A reason why baseball 'was' better than football...

Ok, first. I am a huge football fan. College football is my #1 sport, with major league baseball close in the heels @ #2 on my list. Well, that is unless you count fishing, then college football and MLB ranks second and third respectively, but that is something different. And I do not count them in the same categories.

Still, one of the greatest things I love about baseball is that in baseball, you do not have the constant and annoying distractions while the game is being played that you do with other sports, like football. What do I mean by that? Simple. Cheerleading.

Or at least, there USED to not be any cheerleading in baseball.

Do not get me wrong. I am a guy, and I sit in the stands of football games with a pair of binoculars and staring down at the petite, athletic, extremely limber, lithe and HOT little cheerleader babes like 90% of all other guys do. It is what makes football what it is. Especially with the delays between plays, it is a great distraction.

But in recent years we have seen, in an effort to bring in more fans and mostly male ones, some of the low market baseball teams are now, not only looking at creating cheerleading teams, like the Florida Marlins, "Mermaids", who while they are EXTREMELY pleasant to look at, bring nothing to the game itself.

But those very same Florida Marlins feel that was not enough. Now they want to completely offend our very senses by bringing in a cheerleading squad called, "Manatees". This group is NOT made up of women dressed in hot little outfits that make 40 year old, paunchy men suck in their gut so hard they turn blue and faint, but instead THIS group will consist OF 40 year old plus, paunchy men! (or some reasonable facsimile of that male demographic.)

According to an AP news report this is what is happening (quote:)

"The Florida Marlins are looking for some footloose fat men. The National League team is creating an all-male, plus-size cheerleading squad to be dubbed the Manatees. Tryouts were scheduled for Sunday.

The team hopes to recruit seven to 10 tubby men to dance, cheer and jiggle during Friday and Saturday home games this season.

Real manatees, 1,200-pound mammals sometimes referred to as "sea cows," are not considered the most agile of creatures and often get caught in boat propellers.

The Marlins want their Manatees to have the same dimensions, but to be decidedly more agile. Men will be judged on how well they dance a choreographed routine."

(Source AP news)

(endquote):

Ok, that is just WRONG! NO one wants cheerleading at baseball games, and certainly no one wants to see "fat guys" dancing!!! Fat men dancing as cheerleading for baseball is to me about as appealing as spooning down a bowl of ice cream topped with bleach and gasoline!

Baseball is supposed different, it has been and will be a game for 'game purists'. People who are insanely wrapped up in statistics, numbers and history. But over the years as the interest has faded in that part of fan involvement of the game, what has begun to show up is something that is just offensive and contradictory to that. That being, "cheer leading".

Baseball is game to be enjoyed wistfully and in contemplative reflection of the game. Not wild-eyed, radical screaming at the top of your lungs. THAT is what football is for!

To paraphrase from that immortal movie about baseball, which gave us some of the greatest baseball one-liners, "THERE IS NO CHEERLEADING IN BASEBALL!"