The "Blue Collar" Cliche

There is a place in the world for cliches.  Regular readers of The Grandstander know that I use them all the time, and, in fact, the reason that cliches become cliches in the first place is because they are usually stating a basic and obvious truth.

All that said, I would like to make a motion that we retire the age old cliche about this-or-that sports team being a bunch of "blue collar guys" or that this-or-that athlete is a real "blue collar guy".  In an in-game interview with Giants pitcher Jake Peavy during last night's NLCS game, Peavy left no cliche unturned when he spoke of how the Giants always "come to play" and about how they will always "show up and grind it out"...that kind of fun drivel, but he concluded by saying, and I may not have it exactly correct, that "we (the Giants) are a bunch of blue collar guys who show up everyday with our lunch buckets and thermos bottles" and so on and so forth.

Marilyn, whose father actually WAS a blue collar guy (an electrician at J&L Steel), and who knows what baseball players make in terms of salaries, looked at me and said "Do you think any of those guys actually know what a lunch bucket and thermos bottle actually is?" 

So, yeah, let's put that old "blue collar ethic" cliche to rest, once and for all, at least where it applies to professional athletes and sports teams in America.'

(Having said that, I'll bet you a dollar that such a reference will made by the network announcers at least once during today's Steelers-Browns game.  After all, Pittsburgh and Cleveland are two "rust belt" cities that were built by the "blue collar work ethic" that both teams will no doubt be displaying his afternoon.)