Mindless Ranting About Baseball

For the first time in a really long time I actually watched some baseball. Last night as I was getting ready for bed I caught the end of the Yankees/Red Sox game. In watching the game, I made a mental note not to watch it very much ever again. In the short half hour or 45 minutes I watched, my mind developed a long laundry list of reasons why I hate major league baseball. I watched the game feeling nothing but contempt for the sport, the players, and the fans. I'm sure there's some good apples in the bunch, but from what I saw, the game showcased many terrible things about the world of baseball.

First, I still have such a hard time fathoming how baseball still survives with such an uneven playing field. The Yankees have a bajillion dollar payroll while most other teams pay their entire roster less than a single player on the Yanks. It just boggles my mind how people can continue to cheer for the Yankees when they're basically the equivalent of Microsoft, a monopoly with a stranglehold on an industry. The Yankees simply write out a ludicrously large check to any player they would like to come play for them and then let the rest of the league duke it out for whoever is left over. Microsoft does the same thing. If they see something they like, they usually buy it outright and use it for their own use (Bungie is a perfect example).

Besides the uneven playing field that is major league baseball are the players themselves. Reading some of the quotes from A-rod in the game summary and watching how he played made him seem like nothing more than an overpaid baby. In the process of being tagged out at first, he smacked the other player's glove that had the ball in it to knock it out. Come on, A-rod, are we still in fifth grade here? The last time I'd seen someone do that, I was 12 years old and playing a pickup game of baseball at recess. You're going to get tagged out, so just take the tag like any normal player and go sit back down.

To top it off, he says after the game that instead of swatting the ball away he should have just run the guy over because the baseline is his and he was too nice by trying to avoid the tag. Wow, now that's even better. Why didn't he just whine about how the Red Sox stole his favorite Tonka truck and broke his G.I.Joes too? Grow up.

Then there's his quote about how the umps shouldn't get together to talk over calls because it always seems to go against the Yankees. I don't know if he was saying this in jest or not, but either way it's lame. The umps get together to make the correct calls instead of making snap judgments that could easily be wrong. They made the right call, so stop acting like you didn't try to knock the ball out.

Now, the fans, there's another group of winners. When the call didn't go the Yankee's way, they start throwing baseballs and debris at the umps. Thank you for making it even easier for me to sympathize with Frank Francisco when he tossed a chair at a heckler. Fans, you paid to see a game. What you didn't pay for was the right to attempt to commit bodily harm. You all make A-rod look like Stephen Hawking. There should be no reason that police officers have to line the outside of the field of a baseball game simply for it to be finished.

I'm horribly pissed off right now just thinking about the sheer amount of idiocy involved in just the short amount of time I watched of one baseball game last night. Honestly, if the sport up and disappeared tomorrow, I would not miss it a bit.