The Gladiatorial Arena

Tonight, while the vast majority of the USA watches that singularly most dull of American pass-times, I will be at my office wondering "why?" Of course, the pass-time I refer to is the World Series. And no matter what people tell me, or how un-American I come across to my readers for blasting baseball, I fail to find any source of amusement in that sport.

It is the sport that takes patience to watch, has less action than soccer, worse manners than pigs, and more "juice" than a Tropicana processing facility. And after all the allegations, misdeeds, and open admission before congress that the modern greats are more scandalous than the Roman Senate under the rule of Caligula, we still promote and encourage this bad behaviour by watching the sport.

But maybe my ire should not be lodged at this single sport, but at all modern sports. And at the people who pay to watch them. Are we so filled with luxury that we are willing to pay people to move for us? Is life so cheap that rather than living it, the average American will pay $50.00/year to watch the equivalent of modern day gladiators beat, pummel, and destroy themselves, either in a ring, a stadium, or as the after-effect of fame? Why do we watch rather than participate? The fact is that baseball, and almost any other sport, is a far more enjoyable game when you participate rather than just drink beer from the sidelines. And when we participate, we actually get something of a benefit in exchange in the form of camaraderie and calorie burn.


But instead we choose to spend our money on people who have done nothing so special in their lives other than live with an excess of testosterone, not all of which was produced by their own corpses. Why don't we choose to watch news or well written programming? Is is because we are too lazy to want to comprehend plot development, or too scared to watch something that might make us want to get out of our chairs and change ourselves, and possibly the world in the process?

But instead we reward bad behaviour. We pay perfectly good money to watch boys in big bodies swing a club at a spherical object in the hopes of running around a diamond of dirt. And worse yet, most of these wastrels will not give us our money's worth. Dare I say that most of them are not worth the cost of their components, much less their salaries? If they were moral and/or benefited society as a whole, I could justify the expense. But I cannot. And luckily, one of the biggest wastes of component value will not be playing tonight.

So to my readers, if you have ended up watching that horrendous first game tonight, just remember that the average person is not worth $20m. If they are lucky, their total components account for about $10.00 in a chemistry lab. And remember that the suckers who paid for World Series tickets paid far more to watch.

So America, have we paid for our Gladiators? Because I am not entertained.