Concerning baseball reform, a few observations*:
I’m reminded of the classical-music business — which is always whoring after popularity. I have to tell them, “There’s a reason they call pop music ‘pop music,’ you know: It’s popular. You’re not. So what? Quit trying to be cool. Provide excellent classical music for those who want it, and let the rest of the world do its own thing.”
(Don’t nobody ever listen to me.)
Baseball is not as popular as the NFL or the NBA. So? National Review isn’t as popular as People. So? The Beatles boasted, or simply noted, that they were more popular than Jesus Christ. So?
Let Poland be Poland, let Reagan be Reagan, and let baseball be baseball — and at its own pace, with its own traditions. A minority will always love it. Popularity is not the be-all, end-all (though a money supply is necessary).
I sometimes hear, “We gotta make conservatism cool and hip! No more boring white guys.” Race aside — and sex aside — conservatism is not supposed to be cool and hip. It’s supposed to be honest, timeless, and true.
Anyway, you know what I’m saying (and other bloggers here know a helluva lot more about baseball reform than I do). I love to quote Solzhenitsyn, from his Harvard commencement address (1978), “A World Split Apart”: “The human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.”
*That formula — “Concerning X, a few observations” — was a frequent column-opener for WFB.
P.S. I think the last minute or so of a basketball game is interminable, because of the timeout game. But I don’t know what I’d do about it. Probably nothing. Maybe I should be more patient?
P.P.S. Those wondering about the heading of this post might like to read this article, from Wikipedia.