instruments Rangers and Shell Oil Astros. Doug Shilling is a sophomore journalism major. lose weight. Warned . Tatural, Doctor recoirmw- ccess rate! Call 279*98* and MeTrlm Plu». En|o( ose weight. EnergylW^ today!! 695*6983or telivery in B/CSI : Internet, network games addicts should seek help, need support David LEE ithout a doubt, one of the major factors of Texas A&M’s reputa- e tm. natural wep-K don as a top-tier university is its your llfell 40%0fl. MSS’ f I. . f , . .A . >3 (independentdistnw Jedication towards maintaining _______--J|iigh speed computer network ^re e co 3 2enK 30 F am P us to serve all Aggies, en at 888*216*2887 whether it is a Resnet-wired Jorm room or a computer lab, ; fc^^^™| lar8e RKYAN/C0LLEGE# 1U ^. b . K S t . a . ^ OSS . Ca P US ' .. discover With the integration of e-mail ind the Internet into the daily lives of all students, it is tard to imagine life at A&M without computers. Wn this month’s issue of Yahoo! Internet Life, Texas .&M is rated among the “100 Most Wired Colleges” merica, reinforcing this point. Fountains!Wind0*! However, as with all great things, this technology is eitic Art • Incense Wpen to abuse. In extreme cases, it turns students into cunt Reproductions'^mouse-happy, bleary-eyed computer addicts who dis- nps & Lanterns • Taf*”' eat Sterling SilverJ^I* regard their commitment to class and friends in lieu of their computer. These students, with the urging of their friends, need to seek help in order to break this addiction. Yes, it sounds silly but these students do exist in the dark corners of dormitories all across campus. Their neighbors see them rarely during the semester. They have erratic sleeping habits. They are virtual cavemen in their own rooms, surfing pornography sites around the clock, searching for MP3’s or play ing hour after hour of network computer games such as Quake 2. Things such as frags, pings and clans are essential to these people, more so than air or water. Instead of utilizing their computer and the Internet as the educational tools they were meant to be, these students exploit them as 24-hour entertain ment centers. As with any addiction, these students have trou ble admitting they have a problem. The Student Counseling Service (www.scs.tamu.edu) acknowl edges the problem does exist here at A&M, a prob lem serious enough to warrant the formation of sup port groups. Computer Addiction Services (www.computeraddiction.com) documents the psy chological signs of this addiction: “Having a sense of well-being or euphoria while at the computer, inabil ity to stop the activity, craving more and more time at the computer and feeling empty and depressed when not at the computer. ” Clifford Stoll, author of Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway sees this addic tion as a result of a need to escape from the stresses of everyday life. This makes sense considering the typical Aggie faces a mountain of stress during the semester, whether it be cramming for midterm exams or staying up until dawn hitting redial on the phone in order to register for classes. However, when taken to the ex treme, escaping reality on the computer has a disas trous effect on a student’s productivity. Poor grades and neglect of friends follow soon after. As with any other addiction, the person in ques tion needs a close circle of friends who can urge them to seek help. This problem is no different than drug addiction or alcohol abuse. Friends of these students who see all the warning signs mentioned must have the courage to confront the person about his or her problem. Whether it results in seeking professional help or simply relying on the ear of a friend, these students must be able to defeat this problem. They must be able to prioritize their real lives over the false reality of their computer and the Internet. Once they are able to do that, these stu dents will finally be able to shut down the computer with their own will power and get back to the im portant things in life. Move with caution though, friends. Sabotaging a hard drive may drive your troubled friend to insani ty. Quake does that to you. David Lee is a sophomore general studies major. aSJivents in Kosovo frightening reflection of Holocaust’s atrocities >ost Oak V* Tue-Sat*9pn No Cover Lisa FOOX n evil man im plements a plan that will destroy an entire seg- /l/lOlrfnt of his nation’s 0 Be encour- murder of inno- “^L.ce|it children, rape of and YPnnocent women, ring: death of innocent ii jvicCa^ 1 ' 1 ™ 8 and an atn> 1 -ions dehumanization of those he tar- iejs. These people are made into ani- als by a systematic plan. iSound familiar? The diabolical “final 'solution” for the Jewish people that ’frier engineered is being mirrored in oduy’s society by a man named Slobo- 'ari Milosevich and it must be stopped. "|A few months after the Holocaust Qded and the immensity of the sheer ©fror came to light, people began to ay catch-phrases like “Don’t let it hap pen again” and “Never forget.” They realized that close to 14 million people were killed for nothing more seri ous than the little skullcaps that they wore on their heads or their sexual lean ings. Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, mentally handicapped and Gypsies were murdered in droves and the people of that time knew that an atrocity like that should never be allowed to happen again or be forgotten. This is all ancient history, right? No body needs to worry about any of this anymore, because it could never happen again, right? Unfortunately, since the Holocaust, people’s memories have begun to dim and fade. As more and more Holocaust survivors die, fewer and fewer make an effort to remember what happened. This is how the door opens to anoth er mass genocide . . . In fact, a segment of society (headed by people called Negationists) deny that the Holocaust ever happened. They claim that the Jewish people fictional ized the whole issue for sympathy and that the U.S. government was in on the scam. Since this is obviously false due to the amount of documented proof and available evidence and testimonies, the idea is not widely held. The question that must be answered is what does all of this have to do with Milosovich. The answer is clear. Negationists who deny the Holocaust merely want to pretend it did not hap pen. Americans who claim that America should do nothing to stop the slaughter in Kosovo are unwittingly calling for the Holocaust to happen all over again. In Kosovo right now, the same terror and ethnic hatred is being witnessed that was seen in Europe. People are be ing killed for something as fixed and random as who their parents are and where they live. Although people said, “Never let it happen again,” it is happening and with a swift vengeance. This time, America is getting involved, they are helping, and for that society should be incredibly grateful. Instead, there are people who insist that the United States is too interfering and that the slaughter is none of “our soldiers’ business.” This argument was used in the early stages of the Holocaust to justify a vari ety of pretty nasty actions. One of these was the United States’ decision not to accept the Jewish refugees who man aged to escape to the U.S. in a boat. Not only did the U.S. send them away, but they shipped them back to Germany. The common argument back in those times was, “It’s none of our business to get involved. I’m sure its not as bad as they say it is.” Isolationism is akin to murder in these two instances. Isolationism is a cause for the death of many victims of the Holocaust and isolationism would be the cause of the murder of many more victims in Kosovo. How high would the death count need to go before it became “America’s business?” The time for action is now. The inva sion of ground troops into Kosovo is the only just, right and moral thing to do. Innocents do not need to die, so that American citizens can pride themselves on their uninvolvement. Do not let Hitler live again through Milosovich. Do not let death be the ringing cry of isola tionism. Rather, let America and NATO and all other nations of the world con demn the slaughter of innocents. Milosovich must be stopped. Lisa Foox is a senior journalism major