One-game Wild Card has to go

July 25, 2020

Many of the complaints you will find associated with the rules and traditions of Major League Baseball involve not wanting to change things that have been associated with the game for decades. But for me, the most frustrating rule in professional baseball is a new one. The original addition of a Wild Card team in the playoffs to accommodate for the switch from two large divisions in the American League and the National League to three divisions where each winner made the playoffs made sense. With MLB’s expansion, it was ridiculous that in 1993 only four teams made the playoffs. The ...

Salary cap, floor badly needed

July 25, 2020

Major league players make way, way too much money, and the sport’s entire economic system is a joke. I realize I’m dreaming here, because it’s never going to happen, but MLB needs a salary cap for teams. Along with that, it also needs a salary floor.both of those things would be my first order of business if I were commissioner and could change anything I wanted about Major League Baseball. We all know there’s a gigantic disparity in team payrolls. Last season, the Red Sox had the highest payroll at $229 million, while the Pirates were 29th out of 30 teams at $72 ...

Question marks abound for Bucs, MLB as a whole

July 18, 2020

The 2020 Major League Baseball season will be like no other. After an offseason of unprecedented turbulence in which the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic and an extended, ugly contract dispute between the Major League Players Association and the league’s owners wiped out over half of the regular-season schedule, the season will finally get underway this week with no fans permitted in stadiums all across this virus-ravaged country. A truncated 60-game schedule for all teams that was put together by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred will have every team playing games only against teams from ...

Point-counterpoint: Will any major college football be played this fall? Money will fuel season

July 18, 2020

Major college football will be played in some manner this fall, and there’s one major reason that will happen. Money. I just want to make it clear that this column, for me, is not about whether or not college football should be held. I’m not an expert in the medical field or politics. I am sticking with why I believe it will be played based off contracts and how other entities have handled the COVID-19 pandemic. The numbers I found for the college football television rights tell you all that you need to know. According to an article from Forbes.com that cited ESPN, the Sports ...

Point-counterpoint: Will any major college football be played this fall? US doesn’t deserve it

July 18, 2020

We wouldn’t even be having this debate if it weren’t for the money. The smartest guys in the room — those running the Ivy League — already made the right decision: no college sports at all the rest of this year. It’s just not safe, not when 140,000 people have died from a virus that’s still surging in most of the country and seems impossible to stop because our society is selfish and stubborn. Those Ivy folks don’t really have to worry about all the money stuff because they are in business to educate students. Hmm, what a novel idea for colleges. The major ...

UConn leaving Appleman without a racket

July 7, 2020

At 53 years old, Christian Appleman thought when he accepted the director of men’s tennis position at the University of Connecticut, it would be his last stop. After all, he had spent the better part of 30 years in college coaching, both basketball and tennis, dating back to his start as a graduate assistant with the Penn State men’s basketball program in 1989 under Bruce Parkhill. Instead, his UConn tenure lasted just seven months after the school announced June 24 that it was terminating its men’s program, one of five teams eliminated. The former Williamsburg athlete became ...