25/10: The Boys of Summer Are Still Playing?
Category: American Culture
Posted by: an okie gardener
I'm about to go all Andy Rooney on you, so either indulge me or scroll to the next post.
Baseball is a game tied to the seasons and to the rhythmns of an earllier agricultural America. See this earlier post. It begins in the spring, the time of planting crops, greening grass, budding trees, lengthening days, warming afternoons. Each season matures during the heat of summer with a season as long and slow and meandering as a great river under a dog day sun. Then comes fall, with its shortening days, cooler nights, and harvests.
Greed for television revenue is debasing the game. The regular season now lasts longer than in the past, and the additional layer of playoff games postpones the World Series 3 to 4 weeks later than it was a few decades ago. The extended season, combined with World Series night games (again, for the television revenue) means that these pinnacle games, the result of all the games in all the parks since opening day, often take place in cold and wet conditions. Blasphemous. Unnatural. The National Sport ruined by unbridled capitalism.
Shorten the season. Rethink the extra playoff games. (I mean, what's a Wild Card doing in baseball? For years it was the only professional sport where winning the regular season meant everything to advancement into the post-season.) AND GIVE US DAY GAMES IN THE WORLD SERIES. Baseball is a better radio game anyway.
Baseball is a game tied to the seasons and to the rhythmns of an earllier agricultural America. See this earlier post. It begins in the spring, the time of planting crops, greening grass, budding trees, lengthening days, warming afternoons. Each season matures during the heat of summer with a season as long and slow and meandering as a great river under a dog day sun. Then comes fall, with its shortening days, cooler nights, and harvests.
Greed for television revenue is debasing the game. The regular season now lasts longer than in the past, and the additional layer of playoff games postpones the World Series 3 to 4 weeks later than it was a few decades ago. The extended season, combined with World Series night games (again, for the television revenue) means that these pinnacle games, the result of all the games in all the parks since opening day, often take place in cold and wet conditions. Blasphemous. Unnatural. The National Sport ruined by unbridled capitalism.
Shorten the season. Rethink the extra playoff games. (I mean, what's a Wild Card doing in baseball? For years it was the only professional sport where winning the regular season meant everything to advancement into the post-season.) AND GIVE US DAY GAMES IN THE WORLD SERIES. Baseball is a better radio game anyway.
DerekD wrote: