Sh*t I Don't Understand: Adult Chores

When you think of spring, you think of agreeable weather, baseball, TV season finales, and the onslaught of Wedding Season. Maybe you reminisce about your college pilgrimage(s) to Cancun, Acapulco, Cabo, or any other Mecca of Alcohol Abuse. Spring is great....except when it's followed by the word "cleaning." I hated that phrase as a kid and especially couldn't stand when people would try to put some optimistic, sing-songy tone to it. "Spring Cleaning!" No, thanks. It's one of the few things more annoying than Rick Reilly these days. (Hey Rick, here's your leather jacket, hair mousse, and water skis while you're at it.)

The matter of spring cleaning itself is little more than a topical lede for this post. What I come to you this evening to discuss are Adult Chores in general. As kids we all did chores to gain some sort of grip on the concept of responsibility and/or the value of a dollar. That's totally fine. But when you're grown up and you work for a living, the days of tedious, laborious, mundane tasks consuming your free time should be over. It's one thing if you enjoy certain types of household work, i.e. gardening, as a hobby. It's a whole other thing if you missed seeing the #1 college football team get upset on an autumn Saturday because you were obligated to rake leaves for 3 hours.

Married guys joke about the "honey-do" list a lot. It makes me cringe. "Hey Phil, what did you do this past weekend?" "Oh, the wife put me to work, heh-heh. Spent 6 hours cleaning gutters, trimming hedges, and then she had me change her oil." It certainly sounds like our buddy Phil had a fantastic weekend, didn't he? If that becomes my life at some point, please take mercy on me, and, by "take mercy on me" I mean re-enact the last scene in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with you being the Chief and me being R.P. McMurphy.

I'm not saying the do-it-yourself approach is bad. Hell, some things, like shoveling snow, you sometimes just have to grin and bear and take care of on your own. Other things can even be borderline-enjoyable if you've got nothing else to do and a good playlist going on the iPod (washing your car on a 75-degree day comes to mind). I'm just saying that some people end up enslaved to their chores in a blinded effort to save money. John and I have discussed this many a time, usually while enjoying an afternoon on the golf course. He came up with the great line that "what these people may save in money, they sacrifice in existence." Couldn't have said it better myself. Once again, I'm not telling you to waste money having every single little thing done for you. But, too often, people forget that money spent for the purpose of purifying one's "me time" is some of the best money one will ever spend.

Here's my whole thing. Paying what you determine to be a fair and/or nominal price to have a task done professionally for you is what America is all about. Movement of money is good for the economy, and since I value my time as much as I value my money, it's a good investment to me. I gladly fork over money to have dress clothes dry-cleaned, because I've tried ironing - and I suuuccck at it. Time not spent hunched over an ironing board muttering obscenities to myself is time spent reading, working out, watching sports, writing on this here blog, or any other desirable activity you can think of.

There are about 6 or 7 things in this world that I'm truly very good at. So if the task calls for something outside of lifting a weight, hitting a 3-iron, reciting sports trivia, or seamlessly incorporating movie and TV quotes into conversation, the chances are pretty good that I may not be the most qualified person for the job. You can call me lazy. You can call me un-handy, if that's even a word. You can pontificate on how I'm a microcosm of the outsourcing problem in America. But I make enjoyable use of my free time, and you can't take that away from me.

All For One, One From All?

Mercifully, the NBA free agency whirlwind has subsided, and while certainly all the folks in Cleveland are still pretty steamed (see what I did there? OK Lou you can act your age any minute now) about the public-perception suicide that LeBron James committed, the country now focuses the brunt of its attention on baseball, and specifically for this week, the All-Star Game. One of the time-honored debates that begins the moment the All-Star rosters are announced is the "every team gets represented by at least one player" rule. It used to be that people would only be annoyed at this rule because it would deny a more-deserving player or two a spot on the team, that spot instead going to someone merely having a decent year on a bad team. But since 2003, when Bud Selig found it necessary to inject meaning into a mid-season exhibition game by having its winner determine which league got home field advantage in the World Series, the debate has grown larger and larger. Fortunately, o my brothers, I am here today to solve that debate, in the way that all of our middle school English teachers taught us to - with a bit of the old pro and con.

Pro
Mandating that every team be represented in the All-Star Game is one of the few egalitarian things left in a sport that has become the ultimate caste system over the past 15 years. From a visual perspective, the All-Star Game is unlike anything else, in that you will see 30 different uniforms on the field over the course of the game. Since all of the other sports - football, basketball, hockey, etc. - are nearly impossible to play unless the two teams are wearing distinctly different colors, baseball is the one sport that can pull this off. I, for one, take great enjoyment in seeing every single major league uniform on the field during the Midsummer Classic, and sacrificing a Royal or an Oriole just to get yet another Yankee in there does not seem to go along with the way it was originally drawn up. Not to mention, don't you think much of America is sick of seeing the same 7-8 teams on national television all the time? By mid-July we've all had plenty of Pujols, Jeter, and Halladay. It's a nice change of pace, not to mention a fandom-enriching experience, to see guys like Corey Hart, Heath Bell, and Joakim Soria play on a big stage. It's a spectacle that should put the whole league on display, not just the 4 or 5 biggest markets.

Con
Let's start with the name. "All-Star Game." That kind of implies that every participant should be a star, yes? If that's the case, then good luck convincing me that such players as Michael Bourn (hitting .255 for the sad-sack Astros, albeit with 28 steals), Evan Meek (he does have some nice numbers, but he's a setup guy on the Pirates, give me a break), and Ty Wigginton (sporting a sweet .334 on-base percentage for the 29-win Orioles) really belong on that field. You're selling me on a game where I am just as likely to see a matchup of John Buck vs. Matt Capps (the 23 saves are nice, the 49 hits allowed in 39 innings aren't) as I am to see Cliff Lee against Albert Pujols (Editor's Note: Cliff Lee blew Albert away on 3 pitches in the 4th inning. So I at least got that one.)? And what's worse, the deeper the game goes, how much more likely is it that the average fan will not even have heard of many of the guys on the field at crunch time? Under this system, a guy hitting .260 for a last place team can potentially have the at-bat that decides whether the AL or NL gets home field come late October? Has the whole world gone crazy? Do you get what I'm driving at? Did I just end 5 straight sentences with question marks?

The Verdict
Believe it or not, I'm steadfastly in favor of having every team represented in the All-Star Game. It's bad enough that the owners in cities like Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Kansas City act like they're trying to kill baseball in their respective towns. The least MLB can do to avoid twisting the knife in those beleaguered fan bases is throw them the bone of being able to root for one of their own guys in the Midsummer Classic. What about all the stuff I just said in the last paragraph, about the every-team rule dragging down the talent level? Well, I really don't think that's the issue.

The issue is with how the game is treated. You can't contrive meaning for an exhibition game. Our parents' generation loves to talk about the days when the All-Star Game was a bitter rivalry and meant just as much or more than any regular season game. They croon about Pete Rose running over Ray Fosse in 1970 to illustrate that point. Well I'm sorry, but everyone is going to have to accept the fact that those days are over. There is too much money invested in the players on the field for the All-Star Game to be treated as anything more than an exhibition. Ray Fosse's career was severely derailed after getting decked by Pete Rose. Can you imagine the backlash if that happened today? And it doesn't even have to involve rough play. For instance, if Charlie Manuel were truly managing to win this All-Star Game, don't you think he'd keep Ubaldo Jimenez in there for a lot more than two innings? I don't think they've even invented the words that the Rockies would have for ol' Cholly if he made their ace throw 100 pitches in an All-Star Game. And that's not even considering the issue of everyone not getting into the game, which pisses people off just as much. You can't ask a manager to try his hardest to win a game while at the same time making sure that everyone gets to play. It's a candle burning at both ends.

You could make the All-Star Game count for whatever you want, but guys from opposing teams are still going to be slapping each other on the back during batting practice and chatting while being held on at first base. It's just the way the game is played now. The new every-year DH and re-entry rules are a much-needed safeguard against running out of players, so the issue of repeating the 2002 tie is moot. Instituting those rules is the league saying "there's no reason that everyone can't get into the game," which stamps "EXHIBITION" in big red letters all over the thing. For those reasons, the best of both worlds is to allow the game to remain an exhibition, and simply award home field advantage in the World Series to the team with the better record. Now, can we simply let some of the most talented men on the face of the planet play a game of baseball, and leave it at that?

The Inconvenience of Convenience

Technology is a great thing isn't it? Our culture, and especially our generation, is just enamored with it. And no matter what facet of life you're dealing with, chances are there has been some sort of technological development in the past 20 years that revolutionized it. We have so many nicnaks and doodads designed to make every little step of our days that much more convenient. But I wonder, at what point do these added conveniences become counter-productive?

For instance, a few weeks ago I got a text from my sister, saying "Just read in People magazine that Feces Finding has a single out......thought you may be interested since you set up her stage." She was referring to a singer named Fefe Dobson who did a show at the day camp we both worked at back in the day (and yes, I did work on her stage). But did you catch that little error up there? I'm pretty sure if the actual name of the group were Feces Finding, they'd be targeting a whole different segment of the market. Alas, what happened was that her phone has an autocorrect texting feature that will change words it doesn't recognize (which is bound to happen with a lot of names) into words it does recognize. So "Fefe" became "Feces," a chuckle-worthy text blunder caused by a feature designed to make things more convenient.

These things are all over the place. Most colleges these days have an online file sharing system where professors can post assignments, grades, etc. and students can submit papers and homework electronically via a dropbox feature. This is all great, but is it really worth saving the trip to physically hand stuff in? And you don't even want to know what happens if the internet goes down and you can't get your assignments or submit your work before the built-in deadline. It's a shitstorm in a snow globe.

This is the world in which we trudge about our lives. You can't type a word on a computer anymore without spell check having a seizure on your screen. That supremely annoying Microsoft Office paperclip above has managed to gain the wrath of everyone born after 1970. It's great that we have cell phones with email capabilities, but isn't a by-product of those luxuries the fact that you are now accessible in many situations where you really don't want to be accessible (especially in regards to work)? Go into any public bathroom, and you have those automatic-flushing toilets, automatic sinks, and motion-detecting paper towel dispensers. How unreliable are these things? Don't you just love having to wave your hand in front of those things like a jackass to try to get them to serve their function in life? Half the time they're broken anyway, leaving a foul-smelling bathroom with no paper towels to be had.

There's nothing wrong with most uses of technology in an effort to make things more user-friendly. The problem occurs when all of a sudden we are relying on overly involved or complicated systems to do simple and mundane tasks. And why have such elaborate developments been made in some of the seemingly least necessary areas? To counteract human ineptitude, of course!

There is no need for a motion-detection system wired to flush a toilet. There is no need for a laser-powered viewfinder to tell to a golfer exactly how far he is from the hole. Nor is there a real need for an autopilot mode built into new cars to essentially parallel park themselves. But somewhere along the line, laziness and ignorance won out. Auto-flush toilets became necessary because enough people thought it was OK to not flush. Bad golfers with money to burn never grasped the concept of playing by sight, and decided that a handheld surveying system would somehow offset their terrible swing and lack of instincts. A demand for parallel-park assist developed out of the apparent staggering decline in humanity's ability to operate a motor vehicle. The examples go on, but I'd like to think I've made my point.

MLB's Unbalanced Schedule: Just Add Water

To get NotAsGoodAsYouThink's attempt at a baseball preview going, we'll start with something that has been been irking me for a few years now. Major League Baseball instituted the unbalanced schedule in 2001 in an effort to make the long regular season more interesting by adding juice to its existing rivalries and maybe even creating some new ones along the way. For those who are unaware, the unbalanced schedule calls for each team to play about 17-19 games a year against each of the other teams in its division, which will take up about half of the team's 162 games. The rest of the schedule is made up of anywhere from 6-9 games against the rest of the teams in your league, plus between 15-18 interleague games. The heavy amount of intra-division games was supposed to intensify division races and rivalries through sheer volume and familiarity.

It's worked, but only to a point. Sure, baseball gets to showcase (read: TV revenue) a ton of Yankees-Red Sox, Phillies-Mets, Cubs-Cardinals, and Giants-Dodgers games for its fans' viewing pleasure. But there's an ugly other side to that coin, because for every extra marquee matchup the unbalanced schedule gives you, it gives you a Pirates-Reds, Padres-D'Backs, or Royals-Indians sack of garbage to go with it. Plus, fans can get a little tired of seeing the same teams over and again throughout the season - I bet most Phillies season ticket holders would gladly trade a series against the Nats for another more compelling series against someone like the Cardinals or Rockies. It would have been cool to see AL Cy Young winner Zack Greinke face the top lineup in his league last year, but we didn't get to, because the Royals only saw the Yankees for three games in early April and three games in late September, none of which were pitched by Greinke. Such is the drawback of the unbalanced schedule.

I will say the unbalanced schedule is a decent way to keep teams' levels of travel relatively lower, since everyone gets a few extra nearby series within their division versus an extra trip or two across multiple time zones. But even that notion is a bit overrated, since most divisions feature at least one long plane ride within themselves anyway (i.e. New York/Philly to Miami, Milwaukee to Houston, Seattle to Arlington, TX). Finally, the unbalanced schedule calls for the final 3 weeks or so of the regular season to be just about all intra-division games. This is cool at first glance because it guarantees late-season head to head matchups to decide division winners. But it also gives you a good number of games where a team in the hunt gets to match up with (and feast upon) a lowly team's minor league call-ups, which throws a just bit of a wrench into the integrity of the pennant race, yes?

To be honest, it was a welcome change from the way it was before - a bland, auto-fill spreadsheet of a schedule where every team played an equal amount of games (two home series, two road series) against all the other teams in its league. But the novelty has worn off, and now the inordinate amount of intra-division games has created rather unfair situations for teams that are in especially strong or weak divisions. For instance, Tampa Bay must play 36 total games against the Yankees and Red Sox this year; that's 22% of their schedule against two teams widely considered to be among the top 3 in baseball. Not only do they have to contend with the two giants for the division itself, but the Rays must also contend for the Wild Card against teams from the other AL divisions who play a considerably softer schedule. Now, before anyone starts making violin-music jokes, Tampa is a very good team in its own right, and many people are convinced they'd be a playoff shoo-in if they were housed in another division. Some have even gone so far as to propose radical realignment policies in order to counteract the pitfalls of the unbalanced schedule.

If you couldn't get through that realignment article without getting a headache, don't feel bad. It's definitely discussion worthy, but way too off-the-wall to happen. That's why I'm here with a simpler proposal - just water down the unbalanced schedule. Instead of playing 18 games a year against your division counterparts, make it 12-13 games a year. Eliminate one interleague series a year, namely the "rivalry" series (interleague matchups built into the schedule where certain pairs of teams meet for two series during interleague play). I've always viewed this extra interleague series as unnecessary and just an excuse to get Yankees-Mets and Angels-Dodgers for 6 games a year instead of 3. Disburse those 27 games or so that we've just freed up among the other teams in the same league, and all of a sudden you've got a schedule that still caters to the big rivalries but falls short of being disproportionate to the league as a whole. The fans and networks still get their share of headliner matchups, and no one can complain all that much about any team having a ridiculously easy or difficult schedule just because of what division they're in.

Anyone have Bud Selig's number?