SNAKES ALIVE

To the Arizona Diamondbacks, who have won, in stirring and gut-wrenching fashion, the seventh game of the World Series, congratulations... and let's not pull a Florida Marlins and dismantle the team by next Sunday.

There are a lot of reasons why it would have been nice for the Yankees to have won... this is going to be one more thing that will make 2001 a bad year to be a New Yorker (though there are about 4,800 people who'd gladly trade a Yankees World Series loss for a do-over of September 11th). It says nothing but bad things about how Major League Baseball has prostituted itself that a team that won 116 games -- the Seattle Mariners -- and one that won 102 -- the Oakland Athletics -- weren't even IN the World Series. And it's bad that a team only four years old can go out and buy itself the players to go out and win the Series... but then again, if such a team had to win, the Yankees are the team to have beaten, since they built themselves the same way.

I'd have given the MVP award (didn't it used to be called the Babe Ruth Award?) to Randy Johnson alone, but Curt Schilling was tough, too, so I can't complain too much.

Now comes the bad news... don't expect a baseball season, much less a World Series, in 2002. Because Major League Baseball Commissioner (and former used-car salesman) Bud Selig will make baseball owners try to force the wrong things down the throats of the Major League Baseball Players Association -- and because the players' union will insist on its own stupid demands -- major league baseball will grind to a halt. Despite terrorist attacks, despite war in Afghanistan (and probably two or three other fronts by spring), the millionaires and the billionaires will have a spitting fit and make us miss one of the things that help us forget people like Osama bin Laden.

Congratulations, Arizona... now let's reinstitute the draft and start with our most fit Americans, professional athletes.