YES Says No to Cablevision Proposal

I truly wish that the Cubs would try a boneheaded move like this. It'll never happen -- the Tribune Company owns both the Cubs and the broadcast WGN, so unless they decide that they want to alienate the entire city, there's absolutely no need to do this -- but I seriously wish they would. It would be so nice to get the Cubs off the air.

Yes, I know. Not liking baseball on television is positively UnAmerican. No doubt a committee will investigate me. But the fact remains that baseball on television is one of the best sleeping pills known to mankind -- second only to golf -- and that it screws the hell out of perfectly good television that might actually be interesting to watch. The games all last nearly as long as your average Oscar telecast.

Now being at a game is an entirely different thing. I don't even like baseball, and I will admit that being at a game with your friends, with the crowd, that's all a fun time.

Well, OK, I wouldn't go to a Cubs game. My idea of "fun" contains actual enjoyment in there, somewhere. Being taunted by drunken fans is not my idea of enjoying anything: July 8: Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell writes that she was taunted with racial slurs after leaving a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field. Mitchell writes that she was about to give money to black drummers outside the ballpark when a crowd of white men began chanting “Aunt Jemima” and were “soon joined by the drummers.” Racism is about “disrespect,” she writes. (To be sure, Ms Mitchell received an official apology from the Cubs ... but then, the Cubs didn't actually do the taunting, did they? And why on earth would Jamaican drummers call a black woman "Aunt Jemima"? What the hell?)