The Rush Is Over -TOMP

Well, bad news everybody.  After the greatest two month stint of the year, we have officially reached the baseball zone.  Stated as being America's Past Time, baseball ultimately proves that hitting a ball a third of the time, playing 150+ games and taking performance enhancing vitamins are all you really need to be successful in life.  I'm not sure what it is, but I really can't take this nonsense for 7 months of the year.

The summer is a great season, unless its a Tuesday night, you don't have a 3 month vacation and you have to deal with 2-3 guys trying to make small chat while they wait 45 seconds between pitches.  Baseball ultimately tests fans patience more than anything.  How is one supposed to get totally jacked up about a match up likes the Red Sox & Orioles in the middle of June when the game will probably mean nothing at the end.

I always hear people sandbagging the NBA because it doesn't look like the players are trying at all times during their 82 game season.  I just did some research, and baseball has double that number of games with half the total number of teams making the playoffs for that championship hunt.  It bewilders me to think that all of these teams play this many games during a season with little or no shot of even getting to the post season.  Oh, and it turns out baseball hasn't gotten with the times and thinks its jussssst fine not to have a salary cap.  This leads to a whopping number of 5 teams with an actual shot to win the "World" Series trophy, while the rest stumble around and work to get a minimal amount of fans into their small market stadium at 3 o'clock on a Wednesday. Did I mention that Bud Selig is the highest paid commissioner in all of sports? That's right, the guy who is in charge of the least competitive major league, with the most amount of games, fewest number of playoff teams and full of guys who take drugs to get an edge, is the HIGHEST paid leader in professional sports in America.  Did I mention that there's not a salary cap?

Hasn't all of the tradition really been lost at this point?  We've seen more records smashed in the last decade then in the previous 40 years. The performance ehancing drugs (while not really a huge deal in my mind, I mean, chicks dig the long ball, right?) have been shown to be evident across the majority of players from bench warmers to superstars.  When it gets to the point when you have to listen to Pete Rose's gibber jabber about how what's going on right now is worse than anything he ever did, you start to get tired of the whole ordeal.

I suppose its hard for me to buy into my own beliefs, as I'm not too into the sport itself. I can't imagine what fans are actually thinking. We hear about the occasional NFL player getting busted covering his urine tract, or juicin' it up, Lights Out style, but its never on the level like we keep seeing in the MLB.  I mean, this is full on cheating to the maximum degree, isn't it? 

I'm not even sure how to react. We've been trained for so long by the media on how to respond to different degrees of immoral action. If the the same number of guys were involved in point shaving, we'd be a lot more pissed off, right?  It would make sense to not compare these two happenings as in the prior scenario with the juice, everyone is still trying to the maximum extent of their ability (presumably).  When we see TO jaggin' off, we're supposed to be pissed. When Lance Armstrong is winning the Tour or trying to be set up for doping, we feel truly American and want to kick the shit out of the French even more. When Tom Brady pops up, bromance kicks in. It's natural at this point. We've been conditioned, maaaaaannnnn.

I need to stop watching all those 70s conspiracy flicks....

"You're Fucking Out. I'm Fucking In."