A World Series Debacle

Poor Bud Selig. He just can't escape the bad luck ghost. As much as I dislike the man, he handled the rain situation during game 5 of the World Series as best he could. But this points to the major problem with MLB, and all sports for that matter, and it's decisions leading up to this situation. Baseball game's shouldn't be starting at 8:30pm and we shouldn't have to worry about a World Series ending in November. MLB is doing the right thing in allowing the game to go all 9 innings, but what if it continues to rain in Philadelphia for another two days? What if Tampa Bay all of a sudden comes back and forces a game 7? The series wouldn't end until November and the weather doesn't suit baseball well at all. The bottom line here is very simliar to my post earlier this week when I said baseball needs to shorten the season. Even if it was by only 10 games, it needs to be shortened. Say the MLB season was only 152 games, 10 shorter than the current schedule. That would allow the playoffs to begin sooner and allow everything to move along better and certainly allow the season to be completed before November. But the starting times of games is an even bigger issue. Let's explain this using an example. If you are planning on having a picnic at your home, you obviously aren't going to wait until 8pm to have it, becuase it is way too late to start it. Common sense tells you that your guests wouldn't appreciate it since they have lives to live. Weather also factors in. If you are planning on having it at say, 6pm and the threat of rain may wash it out, you may plan on having it a little earlier, like at 4:30pm or 5pm. What does this have to do with the World Series? Simple. Baseball should move the start of games back to at least 7pm, like during the regualr season. This would help with many things. First of all people would actually be able to watch the entire game, as long as it didnt go to extra innings, without falling asleep or just giving up all together. One thing I hate is having to go to bed knowing I cannot watch the entire game because I have to work in the morning. Plus many kids can't even watch the entire game because of school. I know when I was in junior high and high school I had to be up at 5:45 every morning to catch the bus by 7pm. I was always in bed by 10pm at the latest. Baseball is screwing up bigtime with poor decisions like this. TV doesn't help either. The game is slowly being destroyed by stupid start times and a season that goes too long. Hopefully MLB will realize their mistake and fix it for the future.

The Problem With The Post-season

Hi friends. Remember me, you're old pal Stein? I want to talk about postseason baseball. Actually all postseason sports in general, but we'll get to that. I would like to vent about it. Here is the problem that I see. The season is just too darn long. I mean, if you love baseball this is the best time of year. The playoffs of any sport are the best time of the year because you get to see the best teams compete for the opportunity to play for a championship. I enjoy watching baseball, but if the World Series goes to a game 7 this year, it is going to be in November (I think). The bottom line is that we should have had the World Series decided this week, maybe this weekend at the latest. There is aboslutely no reason that that could happen. All sports are this way. Football, hockey, baseball, basketball, nascar, golf, cricket and even chess all have seasons that go on too long. OK, maybe not cricket and chess, but all the others do.

First of all the NFL season is too long. I like the current 17 week format, but the season should start a little earlier and then eliminate the week off before the Super Bowl. I know what you are all thinking. "Stein you dumb-fuck. Those teams could use a break before the Super Bowl. It's only fair if they have an injury that the player hurt can heal up." Well I guess that is true, but I don't like waiting for two weeks to watchin the fucking game. I wan't to see it right away, and it won't be unfair at all. These teams play every week and get paid millions to do it, so I don't want to hear that bullshit. I would love for the playoffs to be played around Christmas and New Years. Wouldn't it be great to be able to indulge yourself in a football frenzy? College Football bowls and the Wild Card Playoffs all around Christmas time. What a great idea! I know. You can thank me later, but anyway that would be awesome to me and it should be to you too.

Hockey is another sport that has a season that goes too long, but it would face a much harder battle trying to shorten it. It begins in October and doesn't end until June. What a season! I will admit that hockey is my favorite sport, and I love it very much, but I hate watching it when it's 75 degrees out. It also causes problems for the ice that time of year. mid to late May is when it should be decided at the latest. But with so many teams in the playoffs, it would be a tall order to shorten the season and with such a physical playoff to begin with, I think it can't be changed unless the NHL elminates two teams from each conference making it six teams each. That would be the smart thing to do.

Basketball I don't care enough about to analyze, so we'll move on to Baseball. I would like to think that baseball can change, but it never will. Acutally none of these sports ever will, but for the fun of it lets analyze away! Baseball was alot better when they had the season end and then played the LCS. I think that baseball should elminate the divisions they have and divide the teams in each league into two divisions. At seasons end give two days off and then have the best team in each division battle in the LCS, a best of seven. then on to the world series. With this theory the World Series would have been decided about a week or two ago. If baseball wants to stay the same at least play more games in one day than usual. I love the double and even triple headers that were on at the beginning of the playoffs. There is no shame in day games and it give the the games a bit of nostalgia anyway. I like that better. The fact it however that no change is on the way. TV dominates everything and it will only get worse. I'd say the Pirates have a better chance of winning the World Series this year, than any change occuring with these season and playoff formats.

Here is an ESPN.com article written by Jayson Stark that explains the lack of excitement in the World Series...its a good one!

Classic Uniforms

By now you have probably come to the conclusion that I am lazy. This is true. But instead of going through every division of every sport and taking a look to the past, I have decided to research some super sweet throwback uniforms and share them with you as I go along with this blog. One at a time. It will be fun, as we look back at history and poke fun at ugly uniforms and examine the cool ones too. I'll find a really cool classic uniform and then I'll post a picture of it and the team and give a little history about the team and what they did that season. Yadda, yadda. You get the picture. So without further delay, here is the first classic uniform!!!

The San Diego Padres are the first team we'll look at on Classic Uniforms. The only reason being when I searched "retro baseball uniforms" on Google, this was the first one to come up. But anyway, the San Diego Padres were brought into the major leagues in 1969 as an expansion franchise from the PCL (Pacific Coast League). That minor league club started as the Padres in 1937 and was actually led by a young Ted Williams, who is now preserved in a freezer someplace in the middle of nowhere. Anyhow, the Padres won the 1937 PCL title and in 1969 San Diego moved to the ranks of the Major Leagues. They stunk it up like most expansion franchises do, but they did it with some ugly uniforms. Now don't get me wrong, I love the logo. I think the old Padres logo is one of the coolest in baseball history, but lets face it, brown and yellow just don't do it for me. Come to think of it, I doubt that it does it for anyone, unless you are color blind and those colors look like orange and blue or some other happy horse shit. Anyway, the Padres had losing records each of their first six seasons, losing 100 or more games in four of those first six seasons. Their uniforms remained stained with piss and shit until 1984 when they actually made it to a World Series, but then lost to the Detroit Tiggers. Then like most teams do when they actually win, they tweaked their uniforms to include orange. So now they played with piss, shit and Agent Orange on their uniforms. Nice. Needless to say these uniforms didn't look any better, but Padres fans were anything but blessed in those early days in San Diego.