Green grass, brown dirt, blue fans

Watching Game 2 of the World Series last night raised a pet peeve of mine: The baseball season goes too long, too late, and ought to be shortened. The arctic temperatures in Detroit may not get that much better when the Series moves to St. Louis tomorrow night.

But there's a reason why these end games are played this time of year, and at night: money. The TV networks that pay a bundle for broadcast rights insist on night games because they reckon they'll get a bigger audience. And the owners and players of Major League Baseball care more about that TV lucre than about their fans.

So we get night games in freezing weather. Little kids can't stay up past their bedtimes, even to watch their favorite teams and athletes, surely a mistake when it comes to building long-term fan loyalty. And they play at night even on weekends because the TV people believe football games are more popular, and therefore more lucrative. And that, plus TV money beyond the dreams of avarice, adds up to a new take on an old baseball tradition: winter ball.

(I used to regard those who like football better than baseball as singularly un-American, until the columnist George Will set me straight on that score several years ago, when he said, "Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings.")

Go Redbirds.