Baseball Like We've NEVER Seen It

So, here we go. It took the Commissioner of Major League Baseball to mandate a 60-game season, set to start in July.

It's going to be a season like we've never seen before. And, hopefully, we will never see it again!

They've sorted out a schedule that should help the Milwaukee Brewers -- 10 games (home and home) with their NL Central teams (Reds, Cubs, Cardinals, Pirates) and 20 games with teams from the AL Central (White Sox, Royals, Tigers, Twins, Indians). We can live with that.

The 60 game schedule makes EVERY game important and interesting. I like the urgency of this season will have. It's a sprint now, not a marathon. And what happens when a key player is sidelined for 14 days due to Covid-19? Or a whole team, for that matter. Strange times indeed.

How about those rule changes? The Universal DH will help the Brewers (gets that Ryan Braun bat in the lineup without hurting the team's defense) so I'm okay with giving that a shot for the years. How about putting a runner at second in the 10th inning? For this season, that's fine. I get it. Can't have a team playing 18 innings one day and then playing again the next. Not with this shortened season format.

But, I really, really don't want to see baseball go this permanently. As a fan, I happen to like being part of an extra-inning contest. One of my favorite memories is seeing a 15-inning game in the Houston Astro Dome, as the Astros knocked off the Chicago Cubs. (Remember that game, Mild Bill?)

Baseball is still concerned about social distancing on the basepaths. How will that look at first base? Or the shortstop or secondbaseman covering the bag on a steal or double play?

Here's my solution. That that playground standard -- Ghost Runners. We all have years and years of experience with it, stemming from games played when we lacked the right number of players for both sides.

Can you imagine the arguments that would stem from Ghost Runners on double plays or plays at the plate? And could you have them steal bases? Maybe use dice -- hello, Strat-o-matic or Sports Illustrated's Superstar Baseball!

Well, we've all wished for baseball to return. Looks like it will, warts and all!

What's Wrong With This Picture?

I'm starting to view Major League Baseball owners & players as little kids fighting over a toy. The REALLY need someone with authority to step in and settle this once and for all.

Both sides are right, and both sides are wrong. But there HAS to be give & take here or baseball is not only killing off this season but it's future as well. Has neither side learned anything from history?

There's a class at the University of Wisconsin that I wanted to take as a "senior guest" student. Old folks can do that -- one course per semester with the professor's approval, no cost. The beauty is, you do the readings, listen to the lectures BUT you don't do the assigned work or take the tests. (Among my friends and family, I'm sure many thought I did this all through my four years at UW-Oshkosh! My GPA begs to differ, but that's another issue.)

Tried to get into the class, Baseball & Society Since World War II, but it was not in a lecture pit, and with limited space, they prof couldn't let me in. But he did provide me with the reading list for it. One text dealt with breaking the racial barrier, starting with Jackie Robinson. Another was Ball Four, the tell-all diary by Jim Bouton from the early 1970's that changed the way a lot of us looked at professional athletes.

The third was The End Of Baseball As We Knew It: The Players Union, 1960-1981 by Charles P. Korr.

It's an eye-opening, detailed look at the nastiness that has been part of the relationship between MLB's owners the the player's union for well over 40 years. Seems like there has been bad blood forever.

Both sides have an opportunity to set some of that aside at the negotiation table and work through this.

As fans, we need to it to be sooner rather than later.

Please?

Taking the "Sport" Out Of Sportsman

Ran across the following blurb on the Washington Post the other day, and it just made me more than a little angry.

I have a lot of friends and family who hunt and fish. They are sportsman in the true sense of the word, and respect their sport. But I think they will cringe when they see this...as well they should. I just wonder what the logic of this is.

This is the blurb:

The Trump administration is making it easier for hunters to kill bear cubs and wolf pups in Alaska. 

“Hunters will soon be allowed to venture into national parks in Alaska and engage in practices that conservation groups say are reprehensible: baiting hibernating bears from their dens with doughnuts to kill them and using artificial light such as headlamps to scurry into wolf dens to slaughter mothers and their pups,” Darryl Fears reports. “In a final rule that is expected to be published Tuesday (6/9/2020) in the Federal Register, the Trump administration will end a five-year-old ban on the practices, which also include shooting swimming caribou from a boat and targeting animals from airplanes and snowmobiles. It would take effect 30 days after being published.”