[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 4, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H4149]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  BACK TO THE FUNDAMENTALS ONCE AGAIN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bilbray). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Poshard] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. POSHARD. Mr. Speaker, I love baseball. Growing up in farm country 
in southern Illinois, I always managed with my cousins to start the 
baseball season this time of the year with some pickup games, and I 
dreamed of the time that I could become a baseball coach. I went into 
the Army when I was 17, and I got out at age 20 and started going to 
the university. I got a bachelor's degree in physical education and 
became a baseball coach. I started coaching in a small rural high 
school. After the basketball season had ended my first year of 
coaching, it was only a few weeks' time that we had to get into the 
baseball season. In between that and the April showers we did not have 
much practice time. Lo and behold, the kids had not had the privilege 
of playing in Little League or Pony League or Legion Ball, so they knew 
nothing about the fundamentals of baseball.
  In our first game of the year we were playing another team in a 
nearby community. We were behind 9 to nothing in the bottom of the 5th 
inning. In high school ball there is a 10-run rule. If you are behind 
10 runs at the end of the 5th inning everybody goes home. They make the 
assumption you are not going to catch up; the game is over.
  So the opposing team had the bases loaded and nobody out. If the kid 
on third base scores the game is over and we all go home. So I walked 
outside the dugout and yelled to my men in the infield. I said, ``Okay, 
men, let's bring the infield in for the play at the plate.'' I turned 
and walked back to the dugout and every single kid on the infield 
followed me straight into the dugout. Well, I was shocked. Derisive 
laughter came out of the stands. People were guffawing their heads off. 
I chewed my kids out. But the truth is, on the way home I got a guilty 
conscience. You see, it was not their fault that I had not taught them 
a basic fundamental of the game, how to bring the infield in and throw 
the guy out at the plate. It was my fault. I had forgotten to teach the 
fundamentals. I want to tell you in this last baseball strike here lots 
of fundamentals were forgotten, mainly that baseball is a game. But let 
me tell you about a labor-management dispute that is not a game.
  In my district the United Paper Workers, the United Auto Workers, the 
United Rubber Workers have been in the midst of a labor-management 
dispute for some as long as 2 years. These are people that will never 
make a million dollars in their entire lifetime.
  They are not cry babies. But their babies are crying. No jobs, less 
food on the table, no health insurance. These people do not labor in 
high-paying, hero-worshipping jobs in right field or center field or 
even the infield. They labor in coal fields and cornfields and wet-
milling plants and making rubber tires and making heavy equipment, 
tough jobs.
  When their complaints of unfair labor practices were filed, some as 
long as 2 years ago, no one expedited their case in the National Labor 
Relations Board. When their employers locked them out in the case of 
the rubber Workers permanently replacing them because they wanted the 
same contract as this Japanese-owned corporation that their 
counterparts had received from American companies, no Federal judge 
said a word. Why? Is their labor less worthy? Are their families less 
important to the welfare of this country? How can we be so out front 
for people making $4 million or $5 million a year and so reluctant to 
help people making $20,000 or $25,000? I know unions are not in favor 
today. But I grew up in coal-mining country. I saw young men go down 
into the mines and come up, at 35 years of age, with black lung and die 
and leave their families with nothing, until the UMWA organized. I saw 
the working conditions change so that accidents did not take hundreds 
of lives.
  Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, I am not asking for the administration or 
the Congress to take sides in this labor-management dispute, but I am 
asking that the same sense of urgency and concern be given to the 
working people of this country.
  Let us not forget the basic fundamentals of what built this country: 
Respecting people's work and expecting that their government will go to 
bat for them no matter their station in life or their position of power 
and influence in this country.


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