baseball has (in my opinion) crossed a line

Baseball teams exist to make a profit. They always have. I get that. When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the Giants to San Francisco in 1958 it was about heading to wide open markets without competition. Legendary San Francisco Giants play-by-play broadcaster Hank Greenwald published a memoir entitled This Copyrighted Broadcast in 1999, near the end of his career. In it he laments the increasing commercialization of the sport, saying that it was coming close to the point where announcers would have to say, “This next pitch is brought to you by…” Beginning last year the Nike swoosh started appearing on all major league baseball uniforms. All of that.

Recently, however, Major League Baseball entered into an agreement that I find troubling. They developed a marketing arrangement with a company known as FTX. The firm is a cryptocurrency exchange, facilitating transactions in tender such as Bitcoin. Starting with the All Star game this year all umpires are wearing an FTX patch on their uniforms.

I have a couple of problems with this. First, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are on the fringes of legality. They’re not illegal, but the federal government hasn’t figured out how to regulate them. Traders use cryptocurrencies in questionable activities and in transactions where those involved want to keep their identities secret. It’s not something that baseball should involve itself with, particularly when the television viewer can clearly see the patch on the umpire’s shirt throughout the game.

My other problem is that umpires are supposed to be the very model of objectivity. Commercializing their uniforms is damages their credibility.

This is almost enough to get me to stop watching baseball. Not quite, but almost.