Is it over yet?

It's not over yet. You don't have to say maybe next year yet. Being a Yankee fan is tough these days especially when you live in Red Sox country. Everywhere I go instead of harassing me about my loyalty to the Yankees people are giving me sincere sympathy. I'm wondering if a government bailout of the Yankee collapse is soon to come. Where's the fan protests of out of control spending of the Yankee fans money? Where's the outrage over the big player bonuses? What happened to all of them great players? Why doesn't anyone write a good book about the Yankees any more? Where's the steroids when you need them? I have one message to my fellow Yankee fans. "Remain calm because the season is long and there's plenty of time for the Yankees to pull together as a team." While you're waiting you can watch Joe Torre manage the Dodgers and imagine how things used to be.

The arms race

During the off season there's always a feeding frenzy of teams trying to land the best pitchers. The Yankees picked up two good starters, C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. Derek Lowe and Javier Vasquez went to the Atlanta Braves. The Mets improve their bullpen by picking up Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz. The Redsox pick up Ramon Ramirez which gives them the best bullpen in the majors. Now we just have to wait and see who got the best pitchers and who wasted their money.

Females playing major sports

Which major sports league will have the first female player? The NFL, MLB, or NHL? The NHL had a female player in 1992 that played a couple of preseason games but no regular season games. I may not see it in my lifetime but I think MLB is the most likely to see a female player because it is the least physically demanding of the major sports.

Blackout Games

I think it's time they made it illegal to blackout games. Being a big Yankee fan I subscribed to the yes network. Imagine my surprise when I found out that all of the games were blacked out because of where I live. I could only watch replays of the game which were on long after I went to bed. If I'm paying for TV programming I should be able to watch what I want and not have someone else dictate what I should be able to watch. This is outrageous and everyone should be complaining about this.

The poor mans game

If you don't want to spend hundreds of dollars for a sporting event try going to watch a minor league team. There are many benefits to going to a minor league game. The tickets are much cheaper. It's easier to get good seats. They usually give away a lot of free stuff. You get to see players up close and get autographs of upcoming prospects and players on rehab. Personally I find it easier to enjoy myself when I can take my kids to a game without taking out a second mortgage. With the current state of the economy I wouldn't be surprised to see a drop in ticket prices but I'm not holding my breath.

How much is too much?

You look at the salary of professional sports players and say they make too much money. How much they make is determined by many factors. How productive they are based on stats is the biggest factor. How popular they are is another factor. Popular players bring in a lot of money from merchandise and ticket sales. A players age is another factor. Young players usually get more because of their future earning potential. When you look at the whole picture the salary is usually much smaller than the amount of money they help to bring into the organization. If you owned a team and a player helped you to make 100 million dollars a year but you were paying him 20 million dollars a year would you still think they were being overpaid?

Fighting in sports

Most sports fans have heard the joke, "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out." Most fans will not admit it but it seems like a large percentage of people like a good fight. When a fight breaks out they cheer on their player. I was at a hockey game one time and when a fight broke out they started chanting, "Blood, blood, blood." Is fighting just a part of the game or should we be trying to stop it by using more serious penalties? What kind of message are we sending to our kids when we allow fighting in sports?

Recession hits baseball

Recession has hit baseball leaving ballparks the difficult task of filling seats. Many free agents are still unsigned. Even Manny Ramirez was forced to settle for a short term contract for a measly 45 million dollars. The NY Yankees seem to be the only team with money to burn. Spending money almost as fast as congress on a new stadium and several big name players they seem to be unaffected by the recession.

Steroids

Who's doing them and who isn't? Who really cares? If someone works out they get bigger and stronger. If someone eats they get bigger and stronger. If someone takes steroids they get bigger and stronger. Using steroids is a personal choice. I could care less what someone else puts into their body. It's nobody's business but their own. I'm sure the use of steroids is much more widespread than anyone knows and they've probably already figured out a way to cover it up. Do we really want to know who's doing steroids or should we just adopt a don't ask don't tell policy and move on?

Sports Fan

I was born in a small city with a population of about 10,000 people in upstate NY not far from Cooperstown the home of baseball. When I was a kid my father took me every year to the Hall of Fame game and the induction ceremonies. My father was friends with someone who lived just blocks from the ballpark and they waited in line for tickets every year and sold tickets to my father. Growing up in NY almost everybody was a Yankee fan and I was no exception. The first Yankee game I went to was with the little league when I was 12 years old and I've been a fan ever since. The neighborhood I grew up in had a lot of kids my age and we played a lot of sports although I never played sports in school. School sports was only for the privileged few. Baseball was always my favorite sport but I liked playing almost any sport. I grew up on a dead end street and we used to hose down the end of the street in the winter so we could play ice hockey. One of my friends had a huge yard where we played football and on weekends we went to the YMCA. When we went to the YMCA we played basketball, ping pong and the funnest game I've ever played, Spaceball. Spaceball is a game that's hard to explain to someone who hasn't seen it played and I don't know anywhere you can still play it. If anybody knows where you can still play it please let me know. It's more fun than donkey basketball. Spaceball is like a combination of basketball and volleyball played on 3 large trampolines hooked together. Where I grew up was also close to Colgate University which is another place I went to many times with my father. My father often got free tickets to football games and hockey games from a friend who worked at the college. We went to most of the home football games and sometimes we went to the hockey games. The thing I noticed about college sports is that watching the fans is usually more entertaining than watching the games. If you've been to very many college games you probably know what I'm talking about. Colleges are also a good place to watch the sport of cheerleading. If you don't think cheerleading is a sport try watching a cheerleading competition. Cheerleaders are very athletic. Now that I'm older I don't play sports very often but I'm still a sports fanatic and I have 2 young kids that are just starting to play sports. I often take them to games and hope they will like playing sports. I know one day they may be rich sports stars. Although, I would be happy if they grew up to be like their dad, a sports fan with a house full of useless dusty sports merchandise that loves to watch a good game.