Still ready for baseball in October?

Tonight the UL baseball team plays its last fall scrimmage in the annual "Pizza Bowl" at Patterson Stadium. If you get a chance, and weather permitting, try and get out to watch them. Louisville has four pitchers with pro potential on this staff in personages of BJ Rosenberg, Zach Pitts, Justin Marks and UL's version of "The Big Unit" in 6-foot-7 behemoth Bob Revesz. When Revesz releases the ball, he has already covered 25 of the 60 feet to home plate.

Should be a fun time.

There is other baseball happening tonight at The Jake. This where the struggling BoSox pitching staff will try to figure out SOME way of quieting the Indians bats and keeping the RedSox hopes of World Series appearance on life support. But the real drama that is baseball was actually last night when......nothing at all happened.

The real problem with baseball is that in a 7 game series and dead in the MIDDLE of a 3 game stand in Cleveland, MLB because of BAD FOX Sports programming left all of us baseball fans high and dry last night!

What the HELL?!

This was the single most stupid thing I have ever witnessed in MLB scheduling since, oh, how about insipid "inter-league" play. How can baseball expect to try to gather back some marketshare from an increasingly thinning sports viewing public. Just when you build up some interest and momentum, as a fan you are then left hanging and waiting for the other shoe to drop. This was NOT a travel day where the teams were changing ballpark venues.

The reason for this stupid "dead period" was MLB's decision to change the post-season schedule so that the World Series would start in the middle of the week in hopes to gain ratings. Ok, I get that, but to STOP a 3 game stand just to do that? That makes NO sense whatsoever. Especially when what the MLB COULD have done is push the playoffs up earlier in the schedule by just ending the season a few days earlier, rather than on a weekend, like they did. But instead, MLB decided to extend the season longer by adding more "off days" during the regular season.

MLB Commissioner Bud Selig is doing everything he can to ruin baseball for the "casual" baseball fan. It used to be that you could catch a Cubs or Braves game on WGN or TBS almost every day of the week during the season, but his idiocy of leadership is pushing more and more to "pay per view" types of situations, and this latest scheduling change in the middle of the ALCS is just another example of that.

I did the math and if you add up all of the "extra day off" during the playoffs this season, it add up to 9 total days! That is up and above counting any travel days.

For those of us who are fans of the "game of baseball" and not necessarily of any particular team, it breaks up the continuity of the game and artificially extends the season for no real gain, or even purpose.

Oh, well, as a fan I will still be watching, but the decisions made to extend baseball artificially, is about an insane as watching the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs in May during 80 degree weather.

Someday, these commissioner's are going to figure out that there IS a seasonal timeline to sporting events and that you should not screw around with it, regardless of whether you THINK you might be additional viewers or not. A concept that has yet turned out to be true.