Cheap Seats

There are stirrings in Florida and Arizona as Major League Baseball shakes off the winter doldrums and readies itself for another campaign. There is no sport I love as passionately as baseball-I'll stop channel surfing to watch two ball clubs about whom I know nothing play an exhibition game and was notorious while stationed at Sondrestrom AB in Greenland (a/k/a "The Miami of the North") working for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, AFRTS,  to come back up the station, on the shores of Lake Ferguson three miles above the base and set up the telecine so I could watch the 16mm print of the Game of the Week, usually two to three weeks after it was played by the time we got it. No matter. A bag of chips, a jug of juice and thou-as close to heaven as you got ninety miles north of the Arctic Circle.

This season to make it more exciting for the fans (= more money for the billionaire owners and the millionaire players (see Albert Pujols)), MLB has expanded the number of teams eligible to make the playoffs to twenty-eight. I jest, but only just. Point in fact, your eyes just glided over that number just like any other day on the phonics pharm. We're closing in on the point where MLB looks exactly like the NHL in terms of the regular season being a warm-up for the post-season.

Right after baseball teams who finish below .500 get to play in, what by then will be the, December Classic, someone in the Office of the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, in whose name most of the assault on common sense and intelligence has been waged for the last two decades (and yes, designated hitter, I'm talking about you) will realize this has all gone a little too far.

By then, of course, it'll be too late as pseudo psports like professional jousting will be the hot topic on ESPN. The saving grace in that catastrophe will be they'll assign Chris Berman to cover it around the clock, and I'll never hear of him or from him again. Attention Guys in the Sky Boxes: I root for the game-your team not so much. Play ball, preferably in alphabetical order. By height.      
-bill kenny