Blecch!

The NBA and NHL have ruined their sports with meaningless seasons and endless playoffs that have no connection with each other. The NFL has struck the perfect balance, with a regular slate that culls all but the best teams and significantly disadvantages the stragglers among them in the post-season.

Now, if you were baseball, which road would you head down? It appears the game has chosen the road less thought out.

Last night's Yankees-Angels contest was a microcosm of the problem. Two teams that played nearly all of their 162 games in summer conditions met on a mid-October night in New York in conditions more suitable for the Packers. This abomination is made necessary by three rounds of playoffs that push the end of the World Series into November.

And then it got worse. When players are wearing earflaps, sweatshirts and neoprene hoods under their uniforms, that's a sign the game shouldn't be played. Last night, that wasn't even enough: freezing rain fell during innings eight through twelve.

Here's the bitter irony: such horrible conditions would have led to immediate postponement during a meaningless regular season tilt. But when it really counts, MLB lacks the flexibility to wait until another day. So the players and fans are subjected to discomfort, added potential for injury, and the dramatically increased likelihood that the game will be decided by something unrelated to skill, strategy and desire.

We saw this last year, when the Rays and Phillies played two hours of a world championship game in a freezing downpour. If MLB doesn't care about its most important games, it's no wonder that most fans are watching football.

As long as they are powerless to change the calender, MLB mucky-mucks should consider moving all playoff games to the daytime in cool climates. Better yet, reintroduce doubleheaders to shorten the season, eliminate the wild card and one playoff series, and wrap up the World Series by the Ides of October. Because the way things are going now, we're going to have a Rockies-Twins World Series that gets postponed by snow until the following May.
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