Why Baseball is Complete Garbage

Baseball is a joke. The game is great, awesome actually, but the way major league baseball is structured is just awful. It is the only major sports league in North America without a salary cap and makes it extremely difficult for teams to stay competitive with the big spenders who stack their teams with all-stars. As a fan, I’d personally find it extremely boring to essentially get a bye into the playoffs each season just because you are able to buy the best players available every year. Just doesn’t seem fun at all to me. I honestly don’t know how a Yankees fan, or even a Red Sox fan can get remotely excited about the regular season anymore. This is a sick stat, but the Yankees have qualified for the post-season 14 out of the last 15 years! Boston, with the second highest payroll, has made the post-season 6 out of the last 7 seasons. Boston and New York have finished in the top two in the AL East for 10 of the past 12 seasons. Yankees spend over $200 million on their team and finished first overall, while Boston spends $120 million and finished 3rd overall. The Angels have the 4th highest payroll in the league and finished with 97 wins. It annoys me to no end when people say, “Well the other teams could just spend more to make their teams better.” Baloney! All that would do is mean payrolls across the board would escalate, because New York would just spend $230 million and Boston would spend close to $200 million to stay in front. Teams like Tampa Bay occasionally have a miracle year with a cast of young players, but guess what happens when their contracts are up? They end up in Boston or New York. I can’t bring myself to care about a league that is going to have such rare turnover, not because the team is genius at drafting, but simply because they can just buy a better team with money. Boring. Totally, and insanely boring to me. TV networks love it, obviously, and wouldn’t change the status quo because it’s in their best interest to have NY and Boston vying for the World Series each year, but I think they are shortsighted as well and eventually it will come back to bite them in the butt. There is no end in sight to this madness, so I gave up caring. The league will never implement a salary cap, and because of that, I’ll never be a baseball fan every again. It’s so beyond stupid to me that I’d feel dirty watching it.
***************************************************************** I just landed in Hartford and am on my way to play in the NAPT at Mohegan Sun. It’s been a long trip and I’m a bit relieved this is my last stop before heading home to Vegas. I want to get out there and golf! Speaking of golf, I can’t wait to watch the Masters this week and see how Tiger performs. Exciting time for sports right now with NBA and NHL playoffs around the corner also. On the notion of sports, and sports heroes, the whole Tiger Woods thing is a bit of madness. Yes, he cheated on his wife repeatedly and got caught. Yes, he lied about it and tarnished his reputation… but it’s Tiger Woods man! That guy is awesome at GOLF and that’s what I admire him for. I really don’t care much at all what he does with his personal life, I’m a fan of his golf game and am amazed by what he’s capable of. I don’t blame people for deciding they are no longer fans of Mr. Woods, but I would warn them quite strongly: if your choices in terms of who you root for or admire, in whatever area, whether it be Golf, Basketball, or even poker, are based on that persons ability to be faithful to their spouse, you’d be sorely disappointed to know that people cheating on their spouses is quite common. It’s not an anomaly by any stretch of the imagination. Lots of these guys (and gals) cheat on their spouses. They are just people, so why would we assume that our sports heroes would be any more faithful to their wives than an average guy? Let’s make this clear: I don’t think what he did to his wife is admiral or acceptable in the least, but that’s between the two of them. It’s none of my business at all and his fidelity has absolutely no bearing on how I view him as an athlete. The dude rocks at the golfs, and I love watching him play. ]]>