Web sportznutz.com

Speaking of Sports

September 27, 2007

I have often said that no matter how Bud Selig and Baseball try to kill the proverbial golden goose, the sport continues to flourish. Don't ask me how but you cannot argue ratings and attendance.

Even with some of the smaller market teams dragging down averages, the numbers are simply astounding in any case.

Sadly, MLB could care less about you, the fan, and like robots you do as you are programmed by your parents or commercials on the tube or voice box. Like soldiers under orders from high above, you follow blindly.

Your pocket gets picked at the box office, more so by some unscrupulous owners, you pay for subscription services via cable/satellite or on the Internet and you don't get the full benefit of it like the other 200,000 or so who open their wallets yearly, two leagues with different rules and of course a first round postseason that defies logic.

Let's start with the latter and work backwards as the regular season is about to end.

The change began back in 1969 when two separate divisions were created due to expansion. Fundamentally, the rules still remained the same because it was like the New York Lottery, "You have to win it to be in it." In other words, second place meant October tee times instead of reporting to the park.

We had already crossed the threshold of plastic grass, elimination of scheduled doubleheaders, Ladies Day and some of the old traditions so even though there were more teams, some traditions were holding true.

I hated the changes, not the more teams but how some of those traditions were being trampled using "progress" as the catch phrase.

Progress in the National Pastime reared its ugly head when it had a football epiphany. It was called the wild card when those two divisions in each league went to three. Other than outs, innings and runs scored, odd numbers are, well, odd.

There were thirty teams by then meaning the American and National Leagues had a dilemma. Actually, it was Commissioner Bud Selig.

Any way you slice it, six divisions, thirty teams and in simple math that comes down to five teams in each. Rather odd, wouldn't you say? Selig was an odd fellow to begin with as he was an owner of a team who just happened to be the commissioner, an odd conflict of interest.

The resolution was to move a team from one league to the other to make it all even but in another odd turn of events it was Selig's team, the Milwaukee Brewers, that got their ticket punched from the A.L. to the star-studded senior circuit.

Be that as it may, you now had unbalanced leagues with unbalanced schedules and rules that were different in each. Odd.

For some years there was talk about contraction, the elimination of two teams in order to bring back equality but there were no John F. Kennedys or Martin Luther Kings around. Jackie Robinson was long gone from the game too. Equality to Selig was being odd.

As expansion was out of the question - add two and you get four, four team divisions returning tradition of being a winner to play extra games - it didn't take rocket science to see that keeping the 5x6=30 was not such a bad deal after all if someone had used their head.

Interleague play was already in vogue, so much for baseball's version of the separation of church and state, but instead of using it to an advantage keeping the odd as a positive, it was ignored which was really odd.

You take the teams with the worst record in each league from the year before and they play each other on the final homestand of the year to keep the integrity of the schedule. The 16-teams in one league and 14 in the other looks like a teeter-totter with an adult on once side and a child on the other. It's odd.

However, what is more odd is once you get through the regular season the playoff system had to come from the mind of a bunch of guys who had too much of their adult beverage sponsors.

All other sports, and I do mean ALL, set their postseason sked based on seedings. One plays eight; two plays seven and so on. Baseball, on the other hand is a numbers based games and they had a problem with the basic concept.

You have three division winners and a Wild Card, in other words a second place team. A runner-up. In any world, except baseball, that runner-up is the last of the four teams when it comes to setting the seeds.

Not so, mon ami, not so.

If you are the Yankees winning the East with the best record in the league and the Red Sox finish as the Wild Card, one and four could be from different planets as far as the powers that be are concerned.

Convoluted. Odd too.

So now we have learned that those making seven figures and up do not know how to count, they have one sport with two separate sets of rules and it is simply called the designated hitter.

The rule was originally designed to keep the older stars in the game longer and over the years it has become the biggest albatross around the neck of Major League Baseball. The first was Ron Bloomberg who became the first to step in the batter's box with his position in the scorebook listed as DH on April 6, 1973 at Fenway Park while a member of the Yankees.

I do not feel one way or the other about designated hitters as such, I just cringe when the World Series rolls around and it is used in games played in A.L. parks and not when it goes over to the senior circuit's yard. It becomes more trivial now that an exhibition, the All Star Game, decides on who has home field advantage in the Fall Classic.  

Very odd indeed.

Forget that fans now get to vote on how the first round of the playoffs is to be conducted, we have reached the bottom of the barrel when it comes to common sense.

Then again, no one ever said that Selig had a full deck to play with the way he looked away in the steroid era then proclaimed in front of Congress he wanted to rid his sport of it after a gazillion fans had already flipped the turnstiles padding bank accounts of his Brewers and the rest of his owner sidekicks.

But how odd is it that the sport sold its soul to DirecTV and after a serious outcry from fans and politicians, cable outlets got it back for their subscribers. That was the first salvo launched across the bow of the sport's fans. The cost jumped roughly 25% and that was in part to launch a 24x7 baseball channel that was two years from launch.

P.T. Barnum said it when he pointed to suckers being born every day. 

Fans get ripped off again yet they dig into wallets like disposable cash was more important than buying school books for their kids. Stand up soldiers, General Selig has issued marching orders like placing orders for Extra Innings.

So now you are the proud owner of MLBEI. You can watch hundreds, thousands of games. You are no longer baseball challenged; you are an owner of sorts.

Wanna bet?

It only happens a handful of times during the season when your home team is not telecast locally either on cable or over the air stations while they are on the road. So you look up the MLBEI schedule and you see the game is available on the other team's outlet.

You dial in at game time and then find out the game is "not available in your market."

What?

When you think about it, you are purchasing a yearly pay-per-view accessible daily.

If the game is not on in your area, there are no advertising revenues lost. And just because it is available on radio, the ratings and ad rates are apples and oranges, the squawk box revenues are dramatically different than their boob tube counterparts.

So why is there a blackout rule in this instance?

Then there is the issue of high-definition.

Recently the Devil Rays hosted the Yankees at Tropicana Field and was carried on ION-66 in Tampa Bay. The game was being shot back to New York in HD but not in the home team's region.

The local HD station on DirecTV had the Marlins game in HD and two clicks down on the MLBEI HD, there it was again. Double your pleasure, right? Do I watch it on 96 or 94? Odd. I never realized I could watch the game twice at the same time.

Now on Channel 95, the show description said Yankees at Devil Rays and a box appeared saying this wasn't available for me to watch.

A game played six miles from my house is in standard definition while fans 1,100 miles away can see it in 1080i.

Who do you blame? How do you complain? I've tried and it falls on deaf ears. Especially when I point out that I want to watch a road game that is available and not on locally. What the hell am I paying for?

Blackouts are for cities that lose electricity, not for the sports fan that pays extra for the privilege of watching out of town games they so prominently say in their ads to sell the service.

Anyone heard of bait and switch?

When it comes to baseball, fans have been getting the short end of the stick for quite some time but many of you just sit there and take it. Why? Don't care? Enjoy throwing away money?

Odd.