Good teams, AWFUL ballparks

Of the eight remaining teams in the major league baseball playoffs, two teams have truly awful or substandard ballparks. They are the Oakland Athletics and the Tampa Bay Rays. Oakland plays at the O.com Coliseum (or Oakland Coliseum) and the Rays play at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, FL, just outside Tampa. The Oakland Coliseum is an outdated multipurpose facility that isn't even good for the Raiders, let alone the A's. Tropicana Field is essentially this generation's Kingdome, a monstrosity that doesn't work for baseball in the 21st century. I beg Allan H. (Bud) Selig, to coax these teams and their cities to build appropriate ballparks for the 21st century. The two wild card losers, Cleveland and Cincinnati, have attractive ballparks, Progressive Field and Great American Ballpark. Too bad that they couldn't have replaced these two teams and their lousy ballparks.

Hall of Shame weekend

This weekend, Major League Baseball holds its annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown, New York, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Unfortunately, not one player will be inducted. Instead the honors will be limited to a writer from Philadelphia, a broadcaster from Toronto, who unfortunately passed away recently and a few old-time Negro Leaguers. While I don't wish to denigrate these individuals, and they have worthy accomplishments, the point of this post is that this weekend, which is usually one of the highlights of the summer, is a black eye for Major League Baseball.

Yes, we know why the writers didn't elect anyone into the Hall of Fame. It's spelled S-T-E-R-O-I-D-S!

However, if that's true, then why bother having an elaborate ceremony? The NFL doesn't have qualms about putting people in the Hall of Fame who weren't choir boys, such as Lawrence Taylor and O.J. Simpson. But these baseball writers are a bunch of old white stuffed shirts who want to reminisce about the good old days, then count me out.

Maybe the Baseball Hall of Fame should scale back the Hall of Fame Induction ceremony.

In very Orthodox Jewish circles, there are certain Rabbis who have set rules about how big certain celebrations can be, such as a limit on the number of guests invited as well as the number of courses that can be served at the meal, so as not to make other members of the community uncomfortable if they don't have the means to have a 500-guest wedding. Baseball may be served to emulate such a practice, if the writers are going to be persnickety about every player from the 1990's-early 2000's who they suspect of steroid use.