Andy:

I'm in agreement with DMN and not really sure what you mean. Generally, especially compared to 20 years ago, I think fans are better behaved (maybe 40 years ago they were still better), the parks are nicer, the bathrooms nicer, the food nicer, the views as good or better in the newer parks, and the game pretty much the same. What are you pointing to?

JC, perhaps I should have limited the comparison to the older parks, where the tradeoff was 2% obstructed view seats vs. the entire upper deck that was much closer to home plate, especially within the baselines. The cantilevering cured the 2% problem but substituted the 50% problem. This was compounded by the reassignation of the "unreserved" sections to the nether reaches of the park, often to the outfield upper deck, and sometimes eliminating them altogether. Trust me, if you'd been around then, you'd agree with my assessment.

And while the seats and the bathrooms are a big improvement, and the food is much better, this still can't make up for the fact that a person who wants to get a good seat close to the action these days is paying (in real dollar terms) from three to a hundred times the amount he was when I was well past my 21st birthday. Not to mention the transportation and parking cost differences in many parks.

I know the reasons for this. But they don't change the facts.

EDIT: One very small example: Those $150 seats in Nationals Park cost between $1.50 and $2.50 in Griffith Stadium, or $10.72 to $17.86 in today's dollars.

I agree that MLB will not allow the regular season schedule to be disrupted - that is, unless there is sufficient money in it for them, which I can't see happening. However, if the Olympics are scheduled in MLB's offseason - and don't forget, in the Southern Hemisphere summer runs December-February - then I think there is a reasonable chance that MLB players will be released to compete in the Olympics. After all, we have the World Baseball Classic, an Olympic-type competition, which runs in that time frame now.

-- MWE

Of course they exist, and of course what I'm saying is hyperbolic, but you have to be honest with yourself and make a clear distinction between two sets of athletes.

---the ones you're talking about, who compete in minor sports, and who compete for the sheer love of sport

---and the ones for whom it's all about marketing

The problem with the Olympics is that it's been completely---as in 100%---taken over by the professional, the commercial, and the corporate ethos. This makes it great for couch potatoes who like this sort of thing, and it makes it great for a handful of jocks who can parlay their medals into a lucrative pro contract (or a more lucrative one), and it makes it even better for the corporations, the networks, and the host governments.

What you're essentially saying is that we should just put up with all the surrounding politics, commercialism, and general bullshlt in order to give a few thousand amateur athletes something to live for every four years.

Which is fair enough, since the unanswerable rejoinder to people like me is "you don't have to watch it." And of course I don't. But I will continue to drop in from time to time to admire the Emperor's New Clothes.

What about MLB? The NFL? The NBA? European soccer? You compare the opening ceremony, to the WS, but the WS is held every year, not once every 4 years.

How about we look at other fields. Music. Forget pop. Look at the most "elitist" of the musical genres: classical. It's as much "professional" as any sport. Hell, the crappy and awful Chinese classical pianist Lang Lang, sometimes derogatorily referred to as Bang Bang by pianophiles, even performed at the opening ceremony.

The professionalism of sport is a reality. Whether people like it or not. It is not possible to achieve the levels of performance that elite athletes achieve, as an amateur, without being a trust fund baby. If you want amateurism, then, you have to accept (much) reduced levels of performance.

Furthermore, you're setting up a false dichotomy there, by separating those who just love the sport, and those for whom it's all about the marketing. The reality in modern sports is that it's not possible to compete at these levels without turning training into a full time job. A very physically painful and demanding full time job. Just because an athlete loves his / her sport doesn't mean that he / she doesn't expect to derive some financial reward out of it.

Also, what is your definition of a minor sport? Is Track and Field a minor sport? It's a major olympic sport. In 2005, Adam Nelson, 2 time olympic silver medalist in the discus, was so broke that he was going to quit. In the end, he auctioned himself off on Ebay. In return for money for training, he would help market his sponsor. He finally won a gold in a major championship in the 2005 WC. Go back to the days of amateurism, and he would have been banned.

And let's say a handful of jocks do get rich off their performances in the olympics. So what? Given how ####### hard they had to work to win there, why shouldn't they be rewarded?

No, I'm not saying that we should put up with the propagandistic crap, the politics, etc. You can choose to ignore the opening ceremony. You can make fun of the Chinese exercise in propaganda. You can point out that the Chinese put their athletes through brutal training regimes. With even reports of physical beatings of children.

None of that changes the fact that thousands of athletes make tremendous sacrifices to compete there.

Well argued, rfloh. As I said, it's all a matter of preference. And I certainly don't intend to diminish the great majority of athletes who have few if any other realistic venues for breaking through the fog of inattention and advancing their careers. More power to them.

Baseball, however, is about the MLB - that's not a slight to the Japanese, Latin American, or other leagues - facts are facts, Major League baseball is the top of the heap. It's simply the league that all the best players in the world aspire towards

That is true of the NBA too. And olympic soccer is minor compared to the World Cup, or even the club competitions in Europe an SA.

In fact, in olympic soccer, many top players don't participate, because FIFA, the soccer governing body, only allows teams to field 3 players over the age of 23 in their squads. Everyone else must be under 23.

Evan if they award it to a southern hemesphere city, there is little to no chance of the Olympics being held during baseballs offseason. I believe Sydney 2000 was in september. They are not going to bend over backwards to try and fit in with MLBs schedule, nor should they.

And evan on the off chance that one of the Olympics was held during the baseball offseason, it's still not really a solution to the problem. Youd just run into the same dilemma the following Games...

This doesn't seem to be an issue for the NBA or for soccer (and perhaps not the NHL, except I know nothing about the NHL except that that's the sport with ice, so who knows?), so why does it need to be with MLB?

Soccer is played once a week, and the summertime is the off-season for most leagues. Summer is also the off-season for the NBA (the WNBA took a month-long Olympic break, not that anyone noticed). Hockey is played three of four times a week, which causes a two-week break to tighten up the NHL schedule a bit, but it's doable.

Baseball is played every day. Every single day (almost). A two-week break means you have to reschedule 12-13 games, or nearly one-tenth of the season, which already stretches seven months (eight, including spring training games). One possible option could be to give the big baseball nations (US, Japan, Cuba, Venezuela maybe) a bye into the medal round with everybody else playing a preliminary round (this is what they do in hockey) so the majority of the MLB players only have to be away for one week. Even then, of course, there's always the chance somebody's multimillion-dollar player will get hurt playing a "meaningless" game.

However, if the Olympics are scheduled in MLB's offseason - and don't forget, in the Southern Hemisphere summer runs December-February - then I think there is a reasonable chance that MLB players will be released to compete in the Olympics.

Crazy at it sounds, this could actually work. The next Winter Olympics (2010) are being held in Vancouver, which just happens to have a baseball-sized indoor stadium. Most WO venues won't, of course (Sochi, Russia, anyone?), so the IOC would have to award the baseball portion of the Winter Olympics elsewhere. (And there would be precent for that, too: the equestrian events of 1956 couldn't be held in Melbourne due to a horse quarantine, so they were moved to Sweden.)

Indeed. I don't know how anyone watches to opening and closing ceremonies. But, then, I don't watch pregame shows for other sports, either.

Soccer is played once a week, and the summertime is the off-season for most leagues. Summer is also the off-season for the NBA (the WNBA took a month-long Olympic break, not that anyone noticed). Hockey is played three of four times a week, which causes a two-week break to tighten up the NHL schedule a bit, but it's doable.

Baseball is played every day. Every single day (almost). A two-week break means you have to reschedule 12-13 games, or nearly one-tenth of the season, which already stretches seven months (eight, including spring training games).

I guess I wasn't clear, because you're the second one to misinterpret my statement this way. I was referring only to the injury issue, not to the scheduling issue.

and (b) the &(*^#@^$ noise. And by noise I don't mean crowd noise; I mean the stuff blaring over the speakers. Full time. High volume. If only the PA system was limited to announcing the name of the batter coming to the plate or reliever coming into the game, I'd be thrilled.

Agreed.

What's funny is that John Sterling in the past has gone on and on at Tampa Bay games about the noise, doing his whole "I guess their team can't play baseball, so they have to entertain the crowd some other way" schtick. I confess never having watched a home Devil Rays game, but I have watched plenty of games at Yankee Stadium, and the noise there can get unbearable - so I wonder what Sterling is talking about. Maybe it's worse at Tampa Bay games (?), but it's not like Yankee Stadium shuts off its PA system.

My experience is a few years out of date, but the noise at Yankee stadium is much, much worse than at the Trop. I really enjoyed the game I saw in Tampa. Of course, there were only like 15 people there.