Shit I don't like....

Shit I don't like...

Just a little bit of free floating hostility, this morning....little things that are bugging me about my personal life, about life in these here United States, about life and living in general...

• I don't like baseball in the Olympics. Never really have. Never could get into it. And there's part of me that thinks it's the fact that the car salesman ostensibly in charge of the game doesn't let the best players in the world out to play. But the other part of me thinks it's the whole tournament format, and how it doesn't suit baseball. Baseball, maybe more than any other game, is a game of averages. Any team can win any given game, but the truly best talents rise to the top over the course of a series....now, how big a sample size you need to decide the truly best teams in the world, I couldn't tell you. But I gotta think it's a touch larger than what you can fit into 16 or 17 days. All you have to have for the Olympics is one team (Cuba) having played together for a little while and coming in hot. I dunno. Maybe I'm not making sense, but the whole one-and-done format after pool play doesn't seem to bring out the best, all the time. It's like Christmas...it can't be the seventh game of the World Series every day.
• Yeah. There's a snide part of me that still wants to see the very best in the world play each other, and I suppose the World Baseball Classic is maybe a step in the right direction. There's part of me that wouldn't mind a 148 game season one year, while baseball took a break for the Olympics.
• There's another part of me, which likes having the Cubs in first place, that understands that a 3 week break for the Olympics would likely KILL any momentum you'd want to have, leading into the stretch run. (Although, on the bright side...wouldn't it be great to have EVERYBODY healthy leading up into the last month of the season?).
• But on the whole, I think I'd rather have baseball not in the Olympics. And it looks like I'm getting my way.
• Lady's softball though? That should stay. If I were King of the World, I'd tell them to leave it. I don't like that they're taking that out of the Olympics.
• Outside of the Olympics? Ol' Curmudgeonly Tommy doesn't care for the idea of Instant Replay in baseball. Call him a fundamentalist. It's not a time thing. It's a human aspect of the game being taken away that bugs me. I like the fact that umpires are wrong, from time to time, even if it screws you. I like the fact that a manager can get fired up, and fire up his team to argue a blown call. I dunno. It's the whole thing we seem to have, especially here lately, that the most important thing in the world is To Be Right. I realize that, yeah, it's a contest, and that there are millions (and even billions) of dollars in play, here. But there's an aesthetic that's being lost. I like the fact that in 1922, you'd have the same argument that you have in the year 1943, or 1971, or 2008. The history and connection to the past is something I dig. Same with the DH or all these games starting at 8:45 at night....
• I hate the Designated Hitter. Hate. It.
• I realize it's a couple months after the fact, but Hank Steinbrenner should be lobotomized and thrown into foodservice for that bullshit comment he made a few months ago concerning the DH. Pitchers have hit for GENERATIONS, Hank...Chien Mien Wang could have just as easily hurt himself fielding his position as running the bases. I'm sure that he ran bases playing the game growing up...
• Timeliness, and my lack of it, pisses me off.
• The fact that so many people in Athens aren't registered to vote, pisses me off. Call this one a teaser for another post.

Just a few things. Surprisingly. Heading down to the Southern Brewer's Fest down in Chattaboogie today. Maybe that'll mellow me out a little.