Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 253 Editor's Choice: 45
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Bud and Rupert and the Decline of Baseball as We Know It
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]From 1979 to 1992, there was a different World Champion every year. The World Series featured teams from Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Toronto (which broke the string with back-to-back champions in 1993), Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Minneapolis, Oakland, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Atlanta and San Francisco. The Mets and Red Sox and Yankees made the Series once each in that time, the Dodgers twice (and along with the Twins were the only multiple winners).
And baseball was immensely popular. The 1984 Tigers were a cultural phenomenon. The 1991 Series between the Braves and Twins (both of whom had finished in last place the year before) was must-see TV. The 1979 Pirates were so associated with "We Are Family" that it was hard to remember it hadn't been written for them.
And then there arose a Commissioner who knew not Curt Gowdy and he handed over the marketing of baseball to a company run by an Australian who might or might not know the direction in which bases are run.
And suddenly, all we heard about were the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Cubs and Dodgers. Interleague play seems to have been invented solely to air Yankees-Mets games on Saturday afternoon. Who cares if the Phillies and Blue Jays have to play each other every year to accommodate them?
A team can win 116 games during the regular season and have to play weekday playoff games at 3pm local time on F/X so the Yankees can appear in prime time on FOX. That happened to the Mariners in 2001.
The NFL promotes all its teams. There is no franchise with shallower roots in its community than the Indianapolis Colts, but the Indianapolis Colts are promoted by the NFL, so that not a soul, when they won the Super Bowl, was saying "who are these guys?"
Regular season baseball games, because there are so many of them, are not the television draw that NFL games are, but the NBA plays 82 games and no one has trouble remembering Steve Nash, who plays where the Diamondbacks play, Carmelo Anthony, who plays where the Rockies play, or LeBron James, whom I believe hasn't yet been drummed out of Cleveland. Why? Because the NBA will promote its stars regardless of where they play. The Knicks may play in New York, but they're not getting a lot of national TV exposure so long as they suck. Yankees-Red Sox or Yankees-Mets is on national TV regardless of their records, or the records or talent of teams playing at the same time.
So long as Bud and Rupert are in charge, that will always be the case. That "large market teams" get marketed by baseball is a choice, an approach, not a rule of economics. It's, indeed, a bad approach.
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Too True on Hotel Rooms
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First of all, they're not doing it for the environment, they're doing it to try to save money. If they don't have to launder your towels and replace your sheets, they have lower expenses. But they won't pass lowered costs on to you, since they assume everyone will take up the option to have everything changed everyday.
Second, I agree entirely that the cleaning staff simply ignores the signs and replaces towels even if they're hung pretty carefully on the towel rack. Their job is to get through their work as quickly as possible, and have as few complaints as possible. If they had to make judgment calls ("is this towel trailing on the floor on the rack or off?") they'd never get their work done. And if they had to return to a room because, say, a customer who didn't read English was upset because how towels weren't changed, they'd be subject to discipline.
So the whole thing is a waste of time.
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Thank you Leandra Nolting
[Read the article: Why aren't boys allowed to be victims?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The idea is that ultimately someone has the responsibility to be the adult. And that person is the teacher, regardless of gender and regardless of the gender of the child.
High school in particular is a sexually charged time, and teachers who cannot handle it shouldn't be teaching in high school. It's very similar to the prohibitions on sex with patients placed on psychiatrists : there's a point where you have to draw a line, and the line is, sorry, this may be, in your mind, the most profound relationship you can possibly imagine (I'm thinking of Mark Harelik weeping over Reese Witherspoon in "Election"), but if you cross that line, go directly to jail.
The poster way up top who wrote about how boys seduced at young ages lose all sense of boundary rings true with me. Having that deepest fantasy fulfilled at a young age does not prepare one for the hard work it takes to build a healthy relationship with a sex partner, again regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
When we hire people to act in loco parentis in school, we're entitled to demand that they sacrifice the chance that the student they see in fifth period looking up with puppy love will be their true love. I don't think it's too much to ask.