Some traditions are usually not price keeping.
For instance, burning witches.
They almost destroyed the broom industry in Latest England.
Other traditions hold on for no apparent good reason.
In Europe, adults still greet one another by kissing or at the very least briefly rubbing each cheeks with each cheeks.
Not only is that this overkill, however it is a waste of time, tantamount to shaking the other’s right hand after which turning around to shake your left.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, think what number of more French General de Gaulle may need rubbed his cheeks if he had limited his rubbing to one cheek per person.
Then there are the traditions which have died for good reasons, unless the good reasons are short-term greed, neglect, and a pitiful lack of foresight.
A main example is the MLB All-Star Game.
Once the second most-anticipated game of the World Series, the team’s owner-assigned Game Guardians – the “commissioners” involved as CFOs – made the All-Star Game disappear from the picture as a compulsory contest between two separate leagues, deeply entrenched interests, a pointless waste of summer time night to watch indistinguishable “teams”.
Consider Tuesday’s All-Star Game on Fox recorded a TV rating of three.9 – the latest in an annual streak of all-time lows.
And it appeared compared with no live sports competition. From 1967-89, All-Star Game consistently scored rankings of 20 and above – the difference between 35 million viewers and seven million that week.
The insignificance of the All-Star Game began after the 1994 strike, when Bud Selig, who viewed baseball and spoke of it solely as a profitable business—he spoke of his tenure as successful only when it comes to “revenue”—announced that in 1996, interleague play had to be “a present to our fans” who remained committed after the strike.
But this soon turned out to be a hoax, as MLB team owners quickly increased ticket prices for such games, especially gouging fans to those who included AL vs. NL games in the same region.
Inter-league games multiplied until the two leagues essentially became one by adding two cans of water, mixing and serving baseball.
Tuesday’s edition barely lived up to its poor rating.
Fox, as predicted, did what it often does, giving viewers a fast and sustained vowel tantrum with Joe Davis and John Smoltz.
As reader Larry O’Neill succinctly put it, “What a babbling session!”
Rob Manfred’s regime – so pathetic it allowed a bunch of attention-seeking, Catholic trash, face-painted fringe lunatics who dress up as nuns to be honored before a Dodgers game as representatives of the gay community – had two teams full of indistinguishable players, wearing indistinguishable Nike outfits – T-shirts on sale for $200 plus $30 shipping.
Has it not occurred to any of those marketing geniuses that Tuesday’s contestants wear their actual team uniforms to help viewers discover Corbin Carroll as the Arizona outfielder and Jonah Heim as the Texas catcher?
As kids, we were thrilled to see Mickey Mantle play in a Yankees uniform. Today, MLB would have dressed him in AL pajamas.
How did this All-Star Game fare best next yr? How did it help stem viewer bleeding for a TV-money business?
It only contributed to his further demise. Perhaps next yr’s Midseason Classic will feature a mid-game witch-burn, “Brought to you by Zippo, Major League Baseball’s official lighter fluid.”
Rutgers football earns “Big Red (Ink)” tag.
Now, with head football coach Greg Schiano earning $4 million plus loads of allowances and two of his assistants earning greater than $1 million this season, Rutgers has raised tuition costs by 6 percent, double what it was last yr.
With some $260 million in debt to RU’s athletic department since catching the Big Ten fever, taxpayers are inadvertently funding the college 20 percent of its annual costs, including $500,000 in DoorDash fees levied by soccer recruits during COVID.
And in fact, the school pays small fortunes to herald fee-paying colleges like Wagner, Howard, and Morgan State in futile attempts to get “bowl-eligible.”
And that is why the RU, even of their optional all-black Nike uniforms and helmets, is referred to as “Big Red (Ink)”.
Pete Stendel must now get well from a severe head injury – an orbital fracture – but Yankee Stadium’s medical team could use immediate work on procedures.
As reader Jim Heimbuch suggests, it appeared like a “not-so-first-aid” unit, an ambulance that takes the good distance to the hospital.
The treatment of Stendel, a Yankee Stadium first base cameraman who was pinned in the face by a missed throw, was unnecessarily delayed because the quad that left the left-court area to treat him preferred to follow the caution lanes somewhat than cross the field. to reach him as soon as possible.
Heimbuch admitted that the grass at Yankee Stadium is “precious.”
I wasn’t there after I read this, but despite Aaron Boone’s unfathomable standards, it should have been bad: Yanks up, 4-1, Domingo German has one hit on 74 yards in seven as Gleyber Torres butchered a double quarterback to load bases. Boone then pulls German. The Yankees lose 7-4.
It definitely didn’t, since it didn’t even make much sense. But that is what happened.
Mike Francesa, then of WFAN, was asked if he would ever consider managing the Yankees.
Francesa, who often didn’t know when callers mocked his conceit, took the query seriously. So he gave a serious answer: “I’d, but provided that the money was right.”
Even Francesa would come out in German.
One other bad take a look at Venus
Venus Williams, 43, continued the family tradition of acting like a self-proclaimed brat when she refused to shake hands with the chairman after losing in the first round of Wimbledon.
Plainly Williams was upset by the phone call, which didn’t go her way, which is why she considered herself a victim of a serious injustice.
Williams could be very selective in his sense of justice. She avoided the grave injustice suffered by Doug Adler when ESPN fired him for praising her “partisan” tactics, which a reckless NY Times correspondent deemed extreme racism, as if Adler suddenly called Williams a “gorilla” for no reason.
Venus knew what Adler said and meant, she knew it had no racial context in any way.
And as a representative for Nike, she knew that Nike had produced at the very least two ad campaigns that featured tennis stars playing “guerrilla tennis.”
But she allowed Adler to be destroyed by saying, “I listen and only take care of situations which might be noteworthy.”
And I suppose it doesn’t matter to her or ESPN that Adler devoted his time and knowledge to teaching poor black kids tennis during his annual trips to Washington to convene WTA games.
He also lost the performance after the Times and ESPN called him a racist.
Williams, like the scared media and all of tennis, allowed Adler to be destroyed by a hideous and obvious lie.
But at this Wimbledon, Williams showed disgust at the perceived injustice that had befallen her.
Incidentally, with the Times handing over its sports division to a subcontractor, any likelihood that Adler would ever do the right thing – even when it were noted that he had played a task in sentencing an innocent man to life in prison – disappeared.