Daily Nebraskan
Thursday, October 4, 1934,
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omething strange is happening in
S baseball
The umpires, the perennial work
ing stiffs in this glamorous entertainment
business, are on strike. And Joe Public is
falling for management's pitch.
, During the 1970s and early 1980s, Major
League Baseball, the r ulin,j organization
of the American an. National leagues,
chose umpires tor the play-offs and the
World Series on a rotating basis. Thus,
each of the 52 men in the Major League
Umpires Association could umpire the
play-offs every four or five years and the
VVoi ld Series every eight or nine years.
MLB began to choose umpires for those
prime assignments on a "merit" basis in
1982. Thus, the money set aside for umpire
pay for post-season play could be distrib
uted only among those umpires in the
play-offe and World Series.
Brazen diet
The umpires' association thinks
umpires should be paid more and that
money should be divided evenly among
all association members.
Umpires now earn $10,000 each for
working the play-offs and $15,000 each
for the World Series. The association is
asking for a 100 percent increase in those
salaries.
Because of the distribution of the
money, each umpire would earn less.
Richie Phillips, attorney for the umpires'
union, said the extra $1 50,000 paid to the
umpires would not be missed MLB. MLB
received $15 million in extra revenue
from television this year. Phillips con
tends that $150,000 is only the umpires'
fair share.
MLB doesn't think the demands are leg
itimate and it has not granted any con
cessions. The umpires had no choice but
to strike.
Still, Joe Public wants to criticize the
umpires for the timing of their strike. The
Lincoln Journal-Star sports editor says
he has no sympathy for the umpires
because they chose to strike during the
"most important" part of the season.
But if the issue of the strike is play-off
and World Series pay, wouldn't it make
sense to strike during the play-offs and
the World Series?
Peter Ueberroth, the new baseball com
missioner, said the whole thing sounds
communistic to him. His comment about
the Puritan work ethic on national televi
sion had to tug at many American hearts.
"It's my understanding that if you work
you get paid," he said. "And if you don't
work, you don't get paid."
If that's the case, how can Ueberroth
support MLB's policy of paying play-off
money to second- and third-place teams
They don't participate in the play-offs, yet
they reap the financial benefits of them.
Dr. Robert Brown, American League
president, isn't worried about the quality
of umpiring in the play-offs. He has hired
a bunch of rank amateurs and says they
can do as good a job as the professionals.
Umpiring is a difficult profession to
enter. Hundred? of prospective umpires
enroll in umpire camp3 across the coun
try. Only a select few of those many
hundred are considered gcod enough for
entry into professional baseball. An um
pire can take more than a decade to work
his way from the minors to the major
leagues.
No amateurs can possibly take the
place of these experienced professionals.
Jeff Browne
Daily Nebrafk&n Buff Editor
keep registers ringing
IVe been seeing a lot of con
cern about fat lately in the
letters department. Since a
letter responding to one of my
columns spurred the ensuring fat
flurry, I feel partially responsible.
Briefly stated, my views on fat
are as follows: if you're fat and
comfortable, stay fat; if you're fat
and miserable, lose weight; if
you're mortally concerned about
fat people, you've got a fat hang
up; if you like to tease fat people,
you're a jerk.
That out of the way, I'd like to
turn my attention to the more
interesting billion-dollar dieting
industry. A 1883 Health Depart
ment study concluded that more
mes A.
-usseil
than half of America's 200 million
citizens are at least a little over
weight. A hundred million fat
people. America leads the world
in fat people.
So in America, what do we do
about it? We make money off of it,
that's what. Big money, and we
call it the diet industry. It's all
based on the hope that if you're 5
feet 4 and weigh 320 pounds, you
might just drop a few bucks to
drop a few pounds.
And step right up, America,
have we got a diet for you: diets to
keep you quiet; diets that make
you riot; baked, broiled and fry-it
diets; it-won't-work-but-try-it
diets.
Really, have you seen some
of these diet books lately? They're
all striving for that fresh angle,
that new approach that will keep
the cash registers ringing.
Among your choices: the low
stress diet, the vitamin diet, the
new enzyme-catalyst diet, the
think -yourself-thin diet, the car
bohydrate craver's diet, the rota
tion diet, the save your life diet,
the grapefruit diet, the color diet
and the Pritikan Program.
The freshest approach award
goes to a little white book that
can be found snugged between
Jane Fonda's and John Travolta's
exercise books in the health sec
tion of your local bookstore. It's
called, "The Only Diet There Is,"
which i3 an interesting title con
sidering that it's being dwarfed
by 50 other diet books.
I'm not endorsing the book, you
understand, I just find it to be a
brazen new approach. In the first
chapter, the book talks about Zen
monasteries and claims that a
proper diet b all a state of mind
that, in fact, we dont have to
eat at all, if we learn to "tune our
systems to a vibrational code."
Says the book, we absorb pure life
energy through breathing and
create new tissue as a direct pro
cess of thought. What a novel
idea. The ultimate diet don't
eat ever.
Which brings me to another
one of my favorites the water
diet. It's simple enough. Just drink
anywhere from 10 to 20 full glass
es of water a day. You're too busy
going to the bathroom to eat.'
And tfeen there's this reducing
place in Lincoln called K-Creeze,
which bills itself as a body wrap
boutique. Before I let anything
called K-Creeze touch my body,
IVe got some real questions for
these people. Do you have to get
naked for this? Even if I was fat,
I'm not about to strip to the buff
just to let some bimbo make a
gigantic eggroil out of me unh,
unh, no thanks, not me. But, ap
parently, it works for some peo
ple. Whatever floats your boat.
These diet centers are every
where IVe counted 10 in the
last week alone. But I'm realistic.
If just half of these places have
had the same success against fat,
for say, 15 years, which is how
long these places have been in
vogue, you're looking at a total fat
loss of 75 million pounds. That's a
half-million, 150-pound people
more than the population of
Omaha gone.
Where is all this fat going? Can
.it be salvaged and recombined
into something useful? It staggers
the imagination.
And what about grocery
stores? Safeway got out of town,
Hinky Dinky has closed a couple
of stores and tightened its budget.
And why? It's ail you dieters. This
is a grave economic situation
weVe got here.
And if it's not hard enough for
these stores to make a buck these
days, the equivalent of a half a
million people disappear before
their eyes, and former fatties who
once plunked down $110 a week
for groceries, now slink out of the
store for only $65 dollars.
Whammo! Another store manager
on unemployment.
But, hey, far be it from me to
tell you what to do. What do I
care about store managers? You
wanna diet? Diet. Ill even lend
you two new books "Break Out
of Your Fat Cell" and "Lower Your
Fat Thermostat."
But, please, if you're going to
diet, heed well the words of Mark
Twain. "Be careful about reading
health books," he said. "You may
die of a misprint."
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Daily Nebraskan. They are writ
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