COLD, HARD CASH
No other reason to play night baseball in April
MALICE in Wonderland.
I wonder if Rob Manfred, if he went outdoors Saturday afternoon, noticed it was a good day for an early April baseball game; windy but sunny, temperature between 57 and 64.
Then I wonder if Manfred felt bad — even a tiny bit — that the Mets would be playing at home that night.
Next, I wonder if he noticed, Saturday night, it was windy and cold, temperature in the mid-40s, a rotten night to sit through a ballgame, especially one that ran 3:25 — even with an automatic intentional walk.
I also wonder if Manfred noticed Sunday afternoon was even nicer than Saturday afternoon, fabulous day for a ballgame in New York.
But did he feel even a twinge of regret that MLB, having sold its authority and goodwill to TV, allowed ESPN to turn a warm, sunny, Sunday Mets home game into an 8:10 p.m. start?
I wonder, too, if he feels even slightly discomforted that this Sunday’s Cards at Yankees — Easter Sunday — also will begin at 8:10 p.m. on ESPN’s order, how MLB has allowed TV money to strip The Game of its good and decent senses.
Or maybe Manfred’s lost in Wonderland; perhaps he even believes what he recently said about MLB’s great and sustaining responsibility to do right for baseball by always doing right by kids.
Is he unaware for a second straight season the Mets will play no 1 p.m. Saturday home games? The earliest will be 4:05, as per FOX money.
Or is Manfred, trained under Bud Selig, conditioned to feel no seller’s remorse? Were his terms of engagement the same as Selig’s, that he have no conscience?
Ah, Commissioner Selig. After it became clear (or cream) to even Bottom Line Bud that Barry Bonds was busting home-run records while swollen, head to toes — but conspicuously his head — due to infusions of Blam Juice, he allowed teams to hike ticket prices when Bonds hit town.
So what if Bonds didn’t play or was intentionally walked. That, too, was fine with Selig. To hell with The Game’s integrity, money was his only measuring stick.
And there’s no evidence that the team owners’ new Guardian of the Game is any different, any better.
So we revisit the new catchphrase that explains it: “The game has changed,” a halfthought that, if completed, would conclude, “but not for the better.”
Let the record show that throughout the Mets’ first home weekend series — April 7-9, all three games began at night, including 8:10 on a Sunday night. Pathetic. But as Howie Rose says, “Put it in the book.”