Author: Anthony Stalter (Page 1283 of 1503)

The “Hell yes, Guy!” makes a good point about MLB in one of his latest blogs.

What it comes down to is: there are 15 teams out of the 30 in MLB that matter when the season starts. Sure, there might be a surprise or two, but accounting for the annual let downs, the numbers stay just about the same. As an Indians fan I’ve had plenty of years in each of the situations, even just in recent memory. Good years (90’s) bad years (early 2000’s) surprises (2005) and let downs (2006). I guess I would say, the most disappointing thing is that there is very little competition. I’m not saying that over 162 games there aren’t games where a bad team beats a better team; I’m just saying that we all know over the long hall there are some teams that have no shot. All you can do is pray that you’re not rooting for one.

This is part of the reason why the NFL has become so popular. Not everyone likes parity (in fact, there are more than a handful of fans who long for the “good ol’ days” when there were a couple of great teams everybody gunned for each season), but there’s no denying how exciting it is that a team can turn around its misfortune so quickly. It breeds hope after your team just went 4-12.

But in baseball, it’s a rarity for a team to jump from last to first. Baseball is all about the haves and the have-nots.

Tony Massarotti of the Boston Herald writes that the upcoming trip to Japan is starting to severely interfere with the Red Sox’s quest for back-to-back championships.

Beyond that, here is something to consider: To play roughly 6-7 hours of regular season baseball, the Sox will spend nearly five times as many hours (34) in the air.

The moon isn’t in the sky that long.

On the surface, this does not look like an enormous sacrifice. Spring training is far too long to begin with and the Sox open their schedule only a week earlier than most everyone else. One week certainly isn’t too much to promote major league baseball and brand the Sox logo on the side of a pagoda. Who cares about Benny Agbayani when you can have Benihana?

In reality, the Red Sox aren’t giving up one week so much as they are two, maybe three. Last year, nobody would have batted an eye if Josh Beckett [stats] walked off the mound with back spasms prior to a scheduled start on March 8. This year, Beckett immediately became a candidate to miss a March 25 opener because the Red Sox need to be on a plane on March 19.

While the trip overseas is good for baseball from a marketing standpoint, I agree with Massarotti in that the Sox don’t need this. Contenders like Boston enter the season thinking about one thing: Winning the World Series. Are the Sox more likely to accomplish that goal staying home? I would think so. Or, to play devil’s advocate, would this even be an issue if Beckett weren’t suffering from back spasms?

Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan has publicly said that baseball turned its back on the steroids issue. I agree and, like many fans, I want the league to finally come clean, admit they screwed up and not only get a strong testing policy in place, but make sure it’s effective too.