Major League Baseball:You Have Been Dismissed.

Compare the United States with the Roman empire and you’ve got yourself many parallels, but give us credit for inventing such a clean, innocent national pastime while our empirical predecessors were using human candles to illuminate lions eating defenseless slaves alive to the roar of a blood-thirsty Oligarchy. Then wonder how in the hell anybody ever thought for one second it was fun to watch a guy hit a ball with a stick, run around a diamond-shaped series of bases and chase that ball around a field bigger than Costco.

It doesn’t end there. Watch that for nine innings, for a season consisting of ONE HUNDRED, SIXTY-TWO GAMES. Times that by the 30 teams in the league and that’s four-thousand, eight hundred and sixty regular-season baseball games played in just one season (my math maybe askew here, because teams play each other, combining games, but I don’t know the formula and you don’t either).

Two thousand, four thousand, whatever- note to commissioner Bud Selig: Google the law of supply and demand. While you’re at it, Google arrogance, because if the league actually thinks baseball is so awesome and important that the American public needs this much of it, you must also think that it’s worth paying twelve bucks a beer and forty dollars a ticket to come watch this special event that happens in your city at a rate of more than once per four calendar days. Double that if you live in NY, LA or the Bay Area.

Look, I played little league and had a great time. My Mom and Sister play softball and I get jealous they have so much darn fun. But when it comes to bread and circus, in our slowly growing consciousness of the environment, human and animal rights, and the waste of war, we want peace in the streets and blood in the stadium. Look at what’s popular in America: the NFL and UFC. Give us fast and brutal, bloody and chaotic, sexy and tragic. A fat guy chewing bubblicious and blasting foul balls into the upper deck for five hours does not fit this criteria. Even Vin Scully admittedly prefers football. Snooze alarm!

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