{"id":3771,"date":"2020-06-25T20:29:32","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T20:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=3771"},"modified":"2020-06-25T20:29:32","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T20:29:32","slug":"could-a-shorten-mlb-schedule-help-a-team-like-say-the-mariners-reach-the-world-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=3771","title":{"rendered":"Could a shorten MLB schedule help a team like, say, the Mariners reach the World Series?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TERRY MOSHER<\/p>\n

TOP OF THE TOWN<\/strong> \u2013 Money rules the world, as you know. It is why pro sports leagues are twisting and turning and bending backward and forward in the hopes of pinning COVID \u2013 19 to the mat and restart their mammoth multiple -billion dollar profit-making machines. Billion dollar owners are all over the map in MLB with Radio.com showing Cleveland Indians owner Larry Dolan and his family worth $4.6 billion, which tops the 18-known billionaire owners in baseball (the Mariners John Stanton ranks near the bottom of\u00a0 this group at $1.1 billion). Baseball reportedly was losing $75 million collectively a day because of the virus shutdown. I\u2019m only guessing here but it\u2019s likely baseball owners feared losing a considerable fan base if they didn\u2019t do all the contortions possible to save baseball this season.\u00a0 Would fans lose interest in the sport if there was none? Don\u2019t laugh. Think about it. If baseball didn\u2019t return, as it is slated to do with spring training beginning next week at respective home ballparks and a 60-game season beginning later in July, would you really care if it showed up at all in 2021? I believe we would all survive nicely without it. I covered the sport for nearly 30 years and I would not miss it. So the owners jumped in and said, hey, let\u2019s get going. These billionaires didn\u2019t want to be millionaires. Players were worried about it, too. The top half of them have made plenty and likely could survive nicely if they had squired away their money. But the bottom half and the rookies and the 12 percent that traditionally survive and advance through the minor leagues to the big leagues were probably getting a little jumpy. After all, at last report there were over 40 million out of work in the country because of the virus. The one good thing \u2013 or maybe bad thing depending on how you look at it \u2013 of a 60-game schedule is that a bad team like the Mariners are likely to be might get lucky and rise to the top and make the World Series. Wouldn\u2019t that be something? It usually takes 60 games before the real good teams begin to separate themselves from the poor teams like the Mariners, so again don\u2019t laugh. It could happen. If the Mariners win the World Series would baseball put an asterisk next to the feat like it did when Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth\u2019s home run record with the help of an additional eight game schedule (Maris\u00a0played in 161\u00a0games\u00a0that season and\u00a0did hit 61\u00a0homers in 698 plate appearances, according to baseball-reference.com. He lost one homer because of a rainout against the Orioles. Ruth played in 154\u00a0games\u00a0and\u00a0hit\u00a0his 60 in 691 plate appearances). Anyway, baseball has been saved by billionaires and somehow I don\u2019t feel for them when I\u2019m surviving the virus on many billions less. \u2026 I normally don\u2019t root for sports teams or sports figures (we are conditioned on not rooting by virtue of our profession. As writers we are supposed to be neutral. There is no cheering in the press box, for example). So I won\u2019t root for Sawyer Racanelli. I will just hope he shows the promise he showed in a shortened high school career at Hockinson (near Vancouver, WA). He suffered a torn ACL before his senior season in 2019 and missed that season. Before then, Racanelli was as special talent and led Hockinson to consecutive state football titles. He had 1,764 receiving yards and 32 touchdowns his junior year, (11 of them rushing scores), and is a Washington Husky recruit that will be competing this season against a slew of good, young receivers that just need a quarterback (that is yet to be determined) to perhaps produce some of the best pass-catchers in school history. So I\u2019m about as excited as a sportswriter is allowed to get to see this. If the virus allows it. In the meanwhile:<\/p>\n

Be well pal.<\/p>\n

Be careful out there.<\/p>\n

Have a great day.<\/p>\n

You are loved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TERRY MOSHER TOP OF THE TOWN \u2013 Money rules the world, as you know. It is why pro sports leagues…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-column","category-mosher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3772,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771\/revisions\/3772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}