SAN DIEGO — I was a sports fan as a child, an adolescent, and for most of my so-called adult life. A sap who now finds himself a frustrated sports follower.
These no longer are kids' games. They are games people play — and often not well.
Maybe it's just a natural thing that happens after watching literally thousands of sporting events, most of them for a living. But, what the heck, one can write about politics without loving politicians, lies, scandals, and the breaking of rules (which have become a part of sports).
What makes it so hard and frustrating now is the officiating, or lack of it, in football, basketball, and baseball. But especially baseball, with football No. 2 (in more ways than the number suggests). Basketball has no rules anymore.
Officials have taken over our games. They are deciding games. They are ruining games.
And at times replay officials are even worse. Why can we see it and they cannot?
Baseball has become an open wound you can peer into, which makes me so sore, I have difficulty looking at it.
Analytics have made the game immobile, drudgery. It's as though a bank robber stands at home plate night after night and hollers: "Nobody move!"
Games are interminable. Starters are dinosaurs. Pitchers are rolled out like dice, and then they stare at the catcher from the mound as if they're teenage boys who snuck into an old 42nd Street peep show.
But it's the umpiring — mostly the ump behind the plate, calling balls and strikes, calling them badly. And I see every stinking mistake, and I say something I shouldn't out loud.
How we watch it doesn't help. In the old days, we didn't see baseball on TV with a center field view, but from behind home plate. There wasn't a box showing us balls and strikes. And umps were directly behind the plate.
TV should go back to that view. We can watch a game as we might if attending, and we also could see the stupid Shift, which isn't shown from the center-field shot.
Bob Costas is against robo umps, and I'm not thrilled about them. What MLB has to do is find competent ones who work the same strike zone. If they want to play by their rules, ciao.
Like real life. Fail at your job, and your pink slip is showing.
Oh, and when they review plays they should tell fans what's going on. If the NFL does it, so can they.
Football is much more difficult to officiate, but, still, bad calls prevail, especially on pass interference. And there's too much huddling. Tell the ref what the foul is and get on with it.
But baseball is worse, with bad umpiring, continuous pitching changes and games lasting into tomorrow.
It appears certain a baseball work stoppage could come on Dec. 2, which might delay spring training. Figures, in that every single thing in baseball is delayed.
I have more problems with baseball itself than umpiring, primarily because — as with basketball — I recall how the game is supposed to be played, before the nerds took it over.
And I'm no good at math.
