Some Like It Hot

Want something badly enough, and that’s just how it’ll happen, which seems to be the case with major league baseball.

 

MLB is considering an idea for how to play the 2020 season, in Arizona with ten minor-league complexes plus the Diamondbacks’ Chase Field.  The attraction of rendering the Cactus League plus one into the MLB base is that, according to the Associated Press, all of the complexes are about fifty miles apart.  In contrast, the Grapefruit League fields are spread throughout Florida, as much as 225 miles apart.  So, there’s that.

 

Did I mention the heat?  Come summertime, the thermometer usually tops 100 degrees in Arizona.  That would require some very early, and very late, games.  Might I suggest middle of the night, while we’re at it?

 

The ironies abound, starting with the absence of fans at games.  For decades, owners have pointed to declining attendance at a home field as evidence of their need for a publicly subsidized replacement, and now all of a sudden they’re willing to play to empty seats?  That’s rich.  So’s the clubhouse situation.

 

Players were forever complaining about how small the clubhouses were at Comiskey Park and, until recently, Wrigley Field.  How’s a guy going to reach his full launch-angle potential without a nice weight room?  But now, all of a sudden, the players will settle for a locker and, once those run out, maybe a nail on a post.  Again, how rich.

 

I think a better alternative to Arizona lies to the north.  There should be enough good college fields in Iowa/Illinois/Wisconsin/ Indiana with Chicago as a hotel headquarters or Pennsylvania/New York with Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and NYC serving as residential hubs.  Better to play where the corn grows as high as an elephant’s eye as opposed to all those cacti.

 

Maybe they could even play a game in the vicinity of the Elysian Fields in New Jersey.  Now, that would be neat.