Thursday, October 30, 2008

Neutral Site World Series???

With the World Series coming to an end on the Phillies improbable season the biggest question other than how much damage can dumb ass Philly fans cause is should the world series be held in a neutral climate controlled site? You go 100 or so years without a rain shortened game or stoppage of play and all of a sudden this is the hot topic. The amazing thing is that a lot of the writers appear to be on board with this idea. I heard Buster Onley on Mike & Mike this morning going on about the revenue that could be brought in by having the World Series in one stadium for 7 consecutive days. He went on to describe how all the awards like Cy Young and Gold Gloves could be announced and Hall of Famers could converge and we could just have a week long baseball orgy in this neutral site. Sounds good right???

WRONG, it's bad enough that football has pansied out and only plays the Super Bowl in climate controlled environments. Pretty much the only people that get to go to this game are rich people and celebrities or chumps willing to come off nearly a grand for a seat in the nose bleed section. Baseball is to me still a pure sport where the fans make up a lot of the identity for the team. Not to diminish what fans do in other sports but it just seems wrong for the World Series to be played on a neutral turf. Can you imagine the Red Sox and Cubs playing a World Series in Anaheim or The Orioles and Cardinals playing in Houston? Just the thought of it makes my skin crawl. I'm tired of marketing and money dictating how we as fans get to enjoy our sports. It's bad enough that the games don't start until 8:30 and are played on work/school nights. I know that Bud Selig vehemently opposes this idea and for probably the first time I support him. I just hope that when he steps down that MLB doesn't get a commissioner like the NFL just did that is more interested in playing games in Europe and expanding the league than fixing other issues like the shitty pre-season. It's ideas like this that turn people away from sports but unfortunately tend to make millions for people who already have millions.

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