ChangeRoadUnis

I chewed tobacco for 11 years, quitting in 1988. I never once spilled my tobacco juice on anyone and I've never had anyone spill their juice on me. So, I think your reaction is completely overblown.

It is a great system if you want to have a fun little tournament at the end of the season full of excitement where anyone can win. Yippee! If you really want to crown the best team, you've got to put more emphasis on a 162 game schedule and less on best of 5 or 7. But that would entail leaving out some of these wildcard teams and having fewer playoff games and less money. That is never going to happen. In fact, they are more likely to expand this thing than retract it. Baseball is different than Basketball or Football. In a short series, anyone could win, including the worst team in the league, like Oakland, if they got hot.

And being out of state, i would see very few Oriole games on TV during the year. If they were on the Saturday game of the week with Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek, that was great. Very rare though. Same with Monday night baseball, although i do remember the Royals Monday night game in 1976 with Reggie Jackon. And then watching in the playoffs was also a challenge as the games were on in the day and if you were in school, tough luck. I do remember faking being sick and staying home to watch the O's and the A's in either 1973 or 1974. Talk about monster teams. The only time i could listen to the O's on the radio was when they played the Angels. I could pick up the game when it was light out, but when it got dark it was much harder to get. But what a treat to be able to listen!! Hard to understand in this day and age.

I was living in AZ at the time I was 10 years old in 1971 and had a paper route. First thing in the morning I would open up one of the papers to get the scores from the previous day. Day got off to a good start if the O's won In middle and high school, I would go to the library during lunch or off period and study the Sporting News which had all the box scores. Great days.

i remember fondly one autograph experience and one not so fondly. i have lived in Arizona my whole life and attended a few Cleveland Indian spring training games in 1973 and 1974. I was 12 or 13 at the time. I saw Hank Aaron play there and that man stood there and signed all the requests for autographs. I don't have the autograph but what a gentleman. On the other hand, being an Oriole fan since the late 1960s, i saw Frank Robinson and Boog Powell play there. i was no excited to get their autographs. Of course Frank was extremely rude and wouldn't give any fans the time of day. I was surprised that Boog Powell was the same way given his reputation. Anyway, never looked at Powell or baseball players the same way after that.

He is 1 for 21 in his last seven games for a .048 batting average. He does have three walks, so I guess we're supposed to be thrilled with that? He is now batting .159.

Take an electronic picture of every player before the season standing straight up and your strike zone for the whole year is from the knees to letters (or whatever). It would all be digital anyway. Seems doable to me.