So Baseball Started?

In case you were sleeping, which was the case for us on the West Coast, you might have missed the fact the baseball season has *technically started. The A's beat the Mariners this morning or night or whatever time that game was played in Japan. The A's and Mariners split the series and will now head home to play spring training games before resuming the season. If that sounds ridiculous that's because it is. And it's another reason why baseball has become more and more irrelevant.

*I don't count this two game series as the "opening" of the baseball season. Sorry Japan. 

Look I understand it's important for baseball to visit Japan and play games. Japan love baseball and the MLB wants to capitalize on this love. But jeez they can't schedule this series sometime during the season? You know for the A's and Mariners don't have to come back and still play spring training games? This dilemma and baseball in general was the conversation the Colonel and I recently had.

Now I must first say I haven't seen the Colonel lately. We've both been busy with work so we haven't had a lot of time to meet at the Mos Eisley Cantina. I knew immediately the entire conversation would be centered on baseball because when I first walked in, I noticed the Colonel wearing a Giants hat along with his customary white suit.

"Ready for the season, eh?" I say.

"Been ready since the start of this month," says the Colonel. "Sucks that we're still a week away from the Giants starting their season."

"You do know the season has already started?" I ask.

"THAT DOESN'T COUNT!" says the Colonel emphatically. "They both come back to the states to play spring training games! I'm just going to count those games as spring training games since they come back and play spring training games. Besides, we couldn't see those games live so we're just going to pretend they never happened."


The Colonel brings up a good point here. There was a minor controversy during the first game, Bay Area fans couldn't watch the first game because of the arcane MLB blackout rules. Yes CSN California decided not to broadcast either game, so if you're an A's fan you had to listen to the games on the radio or wait until the replay. The blackout rules were in effect for A's fans despite their team playing thousand miles away from Oakland in Japan. MLB finally saw how stupid this was and lifted the blackout rule for the two A's fans could watch their team using the Seattle stream this morning.

"Baseball has got to do something with these arcane blackout rules," I say to the Colonel. "We're not that bogged down by them, unless the A's play in Japan again, but the horror stories about the blackout rules should be a kick to the face for baseball."

"Baseball can't grow until they do a lot of things differently; market new players, allow videos on YouTube, etc," I say. "But they're chasing away the fans they already have with these blackout rules. That's bad for business."

"Look I realize this issue is more of a by-product of the various local networks who air the games," says the Colonel. "MLB needs to come up with some sort of plan to life these blackout rules. One idea is to round up advertising for between innings on mlb.tv and split it up between the teams. That's a simple plan, but we're talking about Bud Selig and crew here."

"Yeah this is Bud Selig and baseball we're talking about," I say. "While the NFL and NBA are marketing their superstar players and growing as a league, baseball still only markets the Red Sox and Yankees and wonder why people have stopped watching baseball."

"They'll never learn until someone younger is running the league," says the Colonel.

And the Colonel is right. Baseball will never grow if Bud Selig and his cronies still run the league. They're behind the times, not growing, and losing what they have left.