Better That Abner's Gone

When you're not physically gifted or coordinated, you get choosy about your sports and mine are pretty much soccer (football, not US football) and baseball. I have the sinking feeling I'll be expending a lot more of my passion for soccer as the pending return of Major League Baseball leaves me shaking my head and wondering why bother? 

The answer (of course) is money. 
Bags full of it, with more than enough for the billionaires who own the teams and the millionaires who play for them. The folks selling hot dogs, soda, beer, programs, peanuts, popcorn, crackerjack, and all manner of souvenirs inside the stadium and the ones on the outside who help you park the car, all of those folks get screwed. 

Don't feel bad for them, though. A lot of them got those $600 checks from the Federal government back in March so they're pretty much still farting through silk, I'm sure. Unless of course, they were considered 'at will' employees or concessionaires then they got just about nothing at all. But let's face it, there won't be any spectators, no bleacher creatures of any kind so who will miss them.

Sixty games instead of a full season and ten teams total making the playoffs. Why can't the MLB be more like the NHL where, after the season, almost everyone goes to the playoffs? I don't actually pay attention to hockey but apparently, those who do don't seem to mind so why not baseball as well?

Looks like the National League will have the designated hitter (I loathe the designated hitter and its evil little brother, the designated runner) to 'save pitchers from getting injured on the basepaths' even though baseball went about one hundred years or more without ANY designated hitters and we still had pitchers who got hits, ran bases, and didn't die while doing either. 

Here's how we can save pitchers from getting injured and further incorporate that stupid Minor League Baseball innovation of having games that go into extra innings have each inning start with a runner on second base: take a page out of the little league (actually the teeny-weeny league or PeeWees. maybe), and have batters hit off a tee. Yep NO pitchers at all, just sluggers! HOORAY! 

And maybe if the score gets out of hand at some mid-way point in the contest, the players could swap uniforms and continue on. It's not like there are fans paying attention as our once great national pastime transforms itself into something that the Boomers think the Zoomers will want to watch as they wait for their avocado toast to cool. 
-bill kenny