Baseball Hates Its Fans

Here is the future of baseball: empty stadiums

As if baseball wasn't boring enough (and I've been to over 150 games and was a huge rah-rah Yankees fan for years), they've gotten into this idiotic habit of starting their post-season contests after 8pm. Looking ahead at this week, I see that the games of Tuesday and Wednesday are slated to begin at 8:21pm. The reasoning among the idiots who are running (ruining) things -- the dual doofuses of both Major League Baseball and whichever network has decided to lose money on the playoff games that year -- is that starting games early means that commuters in California or, in this year's case, Arizona and Colorado, would miss the beginning of the games. But let's remember two things: 1) The excitement of a baseball game (if there is any) happens at the end of the game, and 2) most post-season games are over three hours long. This means that games starting at 8:21 finish long after most adults, and almost all kids, have headed to bed. And where does baseball think it's going to find the fans of tomorrow if the fans of today are sleeping thru 9th inning walkoff homeruns or tension-frought pitchers' duels?

What baseball and the networks need to do is to begin the post-season games no later than 7pm EST. That means that kids in New York and Boston can watch an entire game, while young'uns on the West Coast can ... watch an entire game. As for their parents, the East Coasters can watch the whole game, but their West Coast counterparts might have to miss the beginnings of games but will always get to watch the end.

Voice of Society Man has spoken -- now who's listening? If only I had a good friend who worked at MLB.

Actually, I do. I've mentioned all of this to him, but he's not high up enough in their hierarchy to make that sort of difference. Well, at least I've tried!