A step to the idiocy of sports

Some of the events in sports this week have made me wonder -- just who is in charge of things?
For instance, who was the brain surgeon that decided Wednesday's playoff game between Oakland and Boston should begin after 10 p.m.?
I'm not a Red Sox fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I am a baseball fan, and the fact I couldn't see any of that game made me angry.
I can only imagine what Red Sox fans thought.
I understand that television executives probably wanted a prime time game for the West Coast, but this happens to be one of the years where it's simply not possible. Both Oakland and the San Francisco Giants were paired against East Coast teams.
What made this decision even more ridiculous was the fact that the 1 p.m. start time on Wednesday was open. The networks could have simply moved the Braves-Cubs game (yes, the networks -- you're not naive enough to believe Major League Baseball sets the game times, are you?) from 7 to 1 p.m. and started the Red Sox/Athletics at 7.
Sending the wrong message
By not starting that game until 10, Major League Baseball and its television partners basically told a vast majority of its fans they weren't important.
It was poetic justice, then, for that game to go into extra innings and not end until almost 3 a.m. A very unscientific ESPN radio poll Thursday indicated that nearly two-thirds of the country did not watch the end of the game, which could have been considered one of the most exciting in postseason history ... had it been seen.
Baseball has suffered from low television ratings for decades; still, Wednesday's debacle did nothing but further erode Bud Selig's legacy as the most mis-managed era in the game's history.
MLB was quick to tout its push to shorten the length of games during the regular season was working. Games generally were being completed in under 2 hours, 50 minutes.
But, in the first eight games of the postseason, the games were lasting an average of 3 hours, 13 minutes and 15 seconds. You can thank the networks for that.
If that average holds, that means any of the weekday World Series games, which aren't slated to start before 8:25 p.m., won't end until almost midnight.
And Selig wonders why baseball's popularity is lagging behind the other major professional sports among the nation's youth.
Limbaugh's folly
Then there was the firestorm created by Rush Limbaugh's comments about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb.
Limbaugh, the conservative talk radio host, on ESPN's NFL preview show, said that McNabb's success was due not to his on-field performances, but to a media push that wanted to see an African-American quarterback do well.
The reaction, predictably, was outrageous and forced Limbaugh to resign from his short-lived position on the highly-rated ESPN show.
First, Limbaugh's opinion about McNabb was just that -- an opinion. Was it libelous? No. Was it rather preposterous? Yes.
Secondly, did anyone expect Limbaugh, whose radio show popularity and ratings are predicated on his at-times outrageous comments, to have a different persona on ESPN?
Of course not -- that outrageousness is exactly what ESPN's producers wanted and expected from Limbaugh.
He was going to push the envelope -- it was only a matter of time before he did in himself.
It's ironic, though, to me, that Dusty Baker, the Cubs manager who suggested earlier this year that blacks and Hispanic players perform better in day baseball games because their skin tones were more adaptable to the sun than whites', was given a pass. Baker, like Limbaugh, offered an opinion. Similarly, it was considered fairly ridiculous.
But, unlike Limbaugh, Baker's folly was quickly forgotten.
XRob Todor is sports editor of The Vindicator. Write to him at todor@vindy.com.