I Thought He Was Dead!

Shank gets his one mile run in with his weekly CNN / SI article. It's about what you'd expect from him concerning owner / player disputes:

Dueling lockouts. Call me when they're over.

My strategy with sports labor stories is pretty simple: ignore, ignore, ignore. Back in the days when I was a baseball beat reporter I spent far too much time speaking with Marvin Miller, Ray Grebey, Donald Fehr, Gene Orza, Ken Moffett, Mark Belanger and anyone else with a sabre to rattle.

I remember the long hot baseball strike of 1981, and the NFL playing games with replacement players in 1987. I remember baseball's charade of replacement teams in spring training in 1995. I remember management and players' reps trying to manipulate the message and all the bad reporting that's done when sportswriters wander into labor issues.

Fans hate sports labor stories and you know what? Same goes for those of us who write about sports. We didn't get into this business to spend time dealing with the National Labor Relations Board.

I hope his strike / lockout from the Boston Globe takes the same amount of time to resolve...