Two words. Neutral site. Two more words. Right now.
Pardon me while I shiver. Brrrrrrr.
No matter how ch-ch-charming baseball is as a winter sport, the novelty is hardly worth the discomfort.
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“Thinking that you can just move the World Series to a neutral site is absolute folly,” said Bud Selig, baseball’s ersatz commissioner.
Well, if Selig is against it, maybe it has a chance.
It is not just the frigid and game-altering conditions of this place to consider, although the bats for Game 4 may have come out of a box labeled Mrs. Paul’s. Snow spit on Jacobs Field from rush hour on Wednesday, mocking the silly folks playing the game, those witnessing the game, those covering the game.
If the baseball can survive without the Yankee Clipper, it certainly can survive the occasional Alberta Clipper.
What should be a more serious concern is the humbling reality that baseball has become a local story and TV ratings of this Series certainly bear that out. They are the lowest ever.
“I pore over TV ratings,” Selig said. “Believe me, everybody’s ratings drop, every sport, all programs. I mean, we started on a Saturday night, the lowest-rated night of the week.
“The two teams are, well, let’s be candid, Florida is a surprise and Cleveland didn’t get the attention that New York and Baltimore did. I mean, last year you had the team from the largest market (New York) playing Atlanta, America’s team. Sure, we would be off a bit.”
Selig is missing the point, as usual.
What America is telling baseball is that the World Series is just not an event that can stand alone, a special festival of baseball, if you will, able to involve more than each team’s own constituents.
What our incredibly shrinking national pastime needs is a national stage.
A warm-and-ready national stage. San Diego, for example. New Orleans. San Antonio. Is the Final Four smarter than the World Series?
The hype never escapes the city limits of two places that are decided only a few days before, for which neither is ever properly prepared. Here, for example, conventions clutter and challenge the services of a town used to being undercrowded.
In my hotel, no less than seven companies take up most of the space. My favorite being Dyneon, “Rockin’ the Flouropolymer Industry Since the 50s.” Rental cars are rarer than Series tickets.
In Florida, my hotel was more concerned with making delegates to a giant computer convention happy than humoring those of us there for the Series.
Baseball, even the World Series, becomes just another visitor to its hosts, and a tardy one at that.
The Super Bowl, the Final Four, the Olympics, the World Cup, all are put up for bids and anchored well ahead of time. Plans can be made.
Tradition is strongest when tradition has an address in advance. I give you Churchill Downs, Augusta, Wimbledon. Pasadena.
“You just couldn’t take this away from Cleveland,” Selig said. “You just have to walk the streets of the city to see what this means.”
I am guessing that I do a lot more street walking than Selig does, and what I’ve found is the usual cheap hustle and self-serving boosterism (Go Tribe Sez Wally’s Shoe Repair and Sticky Buns).
My own informal, teeth-chattering poll on the matter reveals the following: 2 1/2 out of seven Cleveland fans, who are the most devoted in sports, would like the Series someplace else, the half being a couple whose marriage may not last until the next time the Indians are in a Series.
Putting the Series in a neutral site would not deprive communities of celebrating their teams because there would be two playoff levels before the Series, just as there are in football before the Super Bowl.
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The reward is getting there, and if the there is worth getting to, everybody shares.
It is the event itself that becomes special, rather than who is in it, or how adorable they look in ski masks.