What do Tom Selleck, Garth Brooks and Billy Crystal all have in common? It’s not a fast car with a helicopter that follows you, nor is it a jaded country singer with a manic depressive alter ego that bombed horribly on the charts, nor do they share a common bond for naked gold men holding metaphoric phallic swords that you give to people as an award. Nope, it’s them playing baseball… and who cares.

How come Billy Crystal turning 60 and swinging at 88mph low fast balls makes the evening news with Katie Couric (without Katie Couric) and there’s a photo essay available? Several news websites are carrying the story as well. Isn’t there anything more important going on the world?

Most news programs are 1/2 hour to an hour in length, divide that with how short the stories actually are (I mean compared to how many words make up a newspaper story as compared to a news TV transcript.) Time is precious on TV news shows, so can’t they cover more than a media fluff ball piece just because the Yankees are getting a new stadium soon? Or perhaps because Billy Crystal likes baseball and the Yankees… a lot of people like baseball and some like the Yankees (not that anyone should like the Yankees.)

Sure the average Joe doesn’t get to play major league ball and that may raise some eyebrows, and Crystal has that average Joe persona. But I think that this news should have perhaps been tucked away in a top ten feature on ESPN briefly.

I wonder if Billy is laughing, he got a standing ovation at the park and now he has probably pushed out some important news. I know that today the mortgage crisis was covered on the show but not aware of what else was, so what story did Crystals strike out take place of? Eh… probably not important since Crystal’s strike out was just that important to discuss.