Let's get real.

Photo © tanmanforlife

There's always a lot of talk on the Twitter thing about what it means to be a "real fan". Pissing contests erupting 140-characters at a time. Grown men whining back and forth like old married couples. Ladies behaving... well, rather un-lady-like.

It's getting fricking dangerous out there, folks, and the whole shebang has got me thinking: What exactly constitutes a "real fan"?

In the wake of the team's first title in 56 years, life-long Giants fans watched with trepidation as the park filled up night after night in 2011 with out-of-the-woodwork casual fans decked out literally from head to toe in their freshly-purchased World Champions-branded gear.

Catching up.

As I've said before, the hardest part of being a part-time blogger is keeping on a schedule, especially if you spread your passion across a wide swath of industries, hobbies, and pastimes. Which I do. But that's really another way of saying I'm lazy. I have no problem admitting that sometimes baseball is the furthest thing from my mind, and sometimes I don't feel like I have anything to add to the conversation.

So if you're looking for a daily dish, go to the big boys like MCC or BASG. Me, I don't really do this for page views. You won't see any Google ads on this Google site. I come here to vent, to let loose, to get a healthy dose of catharsis. If somebody actually reads what I write and likes what they read, that's just the all-natural whipped cream on top of my gelato.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let's dig into some recent news and notes before we dig into our turducken...

Striking a Balance

Over the weekend, when ESPN's Buster Olney reported on high-level talks concerning Major League Baseball realignment scenarios, he touched off a firestorm of debate, discussion, and diatribes that continues to clog up the blogosphere and distract us from the season at hand. I've spent the better part of the past few hours playing catch up on all the assholes — I mean, opinions — out there, swirling around the web like stray pieces of paper in a toilet bowl. Seems like everybody's got one.

In case you've been living under a rock for the past few days — or your cat peed on your cable modem — Buster reported that owners and players are considering a consolidation of MLB into two wide-open 15-team leagues with five playoff spots each. What would that mean, exactly? I'm glad you asked. From my vantage point, we're looking at three major impacts:

1. Endless Interleague. Balancing the leagues necessitates at least one interleague series to be happening at all times. Good for revenue. Fun for the fans — the ones that still get a kick out of it, anyway. What's the problem? Picture the Giants coming down to the wire for a playoff spot and having to face the Yankees over the final weekend.
2. Hella Frequent Flyer Miles. Instead of starting from a base of 18 games each against four divisional opponents, I envision a schedule something like this: 10 games each against 14 intraleague opponents and 22 total interleague games (amounting to a home-and-home w/ your "natural" rival and five series against a 4-5 teams additional from the opposite league every year). This means a lot more travel and a lot more sleepless nights for players.
3. Bonus Baseball. Five playoff teams means an additional round. But you can't squeeze many more games into the postseason without pushing into November every year, and unless you want to see more snow in the World Series, that's not a good idea. So the 4 and 5 seeds in each league duke it out in just the type of winner-take-all match-up Bud Selig alluded to as early as last year. Depending on your opinion of the relative benefits of short series or one-game playoffs, this could be a good or bad thing.

So, what do I think of all this? I'm glad you asked...