Here we go again.  There doesn’t seem to be enough speed in the universe.  Practically the entire country is clamoring for a faster brand of baseball, and now the new commissioner of the professional league is all set to step in and accommodate.  Once again I would argue with the concept.  Baseball is about all we have left in the way of a timeless sport.  I admit the intentional walk seems like a time-waster, and one of the proposed rule changes is to get rid of it.  But man, when it goes wrong, what great entertainment.  Go ahead and tweek it here and there if you must, but let’s not get carried away.  I say keep the game just as it is.  My feeling is we should have a sport that clings to old fashioned rules, rules that exhibit, even demand, patience.  I’ll tell you why.

TD Ameritrade Park

My wife and I were at a college baseball game last week, Creighton played Xavier.  Creighton plays their home games in TD Ameritrade Park, the host facility of the annual College World Series here in Omaha.  The place can seat about 25 thousand people.  But outside of four or five games a year, only a couple thousand at best attend Creighton games.  Which is fine with my wife and me.  Better that than being beleaguered by loud-mouth drunks informing everyone inside as well as outside the stadium what a douchebag they think the umpire is.  My wife and I are thus usually surrounded not by people, but by a euphoric paradox.  We can partake in all the excitement of the game, yet blissfully immerse ourselves in the tranquil beauty of this magnificent ball park.  I should tell you we are more than biased.  It is my alma mater playing these games, but just as special, my son was the lead architect that designed the facility.  For that reason we probably get carried away with our respectful treatment of the place.  For instance, my wife scolds me for littering the ground with peanut shells.

My wife and I didn’t get to the ball park until after the National Anthem.  When we got to our seats (season tickets, ninth row right behind home plate) they were occupied.  Rather than ask people to move, we quietly accommodated by slipping into two seats in the next row up.  After all, it’s Creighton/Xavier.  Not exactly a sell out.  In our officially reserved seats, and in a dozen adjacent seats, were members of a teen-aged baseball team.  The group was adorned in game gear, wearing team T-shirts that identified them as visitors from a town somewhere in central Iowa.  I imagine the team was in town for a little league tournament, and coaches and parents wanted to treat the kids to a ball game at TD Ameritrade.  Not once during the entire game did any one of the big-leaguers-in-waiting cast an eye towards the field of play.  Eyes instead were cast upon cell phones taking selfies and group pictures as well as a teen-aged femme fatale who somehow managed to tag along and provide more compelling entertainment for the boys than the ball game.  The little bastards could not sit still.  The entire group was in constant motion, moving from seat to seat, row to row, and back again.  The stadium was 80% empty and these fidgety little fucks had to pick seats right in front of us, and our seats no less.  Is this where the youth of America is headed?  Are they all like this, with the attention span of a goldfish?  There were adults sitting in close proximity that I assume were supposed to supervise, but there was none of that going on.  I won’t be a hypocrite and tell you that when I was a teen-ager I didn’t goof off at a ball game when I was sitting in the stands with friends.  But at least we had the presence of mind to watch for foul-tips.  At a baseball game that can be, should be, a matter of instinctive survival.  If we were living in a pre-historic time, a roaming saber-toothed tiger coming across this clueless bunch would have to feel he had effortlessly stumbled upon a free all-you-can-eat buffet.  And in real time, had this hyperactive group been sitting in seats along a baseline, a screaming line drive in their direction would have easily taken out two or three of them.  I can’t say that I wouldn’t have rushed home after the game to see if I could catch it all on the evening news.

Especially to the point, if I was ever representing a team, my coaches would never put up with any pre-pubescent nonsense.  If my dad was there, he would step over and give me a knuckle-blast across the back of my head.  More knuckle-blasts and less Ritalin I say.  If you’re suited up like you actually play the game, you should understand how to play it.  It’s baseball.   It’s supposed to be slow.  Watch the fucking game.  You might learn something.

I have a lot of time on my hands now that I am retired and one of the things I do a lot is read stuff on ESPN’s web site.  Recently I ran across an article in which Mark Cuban, owner of the professional basketball team the Dallas Mavericks, made an interesting comment about college basketball.  It’s his belief that college basketball is in a horrible state and hurting the NBA.  His complaint is it’s too boring, too slow, too much milking the clock and not enough scoring.  Too much defense, not enough offense.  All that is probably true.  Mark Cuban is stinking rich and didn’t have anything handed to him.  He has to be a really smart guy, and obviously knows basketball.  I can’t say I am a smart guy, and I am certainly not stinking rich.  But still, I have to argue his point about college basketball.  I think it’s great.  Admittedly I am kind of a defensively orientated fan.  I like the strategy involved.  It doesn’t matter what sport I find entertaining.  I like the defensive aspect of it.  Except soccer.  I just can’t get tuned in there.  Overall, offense, defense, it’s all the same with that sport. It’s just boring.  But that’s just me. No offense to all you soccer fans out there.

To be honest, I never watch pro basketball.  I actually consider that to be even more boring than soccer.  There’s way too much offense- players running up and down the court trading baskets.  One team scores, then the other team scores.  They might as well start the game by giving each team 100 points, and then play for two minutes.  The end result would be the same as playing out a whole game, and have the benefit of saving everyone a lot of time.  Which is what Mark, and most of the country, seems to want in the first place.  Everyone is always in a hurry.  We can’t seem to get things done fast enough.  I think there are problems on the horizon if we all don’t learn to slow down.  And I’m not alone, let me tell you.  I’ve talked to my neighbors about this.  Just the other day some dick in a fancy BMW went tearing down our street.  Scared the hell out of poor old Mrs. Hanksteder, and Wally- he has five kids all under twelve years old and lives a whole block away- he practically took one for the team by stepping out in the street to confront that dip shit.  It didn’t do a whole lot of good and he’s lucky he didn’t get run over, but thank god for Wally and people like him that take a stand.  I gotta tell you I’m not about to step out into the street and take on anything that weighs a couple thousand pounds more than I do.  Actually I did try that once, but admittedly I had been drinking.  It’s sort of a long story.  And of course Wally has all those kids.  They do kind of wonder off his property a lot.  I’m not so sure his oldest didn’t egg my house last Halloween.  I’ll be laying for the little bastard this year.

Back to Mark Cuban.  His most salient point was that college ball is ruining the NBA.  Ok, I guess that’s possible and personally I couldn’t care less.  But to drive the point home, he suggested that schools were failing the kids themselves with the kind of basketball colleges are producing.  Referring to college basketball programs, his exact words were “If you want to keep kids in school and keep them from being pro, they’re doing it the exact right way.”  That’s apparently a criticism.  WTF?  Keeping kids in school is a bad thing?  It is obvious Mark believes, as many others do, that college athletic programs are little more than farm clubs for professional ranks. No doubt there are truly talented one and doners out there, but I think we need to put the breaks on this type of thinking.  Give athletes some auxiliary financial aid, but more importantly encourage them to stay in school, not leave it.  A college degree might be the only chance many of these college athletes have of getting ahead in life. Even those college players that are lucky enough to make it professionally might find some sort of degree to be a worth while back up plan.  Every boy scout will tell you to be prepared.  You never know when you might get your knee cap blown off in a strip-club altercation.  If more defense and a slower college game is what it takes to keep kids in school, I say go for it.