Well that was quick

It was almost like I knew what I was talking about! Say goodbye to college basketball season, say hello to baseball season!

That's right, tomorrow morning marks the official unofficially official start to the regular season. Confused? So are the Red Sox and the A's who will play two regular season games in Japan starting tomorrow before returning to the United States to finish up their spring training. Now it might seem stupid to schedule regular season games in the the midst of the exhibition season but, well, I kind of forgot where I was going with that.

On a related note, fans raised a small level of outrage when the Red Sox players threatened to boycott a spring training game last week unless the support staff for their team received the promised stipends to go to Japan. I got a little confused as to what was promised and who was supposed to receive it, but the general outrage seemed to stem from the fact that the players make so much money they should go to Japan for free and like it!

I'm a little ambivalent on that point. I would really love to be in a position to refuse a free trip to Japan unless someone paid me $20,000 or $40,000 or however much it is to go, but at the same time, THIS is the breaking point for people? The selfishness and greed of professional athletes knows no limits as they have proved time and time again over the years. During the '99 lockout of the NBA players, Patrick Ewing famously said "Well, we make a lot of money, but we spend a lot too." These athletes are paid absurd amounts of money to play games. We as consumers feed the kitty by soaking up as much of the product as we can. Unless we stop buying the tickets and the jerseys, stop watching on tv, stop reading about our teams on ESPN and all the blogs, we will never see a change.

These men do something better than 99.99% of the world. There is a HUGE market for their skills, and unless that changes the fans are just going to have to get over themselves. In an ideal world, teachers and firemen and people who make genuine impacts on others' lives would make the most money, but Budweiser thus far seems unwilling to push Mrs. Jones, the 6th grade science teacher from Harlem as the face of their ad campaign. Even if they did, would you cram 50,000 strong into the bleachers to watch her teach?