Last night on "Fox Sports News Primetime," Keith
Olbermann cited the network's MLB "insider" Pete Williams as
reporting that MLB Exec VP/Operations Sandy Alderson is
"concentrating on a new pet project: Break, if not the
umpire's union, then at least the arbiter's strangle-hold on
the game. The goal: To give baseball the right to
discipline, fire and demote umps, institute fitness clauses,
and assign post-season games by merit" (FSN, 6/9).
INTERLEAGUE: In DC, Thomas Boswell: "Baseball says it
has interleague play. But it doesn't. It has regional
play." Boswell writes that the "appeal of individual stars
is what brings people to the ballpark," and MLB's "long-term
goal should be for every team in the sport to play a series
in every park at least once every four years" (WASHINGTON
POST, 6/10). In Baltimore, John Eisenberg also proposes
rotating interleague opponents, and writes that today's
interleague play is "drawing well in ballparks that
generally draw well, and drawing poorly in parks that
generally draw poorly. In other words, it has become just
another set of games on the schedule. The novelty has worn
off" (Baltimore SUN, 6/10). On ESPN.com, Ray Ratto:
"Interleague ball is a gimmick, and one of extremely limited
value at that. Even the statistic which shows the average
crowd was up more than 8,000 over the normal one hides the
fact that weekend crowds are always bigger than weeknight
crowds. We'll see how much interleague attendance drops
this week when games are played on weekdays. In other
words, people have caught on to the scam" (ESPN.com, 6/9).
