Sparky's Lament

Just back from a quick, weekend trip to Boston, where they are still grooving on the latest of the ten championships won by their baseball and football teams this century.

This winter is a little more quiet up there, but the Bruins have been on a long unbeaten streak, while the Celtics still have one of the best records in their conference.  Both figure to be serious contenders in the end.

Things are a little different here in New York.

Nearly every one of our nine teams have openly declared their intention to tank, or at least not to try to win if that means spending more money.

The biggest stars either no longer want to come to New York when they are free agents, or our New York owners refuse to even talk to them.  Because they will cost more money.

Whenever we fans dare to complain, the incompetent executives in our teams' front offices call us ungrateful.  Sometimes the owners do, too.  Mostly, they just ignore us.

Our New York sportswriters and broadcasters used to include the greatest legends of the sporting press.  Now do little except yell at us fans, too, because we want to see great players and winning teams.

All our teams try to extort huge amounts of money from us New York and New Jersey taxpayers, in the form of tax breaks, new stadiums, and subsidies of one sort or another.  Usually, they get what they want.  When they do, they go right back to telling us they can't afford to field a good team.

The prices of everything concerning our teams, from seats to food to cable TV, get more and more expensive every year, even though they were already amongst the highest in the nation.  And even as the teams get worse and worse.

Nor is it just New York.

Players n all sports are obviously still juicing, and doing other, horrific things to their bodies that all too many kids are going to emulate.

All of the games we love the most have become pared-down, one-dimensional caricatures of their formers selves.  Baseball players swing for the fences on every pitch.  Basketball players throw up endless threes.  Football teams do little but pass.  Hockey teams play close-checking, conservative hockey.

Nonetheless, the games last longer than they ever have, and are packed with more and more commercial interruptions.

The major leagues in every major sport are filled with more and more teams, many of which we cannot even keep track of.

They play longer seasons than ever before, but most of them make the playoffs.

Their names are sometimes product placements.  Their stadium names almost always are.  They move about constantly from city to city, always threatening to move on again if they don't get new concessions in the form of public subsidies.

All the old college conferences we grew up following have been dissolved, in pursuit of additional television money.  Their star players rarely stay long enough for us to get to know them—or to reach their full potential—before moving on to the pros.

Huh.  Why is it I can see a day when the only arenas that draw anybody are filled with video gamers?