When I was a kid, I looked forward to Baseball’s All-Star Game. I love scoring baseball games (still do on occasion) and I made up a huge score sheet just to capture all of the substitutions. I made my mother made dozens of copies so I could score games (Copiers were much less prevalent in those days). Time passes of course, and I don’t watch nearly as much baseball as I used to, and so the Midsummer Classic no longer holds the same interest. More important, with interleague play, the All-Star Game is no longer special since the best from each league do play against each other regularly.
Unfortunately for Fox Sports, I am not the only one. Looking back, the game drew 28.2 million viewers in 1985. Twelve years later, after Fox got exclusive broadcast rights, viewership totaled 16.7 million viewers. The audience fell to 12.3 million in 2005 and last year the game drew 11.0 million viewers, about the same viewership as the year before (10.9 million).. Last year’s viewership increase stopped a three-year decline in viewership but the game concluded as the third-least watched MLB All-Star Game in history.
More problematic is that the viewership skews old (like the rest of Fox?). Sports Business Daily reported the average age for last year’s All-Star telecast was 53. Since television most targets the 18-to-49 demographic, it is apparent that the game is nowhere as lucrative than it used to be.
Commissioner Bud Selig’s gimmick to have the teams play for home field advantage in the World Series was always a ludicrous stunt and admittedly, the fans no longer care. The article on SI.com that I am basing this on suggested instead of home field, let the All-Star Game result determine whether the DH is used or not, but I think an all-or-nothing approach like that would disadvantage the representative of the league that lost the All-Star Game.
There is a major problem for baseball. I know that baseball is less popular than football, but the baseball version loses to the NFL Pro Bowl (11.7 million viewers in 2013) in viewers, which is the worst of all of the exhibitions since, due to the violent nature of the game, rules are changed and players don’t play hard to avoid injury. Still, baseball outdraws the NBA All-Star Game (7.5 million viewers on TNT in 2014). But the 2014 NBA All Star Game out-rated MLB last year among adults 18-49 and the NBA game has not dropped viewership nearly at the rate of MLB.
So, what should be done? Should the game be eliminated (which should be the fate of the Pro Bowl)? I don’t think so – it is still nice to see all of the best in the sport in one game at the same time. Plus, as a final bow for future Hall of Famers like Derek Jeter, the game has an emotional resonance. Plus, I think the Home Run Derby is a great deal of fun. I think that the expectations for the game’s ratings (And of course, money) should be adjusted to reflect the new reality. And get rid of the silly World Series home field fiasco.

Congratulations to Germany who won the Cup in extra time over Argentina. Sadness in Brazil, on the pitch after the 7-1 drubbing from the Germans, and still concern over the stadiums built for billions of dollars at the expense of badly needed health and social services for its citizens. Demonstrations in Brazil were kept far away from the venues and the world media. The same can’t be said of the rioters in Argentina after they lost the final.
Here in the U.S., nice crowds for the outdoor broadcasts of the games in Chicago, and the U.S. National Team made it to the elimination round. Nice, but it will not cause the breakthrough of the game in this country.
I watched some of the games, and generally, there was interesting play. It moved fast and was often exciting, especially when the games went back and forth in quick rushes. Unfortunately, that was not the case for every game; there was still a lot of time when men kicked the ball between themselves in the middle of the pitch; interesting if you played the game, boring as hell if you didn’t. And these were the best players in the world; what is the level of play in the MLS or other leagues? Enough to brake the monotony?
Still, there are lots of people holding out hope/expectations that soccer will become as popular here as it is in the rest of the world. I remember writing about this back for The Sportswriters in the 1990s that the answer to that is, probably never. Even if the U.S. team became a force in the sport (which will still take a lot of doing), there are too many, deeply entrenched sports that Americans are used to for soccer to be able to become one of the more popular sports. We have American football, which is the true national pastime. We still have baseball, and basketball, hockey, golf and so many other ways to spend out time/fill our airwaves.
Before the soccer fan friend of mine jump all over me, like so many other things in life, if you like it, that’s great. Enjoy it! It just do it for me.

I don’t like sideline reporters in football; never have. Whether they were men or women, I have never felt that they added anything to broadcasts: injury reports can be called up to the booth, and before and halftime coach interviews were uncomfortable affairs – the coaches are concentrating on the coming game/half, and certainly weren’t going to give away their game plans.
As to women, it is nice to see a pretty face on television, but if they are on a sports program, they should be more then just a pretty face/body; they should know what they are talking about. ESPN’s Suzy Kolber knows football, and so does Fox’s Pam Oliver. Ms. Oliver has been on the sideline beat for 19 seasons, and while she has not changed my overall opinion of sideline reporters, she was ok – attractive enough, knowledgeable enough. But she has been demoted from the number 1 Fox NFL team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman to the number 2 team. She will be replaced by the sports fans current lust object Erin Andrews. This will be Ms. Oliver’s final season on the sidelines, but she resigned with Fox to do “long-form pieces, specials, major interviews and some producing as well,” according to SI.com.
Ms. Andrews is very attractive in a traditional, Caucasian way, and I do think that she knows the game adequately. Will she be better than Ms. Oliver? Personally, I think they are about even. Was Ms. Oliver considered “too black” to remain on the sidelines? Fox, of course says no, and Ms. Oliver will not and should not comment on this topic. I have a suspicion, but have no proof one way or the other.
It all comes down to ratings, and obviously Fox thinks that Ms. Andrews, who has been able to parlay her looks and controversy over stalkers and men taking pictures of her in her hotel room without her knowledge into a nice side occupation as commercial spokesperson. Still, I don’t think that Ms. Andrews will be able to do what Ms. Oliver, Ms. Kolber, Tony Siragusa, or any of the other sideline reporters, pro or college, have been able to do: prove their worth.

King James is coming home. Having trashed the hopes and dreams of Cleveland Cavalier fans 4 years ago and creating the biggest fan pushback of any sports “decision” in history, LeBron James, having won two NBA Championships in Miami, has announced that he is going back home to the Cavaliers.
It seems like all of the people who burned their James jerseys four years ago are making their way to the nearest sporting goods store for new ones. And Cleveland does deserve a break from the gods: hard hit by the last recession deserves a break. The Cavs suffered when James left, but they have been building some good young talent. Adding the best player on the world, in the weakest conference in the league makes them instant contenders.
In Miami, there is the same feeling that Cleveland had when James left. The other members of the Three Musketeers, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, have also opted out of their contracts, and Bosh has been courted by Houston and other teams. Wade, the elder statesman of the three, has been quiet about any teams interested in him. Will Wade say in Miami, which could be a bad team in the short term? And, would a team offer maximum dollars to a 34-year-old player with injury issues?
More important, will some of the ill will directed at James end? I had no particular opinion of James before “The Decision,” but I, like many others, began to hate James, not so much for taking a big contract, but for the way he did it. My local team, the Bulls, made personnel moves to free up money to be able to woo James four years ago and got nothing to show for it. So, I joined in the haters for James and the two years the Heat won were bad, saved only for me by the Blackhawks. Now, what will the league fan perception of LeBron James be?

As President Obama told House Republicans’ threats to sue him over his Executive orders, the Chicago Cubs have become much more strident over the past few weeks. First, they put forth a new, more aggressive plan for renovating Wrigley Field. Basically, after getting nowhere with the rooftop owners especially for new Jumbotron scoreboards, they just went forward with a plan that has even more signage.
The rooftop owners said that they wouldn’t sue the team if there were only two scoreboards rather than the new plans’ seven, but the Cubs filed the plan with the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, and received approval. The Cubs are reportedly “ready to go” starting the renovations, but now what happens? With the rooftops sue? What will Mayor Rahm Emmanual do?
The battle continues….

I have unfriended a couple of people on Facebook, acquaintances or former coworkers spouting Tea Party propaganda mostly. There were heated discussions at times on the site, but in both instances, I just quietly terminated the connection. No announcement, no formal comment, just a decision that they weren’t worth wasting my time and energy on. So, it was an interesting experience to be unfriended by someone else.
Over thirty years ago, I knew this young lady who worked for the same company I did. She was moderately attractive but she had a terrific body. She was flighty, as late teenage/early 20 year old women can be, but I never tried to date her, probably because being 4 or so years older, I wasn’t as interested in the discussions of younger girls, but I don’t remember anyone else trying to date her either. Perhaps they also found her too flighty, or, like so many women in my experience, no one felt it was worth attempting the Herculean feats that would have been required to date her? We were friendly enough, but when I left the company and I thought no more about her.
Jump cut approximately 30 years: perhaps it was the age of most of us when we worked for this company (teens/20s mostly), and perhaps it was the shared experiences that kept most of us together (like military veterans or something), but when Facebook gained prominence, lots of people connected who had worked at this company. And I reconnected with this woman. Never married, no kids, looked about the same; as the title stated of a Douglas Adams’ book, she was “Mostly Harmless.” However, she was VERY religious. She posted that she was at this church or that church and she would post relatively innocuous memes from the Joel Osteens and other mega-church preachers (charlatans?) on her page. For the most part, they were, as I said before, mostly harmless.
But I did have to wonder about her “religious conversion.” There was a young lady in college, also African-American, from the Chicago area, naïve, who started at school as a normal young lady. She was quiet, but she did party with the rest of us for her freshman year. Being attractive, she received the attention of many of the male students (for the record, again, not me). Sometime late in her freshman year, she because extremely religious, and a very dear friend of mine said that he believed that she “found God” when she could not find a suitable boyfriend. If she had found that boyfriend, she would have been as “into” him and she was into “Him.” The fellow alum married a minister and dropped off the face of the Earth to many of us from school. Was our appraisal sarcastic? Yes. Mean – probably. A gross oversimplification – definitely. But I think that there was a kernel of truth in it and I admit that when I reconnected with this woman, I had a similar vibe.
So, life went on unabated until yesterday – the woman posted a meme to “Get God Back Into Schools – Share if you agree.” I don’t, and simply replied “NOOOOO!!!” She asked me why I felt that way, and I said that religion separates people and schools are not the places to indoctrinate children. She said that she believe that the there should be God in school, not religion, which of course let me to ask which God? Christianity? Judaism? Islam? Buddhism? She implied the Christian God and that it was better than the devil.
I could have let it go at that, but I was off work yesterday having some eye surgery and was bored, so I continued. Separation of church and state should be paramount – let the children grow up to make their own decisions. She replied that kids needed a moral center, and I agreed that it should come from their parents. Then I went on into the fact that Christians were being persecuted in the times the Bible was written, thus the emphasis on converting non-believers, but the biggest problem in the modern world is that religions feel that they have to recruit other people – they should mind their own business. She said that she valued her relationship with God, and I said that, unlike other non-believers, I believe that religion has a place in people’s lives and if that makes it easier to get through the day, that’s OK. (I think that is the main problem with today’s atheists, they are as strident in trying to convert religious people not to believe as the believers are to atheists.) However, I still believe that God, in any version belonged in schools and if people wanted their kids to have religion in school, they should send them to a religious school of their choice.
At this point, I was told that I was working for the devil and I should “GET OFF (HER) SITE.” Now, it has been a very long time since I have been called a demon (although it has happened, as the name “Evil Tony” from which this site name derives shows), but as you might well expect, I HAD to get in the last word. I replied that religious people who cannot tolerate opinions that challenged their worldview often aren’t as strong in their faith as they believe.
I had my surgery, and went home and I went on Facebook, not to unfriend her, but to no longer “follow” her, meaning that I would no longer see her posts. I didn’t want to cut her off altogether, but I figured that if I didn’t see here comments, I wouldn’t react to them. This has worked well for people who I care more about but sometimes post things that I would react to, causing hurt feelings. But I could not longer find her in my friends, and when I tried to find her in the general directory, she did not show up, meaning that I was blocked.
Oh well. I guess I could have left well enough alone, but as someone with children, I was appalled by the opinion of someone who didn’t have any. Plus, I thought I was being decent by saying that while I don’t believe, the portion of religion that talks to being tolerant, and loving all people, and the fact that it does help people cope with the world was OK. Unfortunately, like too many of the Tea Party experiences I’ve encountered, I was Godzilla against an ant in this intellectual discussion.
So, who can I piss off next?

Increasingly, I have come to believe that more corporations are inherently evil. They are sociopathic in the extreme, concerned only with the bottom line. Cut corners for profit, cause injury or death – just as long as its profitable. Fire tons of people, leave formerly middle class areas a barren wasteland – who cares, we make money.
This is why what Walgreen proposes is ghastly. The nation’s largest drugstore chain is considering a move that would allow it to significantly cut its tax bill and increase profits. Walgreen is considering a so-called corporate tax inversion, in which an American company is able to incorporate abroad by acquiring a foreign company. The buyer, in effect, becomes a subsidiary of a foreign parent. So, they don’t have to pay US taxes at a time when the corporations is incredibly profitable – profits for 2013 were up 15.2% to nearly $2.5 BILLION. They paid $1.2 billion on net profit before tax of $3.895 billion, or 30.1%. That seems fair to me, but if they pull this corporate switcheroo, they will pay substantially less. How much more profit do they need?
So, as a Walgreen customer if for no other reason than the number of stores near where I work and live, I will come out and say –it, if they pull off this corporate shift, I will never enter one of their stores again. There are just as many CVSs close to the Walgreens. I hope lots of people do the same thing. They don’t want to be a part of the American experience, which includes paying taxes then they don’t need my money.