A completely Justified Rant About Sports...

Hi- I just want to borrow a minute of your time to get something off my chest.

Now, I used to be a giant sports fans.  Baseball, Basketball, Football, you name it.  I can quote Berman, Patrick and Olbermann the way a music lover can quote Dylan, Lennon, and Page.  I have shelves full of books from the 1985 Chicago Bears to analyzing the baseball season of 1991 to the history of the ABA, which folded three years after I was born.  For all of the money I spent on clothes, tickets, books, and cheap tchotchkes that broke three days later, I should be driving a brand new Ferrari.

Before I moved to Cleveland I was a Cubs fan, and after I moved here became a fan of the Indians, Browns, and Cavs.  If you’re not a sports fan, consider yourself lucky.  If you are, then you know that my entire psyche is made up of emotional scar tissue from heart-breaking defeats, betrayals, and losses.  I have more emotional trauma from sports than anything my ex-girlfriends delivered, and there’s a long story why I don’t talk to people named ‘Beverly’.

I can handle losing.  I have 30 years of experience on that.  I can even tolerate a team run by a bunch of idiots who don’t know what they are doing.  Again, 30 years of experience.   But I finally realized was that I was investing time and money into an industry that goes out of my way to spit in my face, and I’ve gotten sick and tired of being their personal piss bucket.

If it’s not the player leaving his hometown to go check out the bikini-clad models on South Beach, it’s the coach gets upset that you point out that he’s really bad at his job.  And even once I stop buying the stuff myself, my money still goes to them because the owner cries poverty unless we spend our tax dollars buying them a state-of-the-art stadium with ticket prices far more than anyone I know can afford.

You know what I enjoy watching?  Pro Wrestling.  Now, people always cry that it’s fake.  My response used to be that so is the TV show ‘Homeland’, but people don’t seem to mind that.

But you know something?  Yes, Pro Wrestling is fake.

That’s.  The.  Damn.  Point.

You see in so-called ‘real’ sports, people can act like complete jackasses to the fans, because they have their contract.  They know that, because of fate or genetics or whatever, they can shoot or throw or run better than 99.99% of the world.  And that, apparently, gives them a license to make obscene amounts of money and lord it over the rest of us without suffering any consequences.

But in wrestling?  Sure, there are good guys and bad guys.  The bad guys want people to boo them, which is different that treating the fans like dirt.  The fans know wrestling is ‘fake’, and the wrestlers know the fans know.  So even when the heels are acting like bad guys, there’s always this wink that the wrestlers give than lets everyone’s in on the act.  But if you are a complete jerk, the fans will tune you out.  And there, it doesn’t matter if you’re the biggest, the strongest, the fastest, the greatest pro-wrestler ever- if the fans don’t like you, you won’t succeed.  

So Professional Wrestlers HAVE to treat the fans with respect.  They understand that, without the fans, they don't have a career.

Which is more than more sports stars know.

My rant about baseball

The MLB playoffs started today, and I don't really care at all.

It wasn't like this.  I grew up a Cub's fan, and was in my first fantasy league in 1986 at the age of 14.  I can still give you the starting lineup of the '84 Cubs.  Between being a Cubs and Indians fan, I can think of four absolutely heartbreaking endings (1984/1997/2003/2007) that I suffered through.

And maybe that's my problem- get beaten down enough, and you stop caring.  Lord knows I've earned the scars.  

But baseball itself has some serious problems- and regardless of the status of my teams, the sport needs to be fixed.  Here's what I see as the problems and the solutions.

Problem:  Baseball is too imbalanced between the high-payroll teams and the low-payroll teams.

OK, here's where I get the soapbox and rant about how the Yankees pay $200 million and most teams don't pay half of that.  Go ahead and take a look.  Players are always going to favor certain markets.  But only in baseball have they given up trying to balance things between the large market teams and the small market teams.  

And hey- baseball claims they're making money.  The small market teams make a profit, the large market teams get the glory and the higher ticket prices.  Maybe everyone wins- unless you're a fan of the small-market teams.  In which case there are three choices:

1)  Accept It
2)  Stop watching altogether
3)  Embrace it and become a fan of a Large-Market team

Solution:  If they do want to fix it, besides a salary cap and floor, they need revenue sharing.  Now, for tickets at the ballpark they already have revenue sharing.  But where the large-market teams make their fortune are in the cable deals- which are not shared with the other teams.  

But again- maybe baseball has calculated that they do better with six superteams and 24 jobber teams.  And if that's what they want, enjoy.  I'm just not participating anymore.


Problem:  Too many playoffs

People were celebrating how 'exciting' the end of the season was.  Basically, they were watching a race between the fifth and sixth best teams.  Oooh.   Ahhh.

Now, if we went back to the pre-1969 days of no divisions, every game would count, and it would have come down to the last day of the season to see who'd go into the World Series.  Even the two-division days would have been exciting.

The rule of thumb:  The more playoffs there are, the less exciting the regular season is.  By adding so many teams to the playoffs, you've made the regular season less and less relevant.  

Solution:  On this one, I'm ideally a purist- get rid of the divisions.  Two leagues, no interleague play, winners face in the World Series.  I doubt I'll get my wish, but if we could go back to two divisions, I'd be happy.



Problem:  Moneyball.

The problem with the 'Moneyball' philosophy is not that it failed.  It's that the philosophy (get players with hig On-Base Percentage and Power to generate the greatest number of runs) succeeded.  29 teams in baseball now try to emulate this style of baseball.  Seattle is the only exception, and sadly they don't do well enough to challenge the model.

The problem is, the Moneyball style, while being the most efficient style to win games, is also... what's the word I'm trying to say...  boring.  Hitters wait and try to draw walks and wear down pitchers, leading to long, slow boring innings.  Less contact, more walks and strikeouts, very few stolen bases.

I don't blame the teams- they are trying to win.  The problem is, the way baseball is set up, the best way to win is also the most monotonous.

I grew up in the 80's.  You had teams that won with power (86 Mets).  That won with speed (85/87 Cardinals).  That won with Pitching (85 Royals).   George Brett could hit .390 one year, then another year Rickey Henderson would steal 130 stolen bases.   Different styles could succeed- and that made the game better.


Solution: Expand the strike zone, encourage more parks that favor pitchers and discourage home runs... if necessary, deaden the ball.  I don't want to go back to the pitching-dominated 60's... just to the sweet spot that we had in the 80's.



Maybe if we did these things I'd go back and proudly call myself a fan again.  Sadly, at this moment in my life, I'm not.  And I'm not sure if I'll be going back anytime soon.

Really?

For crying out loud... we're 15 TRILLION in debt, the CBO says unemployment is actually closer to 15%, Greece is ready to default and take the Euro down with it, and things are breaking down between the US and Iran.  A lot of serious problems in the world.

And we're arguing over contraception?!?

Look, I'll answer the contraception question easily.  Condoms are cheap, buy them your own damn self.  End of story.

The bigger problem is that there are serious issues in the world, we're trying to elect a President and Congress to handle these issues the best way possible, and we're getting sidetracked by the most idiotic issues possible.

This isn't even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  This is arguing over the colors of the seat cushions, while the ship is heading towards the giant Iceberg. 

I'm pissed at all sides.  I think President Obama is giving a first-rate example why we shouldn't elected unqualified people to the highest office in the land.  But the GOP are self-destructing to a degree that we might end up giving him another four years to ignore the debt and come up with economic solutions that don't work.

Gingrich is a disaster, Santorum is a walking stereotype of what non Conservatives think Conservatives are really like, and Romney comes across as phony as a $3 bill.  (And I say this as a Romney supporter)

My big fear isn't that these guys aren't offering the right solutions.  It's that none of them seem to be aware of what the real problems are.