Would be for the baseball club to come up with a name and a mascot that actually honors the bravery and nobility of Native Americans and that most people (esp. Native Americans themselves) agree is complimentary. That can't be impossible.

Just dumping the theme altogether and going with the Spiders, as I think others have pointed out, has the unfortunate effect of rendering Native Americans ever more invisible. If this issue really matters, then let's honor them.

Where did you get your false and snotty ideas about shared joint custody? It's not "simply a dodge to allow men to avoid paying child support" because it doesn't even do so. I'm in Ohio, too, and chlid support is paid by the non-residential parent to the residential parent even in the case of shared custody. And then there's your ideas that moving a child between two homes is "brutal" on them and only done to "appease selfish adults." So giving the child the best possible relationship with both parents after a divorce is just selfish? And "brutal," my ass. It's not that difficult, and if both parents really care about the child it's not necessarily harder on the child than any other arrangement.

Your generalizations are no less awful than those of the posters here (see blueturtle) who think the non-divorced are simply a better class of people.

Some others have already said these things, and I want to agree with them:

1. 8pm is apparently the sweet spot for the start of the broadcast, not the game. If the first pitch isn't going to be until 8:35, I wish they'd be honest about that.

2. It really would be nice if the games were sped up a little.

3. Day games on weekends would be a no-brainer.

4. Those ratings numbers after 11pm are a little misleading because it's reasonable to think that more people want to see the end of the game than the beginning of it. Seems plausible to me that if the games started earlier, the late-inning viewership wouldn't just match the rest of the game but would climb higher.

Also, King, I read your hypothetical about past vs. present three times and I still don't understand it, but I think it's problematic to equate regular season games with postseason games when it comes to creating fans. I think there's a huge group out there (like me), who, from the time they're kids, only watch a handful of games during the regular season but then love to watch the playoffs, and that should be a pretty important group for baseball as a business.

Thanks for the re-explanation. I guess I just thought that the question of whether it's better to have lots of regular season games accessible on TV vs. postseason games doesn't make sense because it seems to assume that there has to be a tradeoff. They should both be easy to watch. But I suppose your point is correct that's it's better for fans now than it was back then.

Eh, maybe I'm an anomaly regarding my postseason fandom regardless of who's playing. Wouldn't be the first time. And come to think of it, as much as I enjoy baseball, MLB doesn't make much money off me anyway.

Unfortunately, a lot of the BCS's credibility will be determined by what Hawaii does against Georgia. If they win then it looks like the system didn't work, but if they get pounded by the Bulldogs, then defenders of the BCS will say "It may not have been fair, but it was right," at least regarding Hawaii. That's a pretty persuasive argument for a lot of people, not including me.

"I'm amazed at how willing some columnists are to simply waive a player's civil rights because he happens to be a professional athlete," Miller told Barra. Exactly. Fans too.

It may be a minor point, but I think you and Miller both have this wrong, King. It's not because they happen to be pro athletes; it's because most of us feel as though we don't have those civil rights ourselves, so the ballplayers shouldn't get special treatment. Being drug-free is now a nearly ubiquitous job requirement, and submission to drug testing seems commonplace. That might or might not be a misperception--i.e. it might not actually be the case that most U.S. employers have the right to randomly test--but nevertheless I'm willing to bet that most average-Joe baseball fans believe that their own employers can spring a drug test on them (if it's not happening already) and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. So it seems to the fans (and columnists) that the players are trying to be above the law. I think that's a big reason why the players' union has been losing the P.R. battle all along.

Bonds was proven to be a doper at a time when he was an active player, unquestionably the best hitter in the game and on his way to breaking the most well-known record in the game. That prominence had to have been the biggest factor in the negative response to his doping, far more than his being black. Nobody (including Clemens) is in a comparable position or has been before Barry, and that's why nobody else (including Clemens) will get such a strong public backlash. If A-Rod gets caught doping as he plays out his career, then maybe you can make a fair comparison.