Baseball-when the cheering stopped !

               Not too infrequently your columnist Mark Patinkin comes

    down from the dizzying heights of banality and writes something with

    a little punch that makes some sense. He loves baseball and the sport

    has been ruined for him by greed. I agree that millionaires - unlike

    oppressed and exploited blue collar workers -do not need a bullying

    union to get them " even " with equally greedy owners. A country

    club meeting and a gentle-men's agreement should suffice to ease

    their pain.

                I coming very close to thinking the same about teachers'

    unions.   Teachers deserve their rather high incomes for the harassment

    they put up with, for the stress and frustration and misery of the

    job. But MISERY does not produce market value. Our high schools are

    mass producing functional illiterates and intellectual incompetents.

           Would we have paid Henry Ford& Co. billions to mass produce

    cars that don't even start ?   I suspect that money is not everything

    in the educational process. Gifted teachers can be found outside the

    educational establishment. Teacher Unions have become a conspiracy

    of ignorance.

                 And oh yes, just to establish my " reactionary " credentials:

    I do believe in phonics and Western Civilization !