Who Broke the F#%*ing Mirror?

As if rampant steriod speculation weren't bad enough. As if Barry wasn't in danger of being in jail by the end of the season. As if Ozzie Guillen hadn't resigned his contract with the devil (substituting Jim Thome's soul for his own). As if the HGH story was about to blow wide open ...

As if all of these things haven't nearly killed the game of baseball, we get the worst possible news. Ever. Major League Baseball just signed two

seven-year TV deals — starting next year — with Fox and TBS. Fox stays the lead dog, retaining the World Series and one league championship series — down from showing both LCS in its current six-year deal. TBS gets a TV monopoly of all first-round playoff games, which have been aired in current deals by Fox and various cable TV channels, including ESPN.

Anyone who has ever watched a game on TBS or FOX knows that the next 7 years are going to be nigh intolerable. McCarver and Buck 26 times a season, and non-stop in the playoffs? The brain-dead lethargic announcing of the TBS broadcasting crew? If you were going to kill us, MLB, why didn't you just demand that Stephen A Smith and Stuart Scott announce every game?

Is ESPN insane? Really, are these people completely out of their minds? Or are we going to start seeing mini-camp footage in March and more coverage of the inane marathon that is the NBA postseason (IT'S A WINTER SPORT, WHY DOES IT LAST UNTIL JUNE!)

ESPN has the personnel, the channels and the advertising budget (see losses on ESPN DA PHONE!!)to do baseball right. One of the delights of the last few years has been when ESPN covered the first round of the playoffs and I got to listen to Harold Reynolds in the booth. There are many talented anchors on the network, and why ESPN goes out of it's way to promote those that act like jackasses is beyond me. This was a chance for ESPN to take back baseball, show weekly games on ABC with competent, entertaining broadcast crew and bring the national past time back to prominence.

It's days like this I thank god that we can get any game over the internet, and not a single one has Joe Buck or Tim McCarver announcing. Never has the sound of Joe "Billy Bean wrote Moneyball" Morgan's voice sounded so sweet.