Support Minor League Baseball

I've made the decision - Major League baseball officially has one less fan. They can bite me. When I was a kid, my Dad and I usually took one trip a summer to Cincinnati to see the Reds play. Most often, we would sit up high in the red seats in old Riverfront Stadium. The seats were so high up that I would be scared to death to look down, but it was still a ton of fun. I remember watching Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Davey Concepcion, Don Gullett and all the rest of the Big Red Machine from way up high, and cheering like crazy. I can only imagine how many home runs Johnny Bench would have hit if George Foster would have stuck a needle in his butt in a bathroom stall.

I have had it with Major League Baseball, with its juice pumping steroid boys. I will not be going to any major league baseball games this summer, and, more importantly, my milkshake drinking hiney is not going to watch any major league baseball on the television. There are too many other ways to spend my free time when the weather is warm. I can sit around, eat a big sandwich, teach my daughter to play catch, or go to the zoo with Mrs. Charlie Lee and my little rugrat.

One thing I will do is go see our minor league baseball team, The Louisville Bats, several times this summer. All tickets are less than $10, all seats at Slugger field are good, the beer, cokes and hot dogs are all tasty. Do the same, support your local minor league baseball team, and tell Major League baseball to go fly a kite.

Speaking of major league baseball, all this talk about Jose Canseco reminds me of something that I witnessed/took part in at old Cardinal Stadium. No felonies were committed, and all statutes of limitations have since run, so I will freely use people's real names. My friends, Tom and John (and Chris, too, I think) and I went to a Louisville Redbirds game in the early 1990s. Jose Canseco's brother, Ozzie, was there, playing for the Redbirds. We were sitting in general admission seating over on the third base side. As I recall, John was on about his 6th beer, and we were still in about the 3rd inning.

John had been mercilessly hollering at Ozzie Canseco, so much so, that by the second time Ozzie came to bat, all of the fans sitting around us had cleared out so that we had the entire section to ourselves.

Ozzie stepped to the plate, and in a voice loud enough to be heard in Oldham country, screams out, "Hey Ozzie, your brother got all the talent!!!"

Ozzie steps out of the box, glares up our way, steps back in the box, and then hits a home run on the next pitch, and stares us down the whole time he circles the bases. This was probably the highlight of Ozzie Canseco's baseball career.