One of the people I love to read is Daniel Negreanu. I read his blog faithfully and I also follow him on Twitter. He's an intelligent young man that makes his living playing poker professionally. I like watching him play, he's very friendly at the tables and seems like a down to earth sort of fellow. Sometimes his thoughts get away from the poker tables and he blogs about other things, like baseball.
I read this blog entry this morning and I have to say that I agree with his points, although I don't totally consider all of baseball as garbage. Yes, the big money teams seem to win a lot of the time but any team can be beaten by any other team on any given day. Like any other sport there is always the luck factor to consider. Maybe that's why teams that don't ever seem to have a chance have such diehard fans, like the Cubs or my team the Pirates. We all hope that someday we shall break out of that losing mold and be a brilliant team that goes all the way.Just like a poker player thinking his pair of tens is really the best hand to wager on and sometimes it is.
Here is his baseball thoughts:
Baseball is a joke. The game is great, awesome actually, but the way major league baseball is structured is just awful. It is the only major sports league in North America without a salary cap and makes it extremely difficult for teams to stay competitive with the big spenders who stack their teams with all-stars. As a fan, I'd personally find it extremely boring to essentially get a bye into the playoffs each season just because you are able to buy the best players available every year. Just doesn't seem fun at all to me. I honestly don't know how a Yankees fan, or even a Red Sox fan can get remotely excited about the regular season anymore.
This is a sick stat, but the Yankees have qualified for the post-season 14 out of the last 15 years! Boston, with the second highest payroll, has made the post-season 6 out of the last 7 seasons. Boston and New York have finished in the top two in the AL East for 10 of the past 12 seasons. Yankees spend over $200 million on their team and finished first overall, while Boston spends $120 million and finished 3rd overall. The Angels have the 4th highest payroll in the league and finished with 97 wins.
It annoys me to no end when people say, "Well the other teams could just spend more to make their teams better." Baloney! All that would do is mean payrolls across the board would escalate, because New York would just spend $230 million and Boston would spend close to $200 million to stay in front.
Teams like Tampa Bay occasionally have a miracle year with a cast of young players, but guess what happens when their contracts are up? They end up in Boston or New York.
I can't bring myself to care about a league that is going to have such rare turnover, not because the team is genius at drafting, but simply because they can just buy a better team with money. Boring. Totally, and insanely boring to me.
TV networks love it, obviously, and wouldn't change the status quo because it's in their best interest to have NY and Boston vying for the World Series each year, but I think they are shortsighted as well and eventually it will come back to bite them in the butt. There is no end in sight to this madness, so I gave up caring. The league will never implement a salary cap, and because of that, I'll never be a baseball fan every again. It's so beyond stupid to me that I'd feel dirty watching it.
If you'd like to read Daniel's blog and I hope you will, it's located here...
http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-journal.php
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment