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.

Crowning Moment of Awesome- 09/29/2012

Who better for a Crowning Moment of Awesome than the Axis of Awesome showing how to play every hit song ever with four chords?

(Three swear words, so possibly NSFW).

Crowning Moment of Awesome- 09/22/2012

I'm reducing the "Crowning Moment of Awesome" Posts to when I find something truly amazing on the web.

This qualifies:

XKCD Brilliance 

Doctor Who Thoughts

I have become a Whovian, watching since the series was rebooted in 2005 and starting to watch many of the 'Classic' episodes.  (Favorite Doctor:  Right now Nine.  Favorite Companion:  Ace, with Donna RIGHT behind her).  So, as this season began, I chronicled my thoughts, comments, and criticisms:

**  NOTE:  Don't read further unless you've seen the episode.

1) I hated, hated, HATED the whole "Amy and Rory are divorcing" sideline. It felt false, it didn't add to the story at all, it wasted the actors. Every time that part of the story was brought up, I wanted to shoot the TV.

I will argue that, of all of the companions that I've seen, no one has been wasted more than Amy and Rory. Rory's only purpose is to show how much he loves Amy (and be a corpse when they want someone to appear dead for dramatic purposes). Amy's only purpose? Look good and be a damsel in distress for the Doctor. Blargh.

2) Now, the "Oswin as Dalek" twist? Loved that. Thought it was brilliant, and it caught me off-guard (though it shouldn't have). But...

3) They blew up the planet and killed her off?!?! NO! There were so many directions they could have taken that concept. Have the Doctor rescue her and try to 'fix' her. Or see if a Delak (even an 'insane' one) can fit in their universe as a protagonist. Or hell- when the Doctor forced her to confront the truth, have her go mad and vow revenge- giving the Doctor an insane Dalek foe who is actually SMARTER than him.

But to create a character that has so many storylines and then kill her off two minutes later? What a waste...

((Note: I retract this comment if she is brought back and they follow one of those storyline suggestions))

4) The "By the way, I've completely deleted all records of you to the Daleks. They have no idea who you are" strikes me as corny and bad writing. And it won't last past the next time they want the Daleks to remember that the Doctor is their enemy.

Crowning Moment of Awesome- 09/03/2012

I love seeing the future.  I love it even more when it looks like the Original Star Wars movie.

Crowning Moment of Awesome- 09/01/2012

Improv TV:  Make up a song, in the styles of 80's alternative, about gas station attendants, called "Wipe the Windows, Hang the Freshener, Let's Go"

Considering this was literally made up on the spot, it's amazing.  Better than half the songs out there today, in fact:

 

Is Clint Eastwood a mad genius?

Hear me out... actually, first, watch his performance at the Republican National Convention this week... then hear me out:

OK- I'm sure if you already are inclining to vote for Romney, you enjoyed this.  If you already were inclined to vote for Obama, you disliked this.

(And, if there's anyone who's truly on the fence right now, I'd be curious to hear their opinion on Clint's speech, both on levels of entertainment and for making political points.)

Here's my thought, though- every President gets caricatured.  W was portrayed as a shoot-first cowboy, Clinton as a "Slick Willie", George HW Bush as an out-of-touch patrician, Reagan as a doddering fool... it's in America's DNA to mock their leaders.  Hell, go back in the past years and see what was said about Teddy Roosevelt , Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or  Dwight Eisenhower.

But Obama's always been very hard to caricature.  No image has really caught on with the American public the way they have with previous Presidents.  In a time where there's about 18 million late night talk shows who are all too willing to mock Sarah Palin, Kim Kardashian, or anyone else... the President's always been treated with kid gloves.

Maybe it's Partisanship- I know some people like David Letterman are big Obama supporters.  Or maybe there's a fear that any mockery of President Obama is racist (Spike Lee had no problem calling Clint Eastwood a racist, and there is not one single note about race in anything that was said in the video above)

But Obama-as-Empty-Chair?  That's catching on.  It's caricaturing a large aspect of his Presidency- the man who makes grandiose promises but isn't there to deliver them.  It's a rough attack, but above the belt.  It's taken three and a half years into his Presidency, but there's finally a caricature image that is catching on with the American public.  

It just took an Oscar-winning director to find the right one.