PEACE at last!!!

Another election day has finally arrived. I am filled with hope and happiness – not because the candidates I vote for will win but, because after today there will be a break from the non-stop negative campaign ads that have bombarded us on tv (in particular, Patti Ritchie’s slanderous campaign). There will finally be a break from a daily mailbox full of campaign literature. I never thought I’d look forward to only having bills to open and Geiko commercials to watch!
Yes, America, today is the day that democracy is exercised and hate-marketing halts if only for a little while.

Tired of Negative campaigning part 2

Kudos to Chuck Shumer for hitting the airwaves with commercials about what he’s accomplished, not what his opponent supposedly did or lacks….
Shame on you to both Matt Doheny and Bill Owens for running commercials that give us absolutely NOTHING about yourselves…..In neither commercial could I tell what either of you stand for. You are embarrassments and the very epitome of what is wrong with today’s politicians…
Shame on you to the Democratic party for running commercials full of accusations and mis-represented facts. You are better than this.
Shame on you to Patty Richie for running commercials similar to the Doheny and Owens embarrassments. I didn’t know anything about you before the commercial and came away from it knowing even less….
Kudos, then, shame-on-you to Darryl Aubertine who has one commercial describing what he will do and what he has done but, a few minutes later, running a commercial doing nothing but accusing his opponent of things that I can only guess are half-true.
As you can see, I am not biased towards or against one party or the other. They both have their flaws. I can only be thankful that there at least is one (Chuck Shumer) who stays above the ridiculous.

Tired of negative campaigning

I’ve had enough. I have decided that who I vote for will be determined by the type of ads I see by the candidates. If you are running for an office and use your opponents flaws or fabricated facts about your opponent as a basis for your campaign, I’m not voting for you. If you can’t run on your own strengths, you shouldn’t be running. I’m so sick of seeing candidates on TV spending their full minute of airtime to tell me what’s wrong with their opponent while not giving me one bit of information about themselves. Stop trying to play on some emotion you think I have and, give me facts. Tell me what your strategy is for improving my life. Don’t point a finger at your competition and tell me they are liars, cheats, or thieves. Give me facts about yourself. How can I confidently vote for you when it is obvious you don’t have enough confidence in yourself to be able to tell me why and how you’ll do a better job than the person you are running against? Make me a believer in YOU.

Now that the Yankees have left the building…

As a lifelong Yankee fan, I’ve heard all (and I mean ALL) the comments from Yankee-haters mostly pertaining to the amount of money the team spends on acquiring players and then, keeping them.  I’ve also listened while those people rejoiced when the team has failed (like they did yesterday) to reach and then win the World Series.   Yes, in my 46 years of life, I cannot begin to list or count the ways non-fans have expressed their pure hate at the team I have passionately loved.   For the most part, I stay silent and smile and roll with it.   I say “for the most part” because when the spews of hate roll off the lips of Red Sox (I refer to them as “Red Sux“) fans,  I am unable to contain myself and ALWAYS make sure I have the last word.   Hey, just ask the Red Sox fans, it’s bigger than us and, when it comes to our hated rivals, we can’t control it.   But, alas, I digress.

Over these years, I’ve tried to understand why the Yankees are so passionately hated.   When I ask,  nine out of every ten people give me the same response:  “because they spend all that money that other teams don’t have to get whatever players they want”.   I think to myself “if I was an owner with a seemingly endless supply of money, wouldn’t I do that too?   More importantly, wouldn’t they?”   Do they really want the Yankees (Steinbrenners) to say “You know what, for the good of the rest of the teams we compete with, we aren’t going to try our best at putting the highest quality team on the field”?  When I pose those thoughts to them, they concede that baseball is truly the one at fault as it has no salary cap.  The NFL comes up as the comparison until I point out that over the past 20 years, BASEBALL has had more different champions than the NFL has.

For one of the first times that I can remember, someone actually touched on what I believe is the REAL problem with baseball (and the other major sports) and why the teams with more money seem to have the most success.   Mike Greenberg of the “Mike and Mike” show on ESPN mentioned that it had been intimated that baseball needs contraction.   He took that further and stated he believed other sports like basketball and hockey have spread themselves too thin and also need contraction.

Contraction is about more than just money.   I believe that baseball’s problem of big-money owners/teams being the only ones successful is the result of having just too many teams for the pool of talent that is available.   Let’s look at the math…..    Currently there are 750 major league players spread over 30 teams (25 man rosters during the regular season).   Say you keep the roster limitations but, reduce the number of teams by 5.   Suddenly, there are 625 major league players and, 125 players who would in theory have been in the lower half (in terms of talent) of the original 750 relegated to the minor leagues.   This results in:   1.  Higher quality of play at the major league level.   2.  Higher quality of play at the minor league levels (borderline major leaguers are now bonafide minor leaguers).   Suddenly, because you have raised the level of play on some of the smaller market teams, they become more competitive with the larger market teams regardless of the amount of money being bid.   Further contraction, makes this result even more pronounced.   Unfortunately,  because we are talking about “big business”,  the quality of the product is not the highest priority.   Money talks,  and, the fact is, the more markets professional sports can get into, the more money they make.   The best baseball teams will be the ones owned by the best businessmen no matter how you slice it.   The once proud franchises in Pittsburgh and Oakland may never be able to compete with the “big boys” again simply because there are so many other, richer choices for players to choose from.

I am fortunate.  I am a fan of the NY Yankees who reside in one of the top two markets in sports and who have been owned by wise businessmen that took advantage of their market to create other monetary opportunities to enhance their ability to land the highest quality players.   Until baseball (and other major sports) wakes up and realizes that a quality product has to be a priority, I know, and expect, my team will continually succeed.