My point was that Olberman does not make any sense in saying that someone who has had a big impact on the game, for good or for ill, deserves to be enshrined. I think you need to have helped the game to get in. Beyond that, I think that Miller et al did some real damage. In order to meet salary demands and to make a profit of their own, MLB schedules its playoff games during prime time in the east. Consequently, the most important innings of the most important games are played after midnight in the east. That will keep a genration of young fans from having the best memories of baseball. I concede that the reserve clause may not have been altogether just. But that doesn't mean that it was an altogether good thing. Most importantly, it allowed teams to keep some players for a decade or more. And as a young fan, I loved how my team had a core of players who had been with the team before I was born and how some players who played when I first started to follow the team (age 7) were still there when I finished college. It gave the club a sense of stability and recognizability that is now gone. Today, fans of poorer teams are afraid to get too worked up about a good player because they fear they will be lost to free agency. That is a shame. Jim VB says that a baseball team now functions like any other company. Ok, but I didn't get interested in professional baseball because it was like an ordinary business.
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