In 1937, someone who wasn't very intelligent invented the product pictured above. If it isn't evident from the image or from this article's title, the Baby Cage was meant to give an infant some fresh air by suspending them outside of a window in a wire cage.
Putting a child in a cage is inhumane enough, but hanging that cage dozens of feet above a busy street with nothing holding it up but thin metal rods borders on sadism.
Now, 73 years later, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig has come up with an idea that rivals the idiocy of the aforementioned invention. On Thursday, Selig said that he and Nippon Professional Baseball Commissioner Ryozo Kato concurred that a true World Series should be implemented. The "Global" World Series would see the winners of both America and Japan's Baseball Championships meet in a winner-take-all seven game series following the conclusion of the Fall Classic.
To start, the Major League Baseball Players Association would never agree on such an event.
Baseball seasons, especially with the recent additions of the World Baseball Classic and the extended postseason, are exceedingly long. Two months of spring training followed by six months of regular season baseball succeeded by a month long postseason and an extra two weeks (at least) of a second World Series would never be accepted by the players.
That schedule would amount to an almost 10-month season, a figure unrivaled in professional sports.
Athletes love what they do and try to survive as deep into the season as possible, but they tend to welcome the offseason with open arms. Think about how sore you may be after you have an intense workout. Now think about feeling that sensation for 280 straight days.
Major League players are in outstanding shape, but they are not superheroes. Allowing just two months for recuperation and family time is ludicrous. Never mind that the 13 hour time difference and 13 hour flight would incur a profound case of jet lag that would make playing a game interminable.
But in a hypothetical sense, let's say the players agreed to this abomination. What would be the point? Although the results of the WBC may point to the contrary, it is likely that such a series would not even be competitive.
An American World Series winner, such as this year's New York Yankees, is comprised fully of world-class talent. The 2009 Yankees had seven players hit at least 20 home runs and won 114 games in the world's best baseball league.
The MLB has 30 teams consisting of the top American and international talent. The Japanese Central League has six teams made up primarily of Japanese players and the occasional American import. Combine the diversity of the MLB with the fact that only a handful of Japanese players have made a successful transition to the Majors and one can see the difference in the talent pools of the two institutions.
It doesn't help that the change-up, a staple of American pitching, is effectively nonexistent in Japan. If Johan Santana ever pitched in a Global World Series (something that would probably never happen considering he's a member of the dreadful New York Mets), he might pitch a perfect game. Or strike out 27 hitters. Or both.
And since nearly everything in sports these days is driven by TV ratings, one might wonder how a Global World Series would fare on the Nielsen Scale. With a 13-hour time difference, games in Japan would be played at around 5:00 A.M. So the Nielsen Rating of an away GWS game would probably equal that of an early morning infomercial on TV Land.
The only discernible argument for such an event is that its name would finally do justice to the "World" part of "World" Series. And while such a correction seems awfully tempting, I think that both the players (and the fans) would prefer never to see this travesty come to light.
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