One golden goose, expired

 The NHL Winter Classic -- a New Year's Day staple for the Blob once the BCS and CFP wrecked the day for college football -- pulled its worst TV numbers ever in 2024. And again it was greed, and the stupidity that greed creates, that was the culprit.

Y'see, the NHL, startled by how popular the Winter Classic was, decided well, hell, this thing is a freaking ATM. Think how much dough we could rake in if we played a whole SERIES of outdoor games EVERY SINGLE YEAR?

So of course the NHL did. And of course what made the Winter Classic a freaking ATM to begin with -- the novelty of seeing two NHL teams play outdoors in the elements, just like the players did on frozen ponds as kids -- thus became just another Tuesday on the NHL schedule. And, poof, the uniqueness that was the Winter Classic's principal attraction vanished, and another golden goose died.

Or at least grew withered and sickly and, this year, was worthy only of a cable presence.

Market saturation has done that to more golden geese than you can shake a drumstick at, and yet allegedly smart people keep on saturatin'. Every gambler in Vegas knows you don't keep pumping quarters into the same one-armed bandit immediately after it's paid off, but not these smart guys. They starting pumping in the quarters faster than before.

"Wow, that's really dumb," you're saying now.

Indeed it is. But greed makes dumb guys out of smart guys all the time. Just about every day in fact.

For instance: A lot of of factors have contributed to the diminishment of the World  Series as a must-see event, and most of those have been well-documented. The over-arching monolith of the NFL, sucking all the oxygen out of autumn ... the abandonment of the next generation of fans ... the lure of football and basketball over baseball for potential future MLB stars ...

And one more, at least according to the Blob: The market saturation -- make that over-saturation -- of interleague play.

Shouting-at-clouds geezers like me never did much care for it, but at least once it was an interesting novelty. Now it's such a regular thing it's completed wiped out one of the elements that used to make the Fall Classic the Fall Classic: The mystery.

Back in the day, when the American League exclusively played the American League and the National League exclusively played the National League, the World Series was a leap into the unknown. How would two teams that had never played one another during the season match up? How distinct were the two styles of play, NL and AL? And which would ultimately prevail?

It may be impossible to quantify how much all of that added to the attraction of the Fall Classic, but surely it added some. And now it's gone, because the two World Series participants likely have played one another half-a-dozen times already during the regular season. The World Series therefore becomes indistinguishable from a divisional or league championship series.

Sad, all of that. And, yes, really, really dumb.