Two last points.
1. Again to add to the situation Ed is talking about, my baseball-nut 7-year-old son has just lost interest since the regular season ended due to the television coverage: (a) the games are almost never on when he can watch them, and (b) other sports and other interests compete for his attention — and (probably because he is not in the Viagra or Budweiser demographic) seem to care a lot more about getting his attention than baseball does. Case in point, he never even turned on the game last night. Why? The hockey game (Devils v. Sabres) started at 7 p.m., and he figured he could watch most of it (two periods) and still get to bed by 8:30 p.m.
2. Since I am too much of an addict, I don’t boycott the games over the TV coverage — I just get myself ballistic over it. So I will take a moment to observe that tonight is every Met fan’s nightmare: Not only a World Series game in Yankee Stadium between our two main nemeses: the Yanks and the Phillies. Turns out the Phils’ starting pitcher will be the former-Met Pedro Martinez. The Mets, you see, didn’t re-sign Pedro because he just wasn’t good enough anymore to be on our fabulous team — which finished 70-92. So the Phillies grabbed him this summer — in time for him to beat the Mets a couple of times, help the 93-69 Phils finish 23 games ahead of the Mets in the standings, and pitch lights-out in the playoffs, meriting him at least one (and probably two) starts in the Fall Classic. But I’m not bitter, no siree … Let’s Go Mets!