MLB Baseball: You Can Take My House, But Please Don't Take My World Series

of media members who agree that a neutral site will rekindle the Fall Classic.

Without referencing any of the many ridiculous reasons Olney tries to back his equally ridiculous statement up with, I will now try to explain to you why there couldn't be anything worse for baseball than a neutral site.

I agree that the World Series wasn't really all that great, especially considering the poor conditions in Philadelphia.

Shortening the season to 148 games isn't a terrible idea. The season would end before September and the weather likely wouldn't be a factor.

But moving the World Series games to Phoenix? No thanks!

Picture this:

It's 2009, and the long-suffering Chicago Cubs are playing in Game 7 of the World Series against the dreaded New York Yankees.

The Yankees took an early lead, but behind Derek Lee and Geovany Soto, the Cubs came all the way back to take a two-run lead. Now it's the top half of the ninth, the Cubs are three outs away from their first World Series since forever, and they have called on Kerry Wood to get three outs.

Wood sets down the first two hitters easily, and then, after a fourteen pitch at-bat, Wood blows a 98-mile-per-hour fastball past Derek Jeter, and Cubs fans are going wild!

But instead of being part of the TV audience that is watching the hysteria and electric atmosphere at Wrigley Field. We are forced to watch a lukewarm reaction with PETCO Park in San Diego, and gauge the Cubs fans' reactions from the thousands of fans who are crammed into a bar on the north side.

C'mon! Where's the pageantry? Where's the sentimentality? Where's the passion and the wild screaming that are the very part of the fabric of baseball that make the sport the "National Past-time?"

I can't even fathom the idea of never being able to watch a World Series be played inside Fenway Park, or Wrigley Field, or Dodger Stadium ever again. How can baseball executives even consider indirectly severing the link between baseball and their fan-base even more.

In the age of luxury boxes and personal seating licenses, a neutral site for baseball would effectively ex-communicate the fans from the game altogether.

One of Olney's arguments is that in a neutral location the MLB can evolve the World Series from seven possible games of baseball, into a super-duper, mega, media-driven, contrived extravaganza that would bring baseball a lot of money, and would also drive hordes of loyal baseball fans away from the game they love.

Yes, people would still watch, and sure I bet thousands of loyal Cubs fans would make the drive to San Diego or Phoenix if they could get the chance to see their team try and win a World Series. But they would probably give their left legs to be able to sit in the left-field bleachers when Wood records the final out to end the suffering.

I also know that football as succeeded for years and their Super Bowl is played at a neutral site every year. The only problem I have with that line of thinking is that football stadiums are huge and impersonal.

Sure Gillette Stadium in Foxborough gets real loud when the Patriots are rocking and rolling. But there is no place in the entire city that gets loud like Fenway Park does when the Red Sox are making a miraculous comeback in the playoffs.

Watch this, and tell me you wouldn't get the same goosebumps that I get if it were your team.

How many of those moments would be erased from baseball's potential history if the World Series was constantly played in a neutral location.

The amazing plays would still happen, but the broadcasters would never be able to utter the phrase, "and look at this crowd go wild!" ever again. Frankly, there are chances that even during a "home game" Cubs fans would be outnumbered by Yankees fans in any neutral site location across the country.

What Olney wrote illustrates the exact problem with baseball's media. Buster Olney has probably reported on countless games that have taken place in Fenway Park. He has probably bore witness to hundreds of wild celebrations by the Fenway faithful, and for each one, he has been sitting snugly in the press box, behind a wall of glass.

I wish Olney could have sat in the right-field bleachers when the Red Sox came back from seven runs down against the Rays in Game 5 of this year's ALCS. I wish Olney, or any sportswriter for that matter, had braved the weather and sat in the grandstands at Citizens Bank Park when Brad Lidge sealed a Phillies championship.

Without these types of experiences, I don't blame sportswriters for failing to make the important connection that exists between a team and it's fan-base. They may get to see the bedlam, but they don't experience it.

They don't get to watch complete strangers high-five and hug each other like they are long lost kin when Aramis Ramirez doubles in the game-winning run. The disconnect has hurt baseball only minimally so far.

So please Bud Selig, when someone approaches you about a neutral site and tries to dazzle you with brights lights and pretty pictures of festivals outside PETCO Park, and hilarious celebrity softball games. Don't listen!

Think of the crazy Red Sox fans who braved the cold waters of the Charles River to prove their commitment to their team after Boston won their first World Series in 2004.

Think of all those Phillies fans who pored out onto Broad Street drunk from joy, willing to flip cars just because they won a World Series (I do not condone such behavior, just trying to make a point).

Think of a loyal Brooklyn-ite, who was just forced to watch his beloved stadium, where he has seen every game for the past 30 years, get torn down. Think of his indignation when he learns that he won't ever get to see a World Series played in the city of New York ever again.

Think of Joe Schmo, the 35-year-old mechanic who has lived through every possible Chicago Cubs collapse imaginable, and one day, could have the opportunity to get absolutely hammered, and cry tears of joy on another man's shoulder when his team, the one he has watched with his father since he was six, win their first World Series in one of the most historic, and tradition-filled venues in all of sports.

Everyone one of those people would be isolated and abandoned by you, Bud Selig, if you decide to follow through on this line of thinking.

Do you really want that on your conscience?

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