[greymule]

I just think a couple of rules changes and a couple of philosophy changes would not hurt MLB. I used to grow up wanting to watch every minute of the post season, even when they came up with the Division series I was a fan. Now I cannot stand to watch the games. They take too long and it is only worth watching the last inning or so when the game is on the line. I cannot even stand the All-Star game anymore.

I won't disagree with anything there. I remember that when the World Series was on, the nation seemed to stop and focus on the games. You'd see drivers holding transistor radios to their ears as they went down the highway. (Many cars didn't have radios in those days.) When our school let the kids bring radios so they could listen (on the little earphone) to the continuing coverage of John Glenn in orbit, we were delighted, because we could actually listen to the Yankees versus the Reds. And the All-Star game was of great importance to us kids, as it seemed the world was divided between American and National League fans, and of course the winner of the All-Star game "proved" their league was better.

I was looking through my 50-year-old junior high school yearbook recently and realized that for every boy pictured, I could cite the team he played for in Little League and the MLB team of which he was a fan. (In those days, it was Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, or Cardinals.) Many people today don't realize how deeply baseball permeated American culture in the "old days." I suspect that's gone forever.