The Battalion
O PINION
Page 9 • Tuesday, April 13, 1999
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Say it ain’t so
Proposed advertising on uniforms
ells disaster for national pastime
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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
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and Services Corrpasv
^Wtoi.nd.TT 1 way to bring financial parity to the
ipenenced stylistfror^iplrt and offset the rising costs of play-
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_The fans of baseball out there have
bribing, typing, et£
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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.
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: 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
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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