Baseball Diatribe

I'd like to revisit this, as awhile back (this summer) I was praising baseball as a sport. I'd like to take a moment now to rescind those nice things I said about baseball. Let's refresh our memories to my words:

"You guys are crazy, baseball is amazing, problem is it hasn't been the same since the great strike-shortened season of 1994. That killed baseball for so many hardcore fans, including me, for a very long time, and it still hasn't recovered. Now, baseball is tainted by steroids, free agency/overinflated contracts, A-rod egos, ridiculous marketing tactics (interleague play) and Kenny Rogers blowups. You guys obviously didn't enjoy baseball in its heyday, and now it's soiled, so you're understanding a different kind of baseball that what I grew up with loving. Fact remains though, baseball is the real thing."-AES June 18, 2007

Now, lets fast forward a few agonizing baseball-following months to my new philosophy on baseball:
"Baseball sucks the life out of humanity.” –AES October 5, 2007

Ok, so this may seem like a rash decision, but trust me, it’s the product of months and months of soul-searching, guided by the fleeting joy, pain, frustration, and all other accompanying emotions that come with being a Philadelphia Phillies fan. Throughout the summer and into the fall, I’ve been following baseball, reading articles, watching games when I can, checking the Gamecast. All for what? For Nothing. No bliss, no championship, no celebration, no champaign. Only a feeling of despair and nothingness. So, screw it, I’m done with you baseball.

Arguments for my renunciation of baseball:


1) Season Too Long

162 regular season games (per team). Seriously, there is non-stop baseball from April to October. It’s too much, trying to watch every game is enough to make any sane man crazy. Think about this, the avg. game lasts about 3 hours and 30 minutes. If you made an effort to watch every game of a particular team, say the Phillies, that would total 567 hours per season watching baseball, or roughly 24 days! 24 days of straight baseball watching in a season. Seem ridiculous, it is. Get a life baseball fanatics!

But here’s the thing, because the season is so dreadfully long and there are so many games, each individual game is essentially deprived of any substantial value. So how can a sport that is made of a collection of insignificant parts be of significance as a whole? Fact is, it can’t. And I didn’t even get to the part about how a quarter of the team are out of playoff contention by the All-Star break anyways, what we’re left with is tons and tons of hours of meaningless baseball (see all games played between the Nationals and Marlins since June).

2) Playoffs Too Short

So, the baseball season is way too long which brings me to my second point: the playoffs are way too short. Now, I’m not going to argue that we should let more teams in, we don’t want the playoffs to become a joke, letting just about every team in (see NFL or NBA). No team with a losing record should ever make the playoffs (again NBA and NFL), so I think 4 per division is a perfect number. However, if we’re going to only let 4 teams in, can we please at least give the first matchups a god damn 7 game series! What the Fuck! These 5 game series are a joke, pathetic and disgraceful. For a sports like baseball that plays so many damn games in the first play (see argument #1), why must be all of the sudden we get all stingy with the number of games once the good part of the season gets here. For a team like the Phillies (or Yankees) this year, who’ve worked so hard to overcome the Mets all season, to see their season finished after just 3 playoff games makes baby Jesus weep. A travesty.

3) Tickets Too Expensive

Pretty self-explanatory. You would think that the basic laws of free-market capitalism, supply and demand, would be adhered to with regards to baseball ticket price. Nope. An overflow of baseball games does not equal cheaper tickets. A losing record, no hopes of playoffs, playing for nothing, waste of space game does not have discounted prices. What The Fuck. Hmm, what else can I buy for the price of decent seats that would otherwise be empty at a 3.5 hour meaningless baseball game? Let’s see: 10 monster burritos (20 meals), or 5 days at Sunsplash, or 7 12-packs of Schlitz beer, or 4 new records, etc etc etc. Do I really even need to weigh that option? No way in hell I’m picking the baseball game. Fuck You Bud Selig.

4) Mets fans

Likely the Worst bunch of fans in all of sports. If I never had to hear another one of these people pretend to know something about baseball again in my entire life, I’d be a slightly less-disgruntled man.


5) God hates me

Self-explanatory


Okay, so to wrap up my break-up with baseball, I'd like to give one last shout out to the Phillies.

"No disrespect Phils, we’ve had a good run together (remember '93), but I’ve shed too many tears for you, so we’ve best go our separate ways. "

So long baseball. Actually, let me change that ending to something more fitting. Screw off baseball, I hope I never see you again in my entire life.