Hey Fed Up Baseball Fans!

Are you a baseball fan who is fed up today with the players jumping from team to team, as they chase ridiculous contracts that pay them more in a single season than most of us will earn over a lifetime?
Are you also someone disgusted with the fact that in order to pay today's players those obscene contracts, that prices for tickets, concessions, and parking means that a family of four has to take out a loan to attend a major league game?
And do you agree with Jerry Seinfeld that we as fans are basically just “rooting for laundry” these days?
Then I suggest that you check out the MLB (Major League Baseball) Network, broadcast in HD. I barely watched the station during the past baseball season. However, the other night I was channel surfing and just as I happened to light on the MLB network, they were about to broadcast a film about the 1948 World Series.
Now I should mention that I am a life-long Cleveland Indians fan, which means I have suffered a great deal of pain and anguish during my lifetime. But in 1948 the Tribe actually won the World Series! While my father had told my brother and I stories about the Indians defeating the old Boston Braves in six games, I had never actually seen one minute of footage from that series.
This was before the World Series was televised nationally, and the film, apparently made to be shown in movie theatres, was in grainy black and white, with cheesy sound effects; for example a loud “clunk” every time the bat hit the ball.
I was mesmerized, drowning in nostalgia. Not only because I saw live action of many of my boyhood heroes, such as Bob Feller, Bob Lemon, Larry Doby (the first black player to play in the American League), Jim Hegan, Dale Mitchell, and player-manager Lou Boudreau.
But it was also fascinating seeing shots of the old Braves Field (which today is the home of Nickerson Field where Boston University plays its football and soccer games), Cleveland's old Municipal Stadium, where I went as a kid to watch Indians and Cleveland Browns games…AND Fenway Park. Yes the film opened with highlights of the Indians defeating the Red Sox 8-3 in the one-game playoff to capture the AL Pennant. Crowd shots were also fascinating, as most of the men in the stands were wearing ties and jackets along with fedora hats. Nobody was dressed in an over-priced, “official” MLB baseball hat or jersey. Many of the women were wearing hats with veils and fur stoles, and almost everyone had a cigarette or cigar hanging out of their mouth.
After watching the 1948 World Series, I then sat and viewed a film of the 1949 World Series highlights, between the NY Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers.
What struck me most was the fact that these teams were truly teams, not a bunch of free agents glued together by multi-million dollar contracts. Even today I can recite off the top of my head many of the players who comprised the lineups for the Yankees and Dodgers in the late 1940s and through the 50s.
Let's see, for the Yankees there was Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio (replaced in 1951 by a rookie named Mickey Mantle), Billy Martin, Phil Rizutto, Hank Bauer, Gene Wooding, Whitey Ford, and Allie Reynolds. And the Dodgers of the era featured Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, Peewee Reese, Carl Furillo, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider, Don Newcombe, and Carl Erskine.
I seriously doubt I could as quickly name as many players who played for the 2009 versions of the Yankees and (now Los Angeles) Dodgers. And does it really matter, as many of those players probably will be wearing the laundry of a different team in 2010?
So I went on-line and checked out the schedule of the MLB Network, and while there are many shows analyzing modern baseball, I noted that they have managed to acquire films of old All Star Games (when the annual contest between the American League stars and the National League stars really meant something), many other World Series, and recaps of exciting past seasons from bygone eras.
So if you are a baseball fan and one night you can't find anything worthwhile to watch on the tube, I suggest you locate the MLB Network, crack open a YooHoo chocolate drink with your son or daughter, and show them what baseball was like in the good old days, when it truly was a game and not a business.