About 45 years ago, Saturday Night Live had a fictional ex-baseball player (Chico Escuela, played by Garrett Morris) who used a simple phrase as part of the gag: "Beisbol has been berry berry good to me." Well, I can't say that the sport has been very very good in taking care of itself.
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The other day, I decided to watch some baseball on TV, and found it hard to find out who is playing and where the games are being played. "Why?" you might ask. Well, MLB has tinkered with the playoff format for 2022, and we now have 3 game wild card playoffs, followed by two more rounds of playoffs before reaching the World Series. Gone are the days where the world series was determined simply by who is at the top of the AL and NL. There is now a much greater element of chance that allows for a merely decent team to make it to the world series. And this is part of what has disillusioned me about baseball as a sport.
Luckily, I am still interested in the history of the game. Instead of putting an asterisk next to Roger Maris's name, as they once did for his 61 season home runs, they should put asterisks next to the names or McGuire, Sosa, and Bonds because they achieved their records in the "juicing" era. No, I am not trying to deny these players their rightful places in the record books. Instead, I want the asterisk to be used as an indictment of MLB as a whole, because they turned a blind eye to "juicing" to improve ratings for the sport. One day, I hope, Aaron Judge and Hank Aaron will be considered the true record holders for MLB, as they played without juice.
Yet, I can still find humor in baseball. Players such as Phil Niekro and Gaylord Perry were well known for their ways of doctoring a baseball before it was pitched. It's too bad that I couldn't have gotten the two of them to do ads for Brylcream touting the advantages of this product, closing the ads with: "Oh, and it's good for your hair too." They would have brought a smile to people with this type of ad once they were safely retired from the game.
All too soon, the baseball season will have to end. I hope to hear Yankee Stadium's PA system take a break from playing Sinatra's rendition of "New York, New York", and again play a tune by Queen after the last game of the World Series - "We are the champions (of the world).".
