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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1977-10-19, Page 2,01.141180104fp 1ST! OBrussels Post 111PWSISE0 ()WARM WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1977 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community, Published each Wednesday afternoon. at Brussels, Ontario by McLean Bros. Publishers, .Limited. Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Dave Robb.- Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $8.00 a Year, Others $14.00 a Year, Single Copies 20 cents each. P*4' ivrtiespApias c°41/4-- Spending Teasel . Milannen,ML•••0101., - Amen j by Karl Schuessler Watching the game And some of the best fun, goes on in the stands. Watching the fans hype, hoop and holler while the teams hit a homer. Maybe there was a time when you could look at the game in sheer reverence. When men played for the ' love of it. When players stayed with a team for years, maybe played for meager wages. The players were heroes. Clean. Rugged.' Healthy types. No smoke. No drink. They were bigger than life. Olympian athletes who broke records and signed every autograph their worshippers wanted from them. Some of them are still around. And so are their fans. They give plenty of love and loyalty. Take the Toronto Blue Jays. They're only into their first year and they've got enough supporters to hold up Exhibition Stadium. One fellow I talked to - attended over. 100 games thisseason. My own- daughter's bedroom looks like a Blue Jay nest.What with her bats and balls, her Blue Jay baseball hat, torn ticket stubs and a huge wall poster that announced every Blue Jay game. And what Blue Jay fan doesn't defend his team and say the Jays didn't do all that bad for a first year expansion team? Montreal did worse their first time around. The defenses go on and on. The fan doesn't want to hear sports writers like Dick Beddoes. They don't want to listen that baseball and other sports have fallen on other days. To big business, To TV networks. To big wage contracts, , They don't want to hear that sportswriters not only tell the game, but they sell the game as well. But that's okay. Tell or sell. Big business or no. It's still fun. And when you put down y our $6.00 for a Blue Jay game, that's an entertainment dollar more than a sports dollar. So what? Go ahead. Eat' your popcorn, peanuts and crackerjacks.Root for your favorite team. Buy a souvenir pennant and a program. Have fun and enjoy.. That's what the game is all about. And where else' can you take your children and not have to apologize for the entertainment? I thought baseball was a summer game. But there it is - spread all over my T.V. screen, night after night and cancelling out the fall season fare. I know,. It's world series -- or should I say-world serious time? When the whole world hushes to the Yankee pitcher's windup and the Dodger's crack of the bat. It's the biggest battle of the baseball y ear and 'all the fans are huddled in front of the TV to watch the fray . But baseball? In October? When the frost is on the pumpkin and the grapes are hanging on the vine? I thought hot weather and beer go with baseball, not Oktoberfest sausage and falling maple leaves. This world series is putting my season out of joint. I've come to depend on September as back-to- school, washing windows and digging potatoes. And October as loaded corn wagons, plowed fields and football games. But there it is--summer's baseball in full fall swing. Let's face it. The whole sport s year is running late. Baseball 's crowding football: And football's barging into hockey. And winter hockey spills over into spring baseball. You just can't depend on sports to tell you what time of the year it is anymore. But there I go — taking sports too seriously. And if there's anything I learned all last week when I interviewed sportswriters and sportscasters, it was this, You have to understand that sports is fun and games. It's for fun you're watching the •game: It really doesn't matter in the big scheme of things who wins -- the Yankees or the Dodgers. Watching sports is play-pen fun. It's a toy thing. That's what Dick Beddoes says and he's been a Toronto sportswriter for over twenty years. You'd never catch him crying over a lousy game the Argos lost or whooping it up for a team that's won. He says let the yahoo fan do that. Let him support the Dreadful Ar gonuts and the Bad Blue Jays. As a sportsWriter he's in the press box — far above the screaming fats. He can see the game for what it is -- all fun. All games. No More. We are reminded by a recent release from the United Church that there has been a tendency over the years for Canadians to dismiss arguments that we live dangerously beyond our means. We regard them as abstract sermons that may be true but which require little or no change in our life styles. The fact is that we do and becaus .e we do, we are in a serious economic and moral position. We are looking for something-for-nothing. The hard, cold facts are that we have come to the end 'of the road in our attempts to have the government bankroll us. We have encouraged government spending to jump from 26 percent of the nation's output in the 1950s to 40 percent today. In cash tht means from $8 billion-a-year to $75 billion. It comes right out of the taxpayers Pocket, too. But instead of changing attitudes we kept demanding more so the government printed more money which merely added to the inflationary spiral. Then still unwilling to live within our means, we tried another tack, borrowing from foreign lenders. In 1975 and 1976 Canada became the world's largest per capita borrower. We didn't just borrow to improve our worn-out manufacturing systems and provide new jobs, we borrowed to continue financing consumption. Now the tax load Won't bear much more, the Bank of Canada won't print new money and the borrowing has eaten up enormous amounts of money in interest and repayments. "Where do we go from here?" we are asked. How do we get more out of our economy than it can provide?" We have no hesitation in endorsing the conclusions which the release reaches and which follow! "Perhaps for a change, w'e listen, start to live within our means and thereby take the' burden off the poor and underprivileged and find again what it means to conserve and save." To the editor: Thank you . o On behalf of the Brussels Business Association, I would personally like to thank you for the editorial you wrote about the Association in the Brussels Post. It was deeply appreciated by the members of the B,B.A. Thanking you. Ken Webster, President To the editor:, pressen by story I was very favourably impressed with the Editorial' "The Old Are People Too" published in last week's Brussels Post and written by Bonnie Richmond. I feel it is highly commendable. We should be very proud of a teenager of this calibre, who has se Mitch understanding and respect for the old people, and appreciates their Worth, Doris McDonald