Some MLB Thoughts

With the end of the baseball season last night, with the White Sox sweeping the Astros, I've been thinking about the happenings in Major League Baseball. I actually have a few concerns about baseball, that will no doubt seem frivolous to Nomad, but I think they're valid at this point in time.

My first concern is all this sweeping. This is at least the second year in a row - forgive me I can't remember the 2003 World Series - that the World Series has ended up with a sweep. And it is the second year that it was an AL team did the sweeping. I'm an AL fan and all, but something tells me that for the world championship of baseball both teams should be pretty equal - at least you'd think. This brings me to the question, are AL teams that much better than NL teams or are the AL teams just having a lot more luck during the Series. I hope that it's the latter and not the former, though in interleague play this year the AL won more games. So perhaps the AL is a little better, but I hope not a lot better.

My second concern surrounds the fact that the Astros had no black players on their roster. It's not that they don't have any black players that concerns me - it's that it concerns other people - high up people. Baseball is ironing itself out in a lot of ways. Many of the players come from Asia or South/Central America because baseball is really big there. In contrast basketball and football are big to black athletes in North America - so it's no wonder their are fewer black players going on to MLB. I'm concerned that these high up people will not see these facts and impose a form of affirmative action in baseball that makes it so every team has to have x% black players. It's not like baseball isn't multicultural - there's just not as many black players to go around, so lets not be rash.

Thirdly and most importantly, the Yankees haven't been to the World Series since 2001. As a Yankee fan, I find this very stressful and saddening. I guess if the Yankees have taught us anything in the last couple of years it's that money really can't buy you happiness - consider that the two biggest trades the Yankees have made in the last three seasons both choked in the playoffs this year - Randy Johnson choked all year.

With baseball done it's only three and a half more months until hope springs again and the Yankees have yet another chance to win the Series.