The Day I Struggle Most to Be a Major League Baseball Fan

Thursday, July 31, at 6:00 p.m. is Major League Baseball's trade deadline. Some baseball fans and pundits consider this as an exciting time as teams make deals, acquistions, etc. It's become a prominent pseudoevent on the Major League Baseball calendar. Yet, as a baseball fan, this is perhaps the one moment every year that most makes me question my interest in following Major League Baseball. Those players who are dealt, acquired, etc. are people. So, all this excitement built around the trade deadline is actually excitment about people being moved about like property. Sure, some players, such as Nolan Arenado, have negotiated rights that allow them to veto this treatment or have a say in the process. Yet, by and large, the activity remains a relic of the system of labor that Curt Flood compared to slavery when he challenged MLB's reserve clause more than fifty years ago.

I continue to follow Major League Baseball, and because of that I have to acknowledge my complicity in this system. I suppose that because the players' union, which has been quite powerful and influential for the past six decades, has agreed to these terms, I am willing to live with them. At the same time, particularly as the trade hype crescendoes at this time each year, I would like to see that hype balanced with more stories that recognize more fully the humanity of the people involved and the real human effects of what happens when baseball players are traded. Even more, I'd love to see the practice of trading players (at least without their consent) abolished.