Say what you will about baseball. It’s OK if you think the teams are owned by a bunch of old, money-grubbing, heartless evil men. It’s OK if you want to refer to the players as selfish, greedy and apathetic. Just don’t call it boring anymore.
Yes, baseball has its problems, but being boring is not one of them.
On one hand, we might have just witnessed one of the greatest World Series ever played.
It had everything a baseball fan could hope for and more. We saw dramatic home runs, incredible pitching, record-breaking hitting and, of course, the Yankees losing.
Whether you were a baseball fan or not, anyone watching this year’s World Series had to have been intrigued. Watching Tino Martinez’s incredibly dramatic game-tying home run with two outs in the 9th inning was something that would be too corny for even Hollywood to script. Watching it happen again the next night was simply unbelievable.
Watching Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson shut down one of baseball’s greatest dynasties was simply breathtaking. When Luis Gonzalez’s base hit floated over the infield in Game seven to win the game, it was a perfect end to a historic series.
On the other hand, watching Bud Selig stand at a podium 48 hours later was the beginning of a terrible nightmare.
I didn’t think it was possible for Selig to mess up baseball anymore than he already has. I know it was not entirely his fault that the strike in 1994 occurred, but he was the man in charge and if there is any one man to point a finger at, it would be him. He was at the helm when the World Series was canceled.
The World Series had happened every year since 1904. It had survived both World Wars, it had survived a gambling fix, it even survived the Yankees winning an average of once every four years. But Selig gets his power and the whole party comes crashing down.
Now Selig wants to throw that power around some more. It is obvious Selig sees a problem. He does see that there is a disparity between the big market teams and the small market teams.
It’s not too hard to figure out that the Yankees and Diamondbacks are going to win when they spend $100 million dollars on their players. We see many of the same teams at the top every year.
It’s like a baseball cycle. People want to see the winners, the winning teams get more money from revenue, they can spend more money on the better players, they win more games, and people come out to see them, restarting the cycle.
Sure, every now and then a team like the As or Twins builds a good team from the ground up, but as soon as those players hit the free agency market, they’re out taking the big bucks and playing in the big markets.
Selig thinks he has something that can help this problem. His solution? Contraction.
OK, one of the teams being discussed in contraction is the Montreal Expos. I’ll be honest, if the Expos disappeared from the universe, I’m not even sure if I would notice until at least June.
The other team rumored to go is the Minnesota Twins. This is what makes me sick about the whole situation. How are you going to disband a team as rich in baseball history as the Twins are?
They were the first to draw 3 million fans in a season. They have won two World Series titles since 1987.
They were in first place in their division as late as July. And Bud Selig wants them gone.
People keep saying that baseball has problems. Baseball can be a great sport.
