TGIF. . .But I Work Saturdays. . . At Least There's Baseball. . .Kind of

We're going to get to the baseball playoffs which start this afternoon, but right off the bat, since it's sports Fridays, let start with the obvious picks for the weekend:

CFB

1) KSU-24: I've seen KU play in person and they are wretched with a capitol yuck. If this games under 30 I'd really be surprised.  Time for Snyder to show Weiss how the big boys do it.

2) West Virgina+7: Anyone watch the Baylor/WVa game last week?  I'm not sure their defense is any good, but I know they can score on anyone at any given time.  Texas better be ready. Plus, WVA was the preseason Big 12 pick, so I'm not sure why the line is so high even when it's in Texas.

3)La Tech-24, UL Monroe-3, N. Illinois-3: I know what you're saying, you've never heard of these teams before. I get it. But let me tell you something, these teams can flat out play.  I've followed and been with them all year so there's no reason to let up now.  They are covering machines and should do so again this Saturday.

NFL

1) Baltimore Ravens-5: Like I said last week, until my chiefs can show that they are an NFL team and not a D1 team, I will continue to bet against them.

2) Pittsburgh Steelers-3: They are at home, Philly has all kinds of problems and Pitt is coming off the buy.  They are as healthy as they can be at this point and Philly is on the down slide.

3) Chicago-4.5: Carolina is horrid. Cutler loves to twist the knife and with Forte back, things should really come together for the Bears this weekend.

So let's get to the meat of this Friday's blog. MLB baseball. Let me first say that I love baseball. Played it all my life. Wasn't great at it, but I tried.  Usually when you are not athletically great at something, but you still love it, you tend to follow it more after you quite trying. I follow baseball about as closely as I follow any major sport which means I'm just left of nerdom, but still way right of most Americans. Baseball, being America's past time, has had it's ups and downs over the years. Strikes, tied all star games, a canceled world series.  Let's just say it hit a rough patch.  And I understand that the NFL has supplemented the MLB as America's go to sport, but my love for the game hasn't changed. Whether it's live or on tv, I can sit there and watch an entire game.  With attendance and ratings up across the board for baseball in the last few year's, I think America is with me: baseball has made a comeback. The playoffs though. . . I just don't get it.

Call me old school, and by old school, I mean I'm over thirty, but the expansion of the playoffs makes no sense. Prior to 1994 there were two leagues and two divisions in each league.  American and National Leagues, an East and West Division in each.  With expansion of baseball and the addition of the Rays, Rockies, and Marlins, they added a new Central division to each league, re-shuffled the teams and now there were 3 divisions in each league.  Since no one can just sit out a round of playoffs, a new "wild card" was added. This alone caused panic and uproar throughout the lives of geeks everywhere.  Suffice it to say, based on the number of teams that have won the World Series as wild cards, and I think even that has worked out as well. 8 teams, then 4, then 2 in the World Series.  It makes sense numerically and everything is fine.

A second wild card?  Does that even make sense? 5 teams to the playoff's in each league. A 1 game  series between the two wild card teams to decide who is the wild card team?  We're getting a little carried away with it right?  I understand the concept behind it.  Play til the end.  Try and win your division instead of coasting in as the lone wild card.  Who are we kidding though right?  It's about money. wild card t-shirts. 1 more home game. more television time.  You can make all the excuses you want about the integrity of the game but expansion, whether its the number of teams you have or the number of games you play; whether its in the NFL, MLB, of NBA; it's always about revenue. If that weren't true, there would be contraction.  We would get rid of several teams who aren't supported by their market and make all of the other teams around them stronger. We don't though.  We change formats, rules, and regulations so that it makes it look like things will be better.  And maybe they will be.  I for one will tune in to both games today to watch the drama unfold. I hope the Braves and Orioles win their games and move on to the next round. I assume after a number of year's that this new 2 team wild card format will seem just as normal as 3 separate divisions do now. Where it will lead though is easy to see. Just like in the NBA where half of the teams make the playoff, i bet within 10 years we'll have 6 or 8 teams from each league in the playoffs.  What ever it takes to keep this game new, fresh and relevant to today's fan. Or in other words, whatever brings in the most money. 

Tom Selleck for President

This will be Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, all rolled into one.  I have resisted making any comments about politics or choosing a political side on other sites like Twitter and Facebook, and I will do my best to continue to not make political comments here; at least so far as trashing any politician for whatever their political or social stance they have, that I may not agree with. As a former political science major, history teacher and debate coach, I have always loved politics. As a person who ran for every high school and college office there was, I have always taken the political process very seriously.  I enjoy politics. I especially love American politics. The history of it.  The romantic nature of it. Founding fathers. The Constitution. I eat that shit up.

I imagine that the world of American politics is really like The West Wing. I still get chills when I watch re-runs and President Bartlett played by Martin Sheen, slips his hands in his pants pockets before announcing something extraordinary to the nation. I get goosebumps while watching Independence Day and President Whitmore, played by Bill Pullman, give an amazing speech about sacking up and kicking some alien ass. Morgan Freeman is President Beck in Deep Impact, and despite the fact that the entire world is getting ready to be destroyed, he re-assures us that we'll be OK, and we believe him. Harrison Ford is President James Marshall, and terrorist be damned, no one messes with his air force one.

But now. . . where are we in the world? Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton. Regardless of their politics, these men seemed larger then life. I don't want to get into the issues, because let's face it, in today's world, there's simply to many issues to even list them in the order of importance. I wouldn't even begin to to try and tell you that I had the faintest idea of how to solve our nations problems at this point, but what I can tell you is that I don't think the men and women we've elected know the answers either. Elected officials used to care. Or at lest we all perceived that they cared. I don't know if we were better or worse of 10, 20, 50, or 100 years ago, but I do know that Americans perceived that things were getting better. We made progress as a nation. We strived to be the best. We became a better country. Great strides were made in education, science, and civil rights. We were envied or despised, the world over, because we were the best, and everyone knew it. Who got us there? Our elected officials. Our statesmen and representatives.

The difference to me, is that those builders of our country, these powerful men and women of our past, were not politicians by nature.  They were farmers, actors, and doctors.  They were placed into politics, urged into running for office, by the people around them because of their previous successes in business, medicine, and education. They were the pillars of their communities first, their states second, and then lastly their country.  Now? Now it seems that people simply start as politicians. As if its a chosen profession like salesmen or mechanic. It's a course in college that anyone can take. I'm not saying that all politicians are the same. Romney was a successful businessmen. Obama a civil rights lawyer. But by and large, Americans don't relate to their elected officials anymore and have become disenfranchised with politics altogether.

I could go on and on but it basically boils down to this: I want Robert Redford from The Candidate to run for office and then I want Michael Douglas from The American President to run the country. I want the fairy tale. I want truth. I want change. I want to see it, know, and believe in it. I want Tom Selleck, Magnum PI himself, Jesse Stone, and Commisioner Frank Reagan all wrapped into one to care, run, and win. It has happened yet, and doesn't look like it will but at least we have President Bartlett and re-runs to fall back on.