Friday, April 06, 2007

Discouraging Abhorrent Behaviour

It’s baseball season again!

But I don’t really give a rat’s ass, not since my team went the way of the Washington Senators and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Nowadays, baseball on TV just reminds me of terrorism somehow. I’m a bit cynical and jaundiced about most professional sports (and amateur too, I guess in the wake of what’s come out lately about the Thorpedo – look for the pun; it’s there) and the Tour de France).

Baseball gets more fans on its playing fields than any other sport in North America. Not in the stands, on its playing fields.

I was one. It was a very special moment, my three-year-old son and I playing catch down the left field line at Olympic Stadium on fan appreciation day, lo those many years ago. But that was allowed. That was, like I said, a special day.

Not like the other father and son who got all liquored up and attacked that first base coach in Kansas City. But it was special nonetheless since hoodlums almost never get TV time during a baseball game – or any other sporting event for that matter. The announcers will tell you that something’s happened, but they keep the perpetrators mostly anonymous. The TV policy is that they don’t want to show that stuff since it may serve to encourage others to repeat that kind of undesirable behaviour. Show some drunk ruffian streaking naked onto the playing field and before you know it, you’ll have naked ruffians everywhere trying to get their “Look Ma!” moment on the boob tube.

So the TV stations don’t show it. Don’t encourage them.

But crash a plane into a building….

Man, we’ll show that forever.










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