Just for fun, since you guys probably don't make it over to our ongoing Broadsheet discussion very often :-) and because Ben Dover proves himself to be nearly as much of an asshole to men as he is to women, here's Ben himself talking about his two MBAs from Princeton and Yale. Yeah, I'm mean.

Ben's got his degree from Yale, first of all:

>Blow me, asswipe. I am a Yale MBA. Never attended Duke, but know what shit smells like when it's around. These men are clearly innocent.

(link here for veracity--letter's at the top of the page)

http://letters.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/12/22/duke/view/index6.html?show=all

And presto-change-o, one from Princeton (incidentally, Princeton doesn't have an MBA program!):

>I have an MBA in Finance from Princeton, my admission and grades were merit based and quite good.

link here, then scroll down to 14th or 15th letter from the top:

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/02/02/molly_ivins/view/?show=all

you weren't that good in high school, else you would have played in college. Typical fat, beer drinking loser reminiscing about days that never existed.

Just wanted to say, there is no Tampa Thunder, only Trenton Thunder. And when you say Trenton, try to make it only one syllable. It is not easy, but it is the correct way to pronounce it. :-)

For those of us with HDTV, there is a great show on the Mojo channel called The Show. It focuses primarily on the Diamondbacks AAA team.

http://www.mojohd.com/mojoseries/theshow/

While I'm neutral on the baseball thing (being fairly uninterested in baseball in general), I thought I'd throw in my $.02 about what I see as the truly horrible state of mainstream sports broadcasting.

When there isn't some major basketball, football, or baseball event going on, I tune into ESPN, ESPN2, and Fox Sports Channel, and what do I see? Poker. Poker, for chrissakes. Or pool. Or fishing. Or some third-rate car racing or drag racing. Or, even worse, a half-hour show with people talking about those things.

What happened to sports being about athletics? Say, soccer or tennis, anyone? I'd rather not have to pay a ton of money to set up an elaborate TV system just to find soccer on TV in the U.S. The Gold Cup, marginalized to Univision and the Fox Soccer channel (yeah, I don't get that either), outdrew the Stanley Cup on TV, which was aired on the major networks. And yet, I tune into ESPN in prime time and get poker. The ratings are negligible enough that the "giving people what they want" explanation just can't cut it.

I'm sure it's economic--if the powers that be have a tennis channel and soccer channel and NFL channel, they can make a lot more money by opening up other avenues for revenue. But the average Joe Cable viewer is being left with worse than table scraps. I don't expect to get everything for free, but I remember when the 'wide world of sports' was about more than watching non-athletes sit around on TV and talk. TV sports is not watching people play cards. What's next, the world deck-refinishing championship?

So whether it's minor league baseball, or soccer, or tennis, or volleyball...give us some real sports, already!

The great thing about minor league baseball is going out to the park. All the aggravations and irritations of MLB - having dollars singleminded vacuumed out of your pockets by an industrial-strength extractor -- are blessedly missing. Park your car for next to nothing by the gate. Cheap tickets, cheap eats. Find a place to spread out in the stands. Let the kids join the other kids hanging out instead of being scowled at if they leave their seats. Even lean over and say a few words to the (excellent) players on the field, who are blessedly free of attitude and glad to be playing the game. It's like going back into a another, simpler world. Sure, check it out on the tube, but it is so, so much better in person - and that isn't true, unless you're loaded with bucks, for a game in the majors.

Would the commercial breaks occur during the game or between innings? Part of the reason my family goes to minor league games is to watch the between-innings antics. Sure it's shtick, but it's fun. What would be the point of watching from home if all you got to see was the baseball game?

I'm all for helping promote minor league teams and other local sports (and theatre, and community bands, and other forms of entertainment), but this seems like to quick way to ruin a good evening.

No one is going to watch/care. You'd have to find the most obscure network on the air to make it even halfway profitable. You might as well televise games from the fabled NYC Men's Baseball League.

Great idea, but perhaps not for ESPN. Like a previous poster, I live in Texas near the wildly successful Round Rock Express, part of Nolan Ryan's burgeoning minor league empire. The regional FXSWSN is a perfect fit. It's hard to imagine an audience for complete MiLB games in an area where minor league ball is as distant a concept as curling or cricket.

Don't spill the beans about minor league baseball! That's like giving away the location of your best fishing spot.

I've been attending minor league games in my area for several years and make a point of finding the local teams whenever I travel. It far surpasses the major league game experience: free parking, $5 tickets, cheap concessions, and no giant flashing video screens blaring out blooper videos and insipid trivia questions between innings. When the game is done I don't have to sit in traffic for 20 minutes just to get out of the stadium parking lot.

As for the level of play, I like that there is no such thing as a routine ground ball. Home runs are something special and the players don't do a little hootchie dance or paddycake to God when they touch home plate. Having only two umpires on the field can make for some interesting calls and I love sitting close enough to the field to actually hear the manager and ump arguing.

Unfortunately, people are catching on to the more personal experience of minor league baseball and the owners are ratcheting up the cost of tickets and concessions. That's to be expected. I just don't want this to get any more popular or I will be priced out of it just like I've been priced out of major league games.