Even in the wake of Randy Johnson’s three-hit masterpiece against the Braves on Tuesday, I just can’t get excited about the Arizona Diamondbacks.
I also don’t see the thrill of watching the Minnesota Wild.
I really don’t care about the score of the Nov. 29th game pitting the Toronto Raptors against the Memphis Grizzlies.
Even though the contest will feature some of the top prospects in the NBA (Shane Battier, Jason Williams and Vince Carter), you can guarantee that my face will not be glued to a television set.
In short, I don’t really like all the expansion that has occurred in the sports world over the past few years.
This country is obsessed with expansion.
We had to expand west when the country was young. We feel the need to expand our homes, our bank accounts, our computer’s memory, our CD collection — and now the professional sports world is getting in the game.
Do we really need a professional team in every major city in the country and enough professional athletes to fill every stadium in which they play?
Back in the days of the original eight National Hockey League teams, fans knew every player in the league by name, number, playing style and probably even their mother’s maiden name.
Granted, back then fans did not get the exposure to as many incredible athletes and did not have the variety of viewing options that we have today.
But, back when the games were pure, there was no need for other options.
The Bruins-Canadians game or Giants-Cardinals game was on and that was what you watched. Those games were the ones kids ran from school to the ballpark to watch.
Call me old-fashioned, but Heat-Wizards doesn’t have the same ring as Celtics-Lakers. Those match-ups from the past made you want to drop everything that was going on in order to watch (or listen to) every pitch or tick of the clock.
Some of today’s games make the act of dropping everything more interesting and fun to watch than the contest itself.
Expansion is not all bad, because if the professional sports leagues had not grown we wouldn’t have the West Coast’s beloved teams like the Mariners, Padres or Kings, but can’t the leagues stop where they are? We have enough teams to think about already.
I’m not sure there is a solution to the problem of too many teams, because the expansion era has brought in millions of dollars of new revenue and thousands of new jobs for team employees and budding journalists trying to step into the sports world (hint, hint).
So, when a team is economically struggling, like the Montreal Expos, there will always be another proposed team ready to step into the world of professional sports. A world full of cleats and pads and dollar signs.
The sports world lives on, though, and we old-fashioned folks steadily maintain our loyalty to our hometown teams.
That is, until the newest Albany Annihilators or Creswell Crush knock us out of the game we have loved for so long.