Take Me Out Of The Ball Game

[athelind]

Many people consider baseball, the "Great American Pastime", an entirely pointless endeavor.

I disagree.

Baseball does have one purpose:

It exists to pre-empt Science Fiction programs.

Since the 1970s, when baseball would pre-empt weekend reruns of Star Trek on KTLA in Los Angeles, to this very evening, when Fox ran a night game that wiped both Firefly and John Doe right off the map, the shows I wanted to watch invariably played second fiddle to a bunch of guys standing around playing catch.

Why don't they schedule games on nights when shows like Friends or Everybody Loves Raymond or Survivor?

Hell, maybe they do. I'd never know.

Comments

With luck, the Last World Series will be in 2011

[drakegrey.livejournal.com]

... or whatever Star Trek TNG predicted. Hmm. Perhaps there's a deeper meaning in that prognostication.

Well, the simple reason is this, of course. Because even today, with successes like X-Files, ST: TNG, and other such shows, television SF is still the poor country cousin and shows about comedians with spouses that yell at them for 30 minutes are still the cash cows.

Or something like that. I'm mixing metaphors.

[kreldon.livejournal.com]

I also have, for many years, considered "the great American pastime" completely and utterly pointless. I kicked back and laughed my tail off when the players threatened a strike last summer. I refuse to have an iota of sympathy for those baseball players who make more money in an hour than most people make in a year (hear that, 'A-Rod'?) yet complain that they don't make enough money...to say nothing of pricing the games themselves completely out of the reach of the Average Joe. ($30 just to park the car?! Get real)

As for their tendency to stomp good TV shows off the air...it's all about the $.

This is coming from someone who graduated from Cooperstown High School in 1996 -- yes, *that* Cooperstown, the fabled "home of baseball".