So today ends the drama of the baseball regular season, if there was any real drama to begin with. The eight playoff teams are set. They include such surprises as the Braves, Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals and Angels. The Astros, perennial playoff losers, are back, and the White Sox have finally realized their potential after a long drought. Then there are the Padres, distinguished by their making the playoffs with a losing record.
If it all seems to familiar, it is. A couple of the characters are new; the rest, all too familiar. We all know that throughout October and into November we'll hear "God Bless America" nightly from Yankee Stadium, renditions alternating between the Hispanic cop's and the Irish guy's. We know that we'll hear that annoying tomahawk chop wail. We know we'll see Roger Clemens get mad when his Astros give him insufficient run support. Now that the Red Sox have lifted the curse, we don't know whether they might have a chance, but we don't really care anymore.
Baseball is losing its luster thanks to a lack of competitiveness. SWNID testifies that we are a natural baseball fan. We played baseball constantly in warm and not-so-warm weather from age eight to age eighteen. We played softball in the forbidding climate of Scotland's Northeast. We have never wavered in our loyalty to the Cincinnati Red Stockings, even through their fourteen years as a super-triple-A farm club for the monied franchises.
But we are tired of seeing the same teams in October, year after year. We are driven to consider heresy: that the NFL is actually more interesting because, well, even though the Patriots are making a play for a dynasty, you never really know who will win from week to week.
Used to be that the Dow 30 Industrials were seemingly set in stone. Companies like US Steel were the bedrock of the economy. Then the economy changed, and McDonald's was added to the index. Now McDonald's looks to be in the early stages of economic Alzheimer's. A Dow with Subway? It could happen, and probably long before the Pirates make the postseason.
Seems to SWNID that the Braves have been in the playoffs longer than companies have been in the current Dow. So maybe this autumn we'll tune in to the Nightly Business Report instead of baseball.
2 comments:
Agreed! ... except for that last comment about the Braves dynasty. They continue to win with an ever-shrinking budget. That kind of performance doesn't bore me a bit. My Cubbies could learn more than a thing or two from it. But who knows? Maybe--gulp!--next year.
I've always been a baseball fan, but it's hard to get too excited about it when you have a pretty fair chance of guessing (is it even a guess?) who will win. What's worse, the playoffs are pre-empting "House" for a month! Let's go Mets!
Post a Comment