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Millions of people enjoy baseball. I am one. Tens of thousands of people are employed and make their livelihoods through baseball, beyond the players. The reporters, groundskeepers, vendors, ushers, barkeeps, waiters, waitresses, and the guys who operate the sausage carts at all the parks across the country rely on baseball to make their daily bread.
I know this is just a funny rant you've posted, and I'm not inclined to take it terribly seriously seriously. That having been said, do consider what you're wishing for. The price of your desire to to not hear about baseball because of a strike falls on the heads of a lot of people who need the work. Just sayin'.
Hockey isn't as big a sport around the country as it is here in Boston and the other Original Six cities, but the NHL lockout has actually hurt a lot of small businesses.
Besides all that, the thing a lot of people like about baseball is beyond individual games or stats or players. This country reinvents itself about every 20 years. Baseball is a constant; it has been basically the same game for 150 years, and has been a part of life through all the peaks and valleys of our history.
Cut open the history of baseball and you can count the rings like on a tree. At this ring, Ted Williams left the game to go fight in WWII. At this one, the women's league was formed to keep baseball alive during the war. At this one, the groundwork laid by hundreds and hundreds of Negro League ballplayers led to the integration of the majors, and I don't care what anyone says, that was a huge moment in the civil rights struggle.
Is a lot of it bullshit? Sure. The recent steroids scandal is an embarrassment, the fact that people like Alex Rodrigues get a quarter of a billion dollars to play a game while schools go begging for money is an absolute disgrace, and the fact that Americans would be far more involved in the public life and health of the country without the distraction of professional sports is axiomatic.
But entertainment is not a bad thing, and if baseball has become more ridiculous over the years, that is mostly because the country itself has gotten more ridiculous over the years. It is an interesting mirror of the culture, exposing our celebrity worship, our misplaced economic principles, and our easy ability to become distracted. But it is also essentially the same game that was being played when TR was president, and a little constancy is not so bad a thing.
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