There may be “No crying in baseball”, but I am crying for baseball. I’m ready for the season to start. Let’s play ball! As a lifelong sports fan, I am finding fewer and fewer sports teams and heroes to follow.
The NFL turned me completely off when they seemingly condoned kneeling during the National Anthem but wouldn’t let a player kneel and pray after a touchdown – so they’re out. Totally.
College football is no longer what it was. They now have mega-conferences assembled with one thing in mind – TV money. And it’s like a handful of teams in the SEC is the major league, and all the other squads in the country are playing tee-ball.
NBA Basketball is a joke. They run a hundred yards down the court between the occasional dribble and plow into one another at will. The games last indefinitely and it’s boring.
College basketball, once my favorite sport, is also in free fall. If a kid a year out of high school doesn’t turn pro after his first year (and spend his career in the G-League or on the bench of an NBA team) they enter something called a transfer portal and they’re off to another school. There is no loyalty to either the college or fans – and they also travel with the ball on each possession.
That leaves baseball. One of the last of the pure sports. Sure, it can be slow, but it’s like chess match, with managers making a strategic move for a pinch hitter or a relief pitcher, to hit and run or steal, to shift the infield or play for the bunt.
But even baseball is in trouble. The players are now locked out while they try to squeeze an extra $100 million out of each of the owners. Scherzer is making $50 million a year and wants more?
I love baseball and I hope they play, but I doubt we’ll have a spring training season this year and it’s likely the regular season won’t get underway until some of the players have missed their first two payments on their cattle farms in Argentina and must come to terms. No one wins and the fans all lose.
I guess this year there will once more be crying in baseball.