And the Oscar Goes To

Once a year, the Academy Awards are presented to recognize the best performances in motion pictures for the past year. Now being a baseball fanatic, I rarely deviate from ESPN, ESPN2, or ESPN Classic. But today happened to be different. I made the mistake of leaving the room and not taking the remote control with me. It turns out this was a grave mistake. While I was out of the room, Trina seized control of the television in a coup worthy of the lead story on CNN. I returned to find that I was no different than many dictators before me. I had been banished to an unfamiliar island and was none to pleased about it. I found myself sitting on the couch watching this awards show. For many years I had known the Oscars were rigged. How else can you explain Major League, Bull Durham, and Angels in the Outfield never being nominated for best picture? Oh sure, they try to appease the fan by including Field of Dreams but baseball films in general never garner much support from the academy. Tonight was no different. The closest this awards show came to sports was a brief clip from some boxing movie which I had never seen. Further, there was only one baseball player even remotely associated with the program and that was Garth Brooks. Even then, he was a former player after being waived last week by the New York Mets. (Suggestion, after two years of trying to become a baseball player, Garth Brooks should retire from the game and instead send Chris Gaines next year. At least that guy looks like a baseball player.) So here I sit, watching as everyone thanks everyone else for wasting my evening. I would have thought that Billy Crystal would have at least made a few baseball comments. After all, he is part owner in the Diamondbacks. He didn't even wear his Diamondbacks hat on the show. What kind of fan is that?