State of the Game

Navel Lint · Post by **Navel Lint** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 11:35 am

Thank You. Thank You………… Please sit down………… Thank You.

I’m honored to speak before you tonight as our game takes its annual All-Star pause to celebrate the best players that didn’t get an “injury” this week and are willing to show up.

As we move forward with our endeavor to restore meaning to the All-Star game by bestowing World Series home field advantage to the winner, we have also decided to reach out to the Little League fans everywhere by naming half the players in the league “all-stars” and making sure everyone gets at least one at-bat or an inning in the field.

This year we are proud to say that our all-stars represent multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds while coming from 6 different countries. With next year’s game scheduled to be played in Arizona, the game might not be as diverse next season.

At this time we would like to congratulate the top vote getters in each league, Joe Mauer of the American League Twins and Albert Pujols of the National League Cardinals. The fans have once again proven that they are the best judge of who an all-star is and we would like to thank all the fans for voting, including a special thanks to the 609,510 people apparently related to Gerald Laird.

As we review the first half of the season, I would like to highlight some things.

We have 18 pitchers with ERA’s below 3.00 and our top home run hitter is “on pace” for 44. Clearly players are finally learning to play the game “the right way” and all those homers and high ERA’s from ’97-’07 had nothing to do with steroids.

We are happy to report that attendance is up as a whole. Unfortunately, there are some cities that have seen lower numbers this year. Cleveland currently ranks 30th in attendance with just over 16,000 people per game, we believe that this was due to Lebron James and the Cavaliers playing in the NBA playoffs during April and May. With Lebron moving to Miami this fall, attendance should start to rise. By the way, the Florida Marlins who play in Miami already rank 29th in attendance so we don’t expect to see any further drop-off there.

Ownership problems have been very minimal this year. We only have two owners going broke running muti-million dollar corporations and a third going thru a divorce which may result in shared custody of the team mascot.

Our game has seen the resurgence of some veteran players like Vlad Guerrero and Alex Rios and we have been treated to a new crop of players making their first appearance in the big leagues. Jason Heyward is an all-star for Atlanta this year and Strasmas came early in Washington, DC as Stephen Strasburg has made every fifth day Baseball Night in America for the MLB Network.

We look forward to a great summer of baseball and a fantastic World Series this fall. I hope everyone enjoys the Home Run Derby and All-Star game and I will now open up the floor for questions. No questions? Good! See you next year.

Fourslot40 · Post by **Fourslot40** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 1:35 pm

Dude. . You have way too much time on your hands. I'll

say u are creative though.

Sebadiah23 · Post by **Sebadiah23** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 3:37 pm

My theory is that the ball has been doctored in some way (de-juiced if you will), to give the illusion that steroids and hgh are out of the game and Bud Selig is a hero.

With the stress on "illusion".

-Craig