What does ‘strike’ mean to Little Leaguers?

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Oh, your youth sports forebears in the past have provided pithy quotes to any media outlet that asks, saying they just don’t get how adults playing a supposed kids’ game can walk out in the name of money. But that’s what the bourgeoisie wants you to think!

Do you think pro owners just give that money away because they love writing big checks? No way. For years they didn’t, and they got away with it.

True economic freedom for professional athletes came only after your parents were born, and while that seems like ancient history, it’s not.

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That freedom happened because the laborers revolted against the bourgeois owner class.

Youth leagues make it sound like you couldn’t live without them, but trust me, they couldn’t live without you. A walkout at a high-profile event such as the Little League World Series presented by Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes would bring them to their knees! They would lambaste you, say you fell under the wrong influences. Tony the Tiger would produce a statement saying the walkout was not “grrrreeeeATTTT!” But it’s what you have to do to get your fair share!

Your parents would have your back, though. You know why? Because, as the Chicago Tribune recently reported, they’re spending about $10,000 per kid in fees, travel and other expenses just to get you to the LLWSPBKFF.

Even if your parents are union busters or professional scabs for a living, they can’t ignore the chance to get that money back. In fact, you would have the sympathy of youth sports parents everywhere who spend enormous amounts of money, as they’re pressured, subtly and not-so-subtly, to feed a youth sports-industrial complex that dines on the parental insecurity that you’re never doing enough for your child.

I’m not saying that all of this is exactly the path Marx would recommend. In fact, I believe he technically argued for a society not based on a cash economy, one with an abolition of private property, which would eliminate the need for a ReMax sponsorship.

But this fight to get paid is not about the finer points of Marxist thought. This is about throwing off the yoke of oppression. If I may paraphrase Marx again, Little Leaguers have nothing to lose, but their chains.

Bob Cook is a contributor to MSNBC.com and a free-lance writer based in Chicago.

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