I was having a quite time at the Club that time Forgot.  I saw him coming through the doors but he saw me first.  It was my acquaintance Freddy the Ferret who approached, dressed to spill, as if propelled by a mixture of dynamite and adrenalin. His attempted subtle whisper amounted to an injection of a small, unwanted cup of spittle in my ear.  As usual it was Ferret at his obtuse best. “The Major Leaguers are in the Emerald City and they are controlling the game.”   As usual I had little idea what the Ferret was on about or on at that time.  He hissed urgently again, “The NBL man…the big stick boys are here to play and I’m not in the same postcode pilgrim!”

It appeared Ferret was in a fix.  An occasional colour piece scribe for the Daily Dread, Ferret found that the NBL (NBL for those who don’t know or couldn’t care less is the National Baseball League) were trying to screw down local press to their Yanky squirrel grip media rules. You know the stuff – yes you print and publish what we want or you don’t get anything.  Apparently the legal eagles for the Dread and the Drone were playing home ground advantage but still Ferret couldn’t get a word in anywhere.

The Arizona Diamondbacks and the LA Dodgers are to play each other baseball on Saturday and Sunday in Sydney…..yawn.  They say 80,000 people have bought tickets. The dearest tickets are $498 (Platinum) and the penny dreadfuls in the Trumper Concourse – among the hot-dog wrappers and tats are a pricey $89.  That’s fine by me.  It’s important that stupid people pay a lot of cash to get an education in how stupefyingly boring the game of tip and run is.

Of course the Major League Baseball group and franchises need a dollar to pay the performers.  Clayton Kershaw who slings the bean for the Dirty Dodgers will earn a tidy sum of $93,150 and 68 cents every day for the next 2,556 days.  That seems reasonable to me.  You might argue that’s the equivalent of around 2,500 school teachers for a year but you would be missing the big point. Clay entertains.  Teachers teach.  Move on Madge.

Despite Ferret’s lean word count the other agencies have had no trouble in sycophantically spewing forth liberal column inches of froth and gee-whiz.  Stories about the game, the stats and how miraculously the hallowed turf of the SCG has been transformed into a baseball stadium crowd the front sports pages and lead television coverage.  Our young sports journos who have sucked on the teat of Fox Sports for far too long cannot conceal their tumescent wetness for a game of rounders.

However, just 287 kilometres down the M3 there is another game playing.  Our game not some dopey bunt, run and spit game. It’s the final of the Sheffield Shield between the NSW Blues and the Western Warriors at Manuka Oval.  A noble game. I know this for a fact because my mate Banker rang to tell me he was sitting down watching the game today.  He went on to say that it was an open gate affair so it it’s obvious none of the 22 lads were going to earn $93K for the day.

The final of the Shield has been sent packing to Capital Dulltown because some indolent fool at the Cricket Ground Trust thinks that the SCG must stand for Some Clever Gold.   Sadly the only person who will find gold in their pan is Munster Murdoch’s Fox Machine as this is patently a marketing exercise with little regard for growing the game here. Which in a way is a mixed blessing.  The only contact the Dodgers and Diamonds have had with kids was at a photo op at Bondi. Arhh the imagination of the PR machine and the complicity of a dumbed down media.

Instead of day at the SCG where every kid from across Sydney and surrounds could come into the SCG and feast on a day of cricket or two we have a couple of games of bunt and run between two overpaid bunches of backy chewing bumsters.  It just does’t add up.  In fact the players of this turgid game cannot add up themselves – former yankee catcher,Yogi Berra once said, “Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical”.