My Sick Mind

This is two days in a row I've written about baseball. Not on purpose, just because it's the game I know the most about and it's the game that has some of the most ridiculous behavior in sports. It's also a game where unwritten rules are just as important as the ones that are in the rule book. Players all know them and when one of their brethren break them, there is Hell to pay - or at least a hefty fine. One of the unwritten rules is that you're not supposed to steal a base when your team is leading by a substantial margin. What the margin is and when it is determined to be insurmountable, only the people who write the unwritten rule book know. It's a sliding scale. By following that logic, when your team has a big lead, batters should go up and just strike out, since they don't need any more runs. OK. When the Phillies' Jimmy Rollins stole second base on the San Francisco Giants while the Phils were leading by 6 is a flagrant violatio...

It's tough to be a sports fan. Especially if you're sleep-dependant and you're trying to watch games and show up for work on time. My standard answer for almost every question I am asked is either "television" or "money." Sometimes it's both. OK, most times it's both. But the point is that television and money dictate policy for just about everything, and sports is not only the exception but the rule. It's playoff time, and the games have odd start times. Times like 7:57, 8:19 and 4:19 are common. One might wonder why, unless they know the secret "television" answer. The games have those unusual start times because TV ratings are counted in quarter-hour increments. When games start at those times, viewers are counted for the quarter hour before and after the actual time, so TV gets credit for a half-hour, even if the game is delayed by rain, earthquake, fire or flood. Advertising rates are dictated by ratings, and televis...

Am I the only person who finds it curious that baseball is the only game where the coach/manager wears a uniform? Football: Hoodie. Hockey & Basketball: Suit. Soccer: ... I don't know, I don't watch soccer, but I bet they aren't wearing shorts and those goofy shirts. I'd like to see a baseball manager in a suit like Connie Mack used to wear, but I'm sure the Gods of Baseball would stop that in its tracks. Baseball is also the only game that is stopped in the middle and not completed if they can't finish it. They should play in the rain like other sports. Even golfers play in the rain to a certain extent. Suck it up, Nancy-boys. I paid $45 for a ticket, $12 to park and $7.25 for a piss-warm draft beer - you can damned well play in the rain. And speaking of baseball ... and I was ... this little ditty over on the YouTube should be taking the Internet by storm soon, so you can say you saw it here first. Just make sure you leave your teeth in while you'r...

If all the world's a stage, where does the audience sit? The NCAA tournament continues, and I can't help but wonder what all the fuss is about. From the looks of the TV (which is after all, the final authority) they're playing to half-empty lower-level seating in Detroit. It makes me think that the tournament is the sports equivalent of the lottery. It's popular because people can wager on it, but they don't have to actually watch it to know if they win. All we need to do is check the scores and check our picks to know whether we have a chance to win. It doesn't help that the games are being played in football stadiums, where the worst seat in the house is barely in the house. How many people who play bracket pools actually watch the games? If you buy a lottery ticket do you watch the drawing? Speaking of sports (which I was), it's now more expensive to go to baseball games: CHICAGO (AP) - It will cost a lot more to root, root, root for the home team th...

Before the Phillies ever took the field on Sunday afternoon, the buzz was thick around the ballpark. The Mets/Marlin game had started twenty minutes earlier, and before long, the scoreboard started the count. Four -nothing Marlin. Five -nothing Marlin. Before we were warm in our seats, the Mets were trailing 7 to nothing, and the biggest September collapse in the history of baseball had begun to wind down. What we knew and certainly what the team knew was that all it would take would be a win against the Nationals for the local nine to be National League Eastern Division champions. 1993. Fourteen years ago a group of hard-nosed players won our hearts with an improbable run to the World Series. Even today, after the loss to Toronto, the team is loved by Phillies fans, and with good reason. They gave us everything they had and gave us a season to remember. 1964. The Phillies blew a six-and-a-half game lead with 12 to play. Until this week, it was the biggest September collapse in baseb...

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - Jose Offerman was having a pretty good summer. Then in a flash, things went flying out of control. Looking for a last chance in the majors, the two-time All-Star turned violent at a minor league game Tuesday night. Hit by a fastball, Offerman charged the mound with his bat and swung at least twice, striking the opposing pitcher and catcher. Offerman, playing for the Long Island Ducks, was arrested on assault charges. The independent Atlantic League suspended him indefinitely Wednesday and expected to make a final decision by the end of the week. City police, providing security during the game, arrested Offerman. He was charged with two counts of second-degree assault. Offerman posted $10,000 bond and is due in Bridgeport Superior Court August 23. I guess “Duck” would have been good advice for Matt Beech, the pitcher whom Offerman hit. The thing that struck me [pun intended] about this story was that assault charges were filed against him. Correct me if I’m wron...

The Espy’s were on last night, and in the words of the great fictional character Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, “The instrument has not been invented that can measure my indifference to that remark.” I suppose there is some place for an awards show that is named after the network that is televising it, but if there is, it is lost on me. Besides, almost all of the sports that they honored already have their own awards for outstanding achievement, so perhaps this amounts to little more than piling on in the name of lame summer programming. In addition, the wimps at Major League baseball allowed ESPN to re-schedule a game that was originally scheduled at 1:35 to be played at 6:05, when most people are either starting or just finishing dinner on Sunday. Usually, their night games are at 8:00, but that would have run them into the scheduled time for their precious awards show, and we know that can’t happen. If baseball had any real balls, they would have told ESPN, “Screw you. We do...

On occasion, television runs out of things to show us. It happens because there are more TV channels than ever - and more all the time - and less and less interesting stuff to show. So much so, that things like America's Funniest Home Videos is a long-running program. It's interesting, since the show's title proclaims what we are supposed to believe it is; funny, when in fact, it really isn't all that funny. What it is is people being hit in the crotch and falling off of things, jumping off of things and having their pants fall down. The word funny is in the title (well, Funniest actually) so it must be funny. Funniest. This week, in the doldrums of television that is the summer, baseball is holding its annual party that they call the All-Star break. It isn't a break, really, since there is a lot of baseball packed into those three days. The only break comes for the unlucky losers who aren't invited to the party. They get to spend three days at home with their...

Michael Nutter won the Philadelphia mayoral democrat primary last night. It strikes me as odd that a city with a population of 5.8 million, and 449,182 registered democrats, that a guy can be so excited that 104,299 of them want him to be mayor. He has 23% of democrats and slightly less than 2% of the population of the city behind him. The newspaper called it “a resounding margin” and “a message of change.” That’s politics, I guess. He will be the next mayor, since the city hasn’t voted Republican since Bernard Samuel in 1952. Now that would be real change. To paraphrase Harry Hartounian , “I wish I could get that excited about Nutter.” Speaking of voting (and I was, just now), voting has been going on for baseball’s annual All-Star game which will be played in San Francisco this year. For the sports impaired among us, the rule is that the league’s team that wins the All Star game has home field advantage in the World Series. In other words, if the National League wins, then the Phill...

This coming weekend may be a Top 5 Weekend of the Year. The weather is getting just a bit warmer, the birdies are chirping, the basketballs bouncing and the bats and clubs a-swinging. On the hardwood, we get the NCAA tournament cranked up again. I checked the futures sheet I brought back from Las Vegas in January. Georgetown was 40 to 1 to win the tournament. The biggest long shot of the 4. The others were in the 6 to 1 range, with Florida a 9 to 2 favorite to repeat. How much you want to bet that there are some vacationers from the D.C. area who may have laid down a shekel or two on their alma mater? The LPGA is cranking up their first major of the year, The Kraft-Nabisco deal at Mission Hills in California. It used to be called the Dinah Shore, but they took her name off in 2000. It's the one where the winner will jump in the lake at 18 on Sunday. I think it's the only sporting event where the winner jumps in a lake, if you don't count diving. Annika is having ...

I love baseball. I grew up with baseball. Dad was baseball. Baseball was summers off from school with the radio at my bed listening until I fell asleep. OK, so I'm no James Earl Jones, but you know... The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard and rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and can be again. Anyway ... It's my favorite sport to attend, and the only sport that I can express an informed opinion or offer insight to. Give me a summer night, a beer, scorecard and hot dog and I'm a happy pappy. Recently, however, ticket prices have begun to creep beyond the grasp of the lower income group who might enjoy a night out. Or me. It is sad because the game may be on its way to becoming another corporate-ruled enterprise, like football and hockey, where the average ...