hey fox sports…

fuck you.

let me tell you a few things about programing baseball. namely baseball at wrigley field.

and specifically baseball at wrigley field in the playoffs.

during the seventh inning we do a little something at wrigley called the seventh inning stretch. you might have heard of it.

in the old days my hero, harry caray, would put down his beer at the end of the top half of the seventh, stand up, and pick up the PA microphone and he’d say something along the lines of

Let me hear ya!

and then he would say, a-one, a-two, a-three

and no matter if the cubs were getting their asses handed to them, or if they were winning by a bunch or if it was a close game all the cub fans would stand up and sing along with that drunken old man and everything would be great again.

the song he would sing is called Take Me Out To The Ballgame.

when harry was dying, he wasnt able to make it to some of the cubs games. so some of the local celebrities like Bill Murray and Walter Payton would work their way up to the broadcast booth and sing Take Me Out To The Ballgame for harry.

after the Lord called him up to the Big Leagues they hired his grandson to broadcast the games, but even he knew that he wasnt harry, so they started a new tradition where they would let local stars like mike ditka and big names like ozzy osbourne lead the crowd in song.

sometimes the renditions are horrible, sometimes theyre wonderful. usually theyre laughable.

last night during one of the most exciting playoff games imaginable, jimmy buffett stood up in the middle of the seventh inning to sing to the friendly confines.

fox, thumbing their nose to history, raising their middle finger to sentiment, and putting their head into the sand of sense of place, cut to commercial and robbed the millions of baseball fans of those thirty seconds of charm that you can only get at wrigley field, and chose to sell soap. or beer. or whatever the fuck they chose to sell like the dirty whores that they are.

yes im emotional about this sort of thing, but not ridiculously so. i understand business, and theres money to be made in televised sports in postseason, but that 30 seconds can be made up. youre already pimping out the green screen behind the plate so my perfect baseball scene is bastardized with a budweiser ad when all im trying to do is watch the batter and the pitcher.

why must you also take away my seventh inning stretch?

fuck you fox sports.

and another thing, whats this shit with not telling us which game is going to be on Fox tonight and which game is going to be on FX?

i live in Hollywood. Los Angeles. New York and Boston will get the game on Fox in their towns, and Chicago and Miami will get the game on Fox in their towns.

Just fucking tell us which game we’re going to get in LA on Fox so we know which channel to tivo. is that so hard? you people love those damn scrolls at the bottom of the screen. scroll that shit for us. are you all on crack?

Have Tim McCarver announce, “game two of this series will be seen in the following cities…” and it will be shown on FX in the rest of the country.

simple.

simple for me because i care about the baseball viewer. simple for me because my entire fucking life isnt devoted to selling out the national pastime so i can get a better toupee and eat more beef.

cut to commerical tonight and feel the wrath of harry when your soul gets sent to hell cuz thats my mans moment and you cant broadcast a cubs game in chicago without paying your respect to the man, and the man is all about the stretch, so quit being fucking little bitches about it.

you are sooooo lucky to have the cubs in the playoffs right now, and if they play the redsox in the world series it will be a cash cow like youve never seen before. so knock off the greed move.

for once in your sorry lives.

mark prior will shut florida out tonight. check your local listings since fox has its head up its ass.

tina + adrants + bitchen + kate sullivan

there will be a day that i sell out.

and to be honest with you, i hope it happens sooner than later.

and to be completely frank, ive been trying to sell out seriously for the better portion of this year.

this morning i woke up and read a good article on ClickZ Today called “Paid Subscription Blogging” where the idea of making money from ones blog was discussed.

At the very bottom of the article an industry insider said that charging people to read a blog will probably only be successful on a few blogs. He mentions Drudge, the Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, Fark… and dumbass me.

Although the flattery of being part of that amazing short list is priceless, let me say here and now that you, precious reader, will never be charged a premium to read the busblog.

If someone wants to pay me money to write for their blog, newspaper, or magazine, I will gladly consider their terms. If someone wants me to tone down the busblog by not saying things like fuck the fucking president, or by not showing scantily clad women, or not calling bullshit on the bullshitters, and if they pay me the proper price, then i will tone down the busblog.

But under no terms will you ever be charged to read this brilliance that me and my hundred monkeys present to you each day.

That will never be part of the sellout.

One of my all-time heroes is Mr. Harry Caray, God rest his soul. The way the Cubs got Harry to be their announcer is that Harry was broadcasting for the White Sox and the White Sox decided in the early 80s to show most of their games on the now-defunct SportsVision, which was a premium addition to ones cable bill, similar to HBO.

Harry quit the Sox immediately saying that baseball is meant for the working person and it should be on free television. And he went across town to the Cubs where 90 per cent of the games were being broadcast on channel 9, WGN, for free.

I believe that it’s not only tacky, but ridiculous to think that readers should pay for the content when there are companies and advertisers who are more than willing to align themselves to personalities, writers, and now bloggers.

The Internet has always been about shit being free and we should continue to embrace that. I can tell you right now that I totally love and respect the Instapundit, but there is no way that i would go and pay for his content at Any price. on principle.

now macropayments are a whole nother thing. i would pay a nickle or even a dime for each web page that i went to in a day, even if ended up costing me 3 bucks a day. in fact it would be my pleasure because youve got to go to a hell of a lot of blogs that cost a dime a day to rack up 3 bucks a day.

im a gigantic fan of micropayments, but the only way that i would implement them on this blog would be by a volunteer basis only.

if i had the 1,000 people a day who visit this fork over a dime a day, i’d make $500 a week.

that car that im trying to get would be mine in a matter of 4 months. so yes, im a fan of micropayments and the man or woman who figures out how to bill people a dime for each blog that they visit will be a rich person. especially if they figure out a way to shave a penny or two for themselves.

until that day i will continue to try to develop working relationships with companies who i admire whose beliefs and business practices i agree with.

therefore if you ever see me pimping sweatshops like nike, know that they gave me at least two million dollars. and know that i gave a million of that to charity. i dont like nike. but i will take their money and give it to causes that they should be giving it to. especially since theyre making their zillions on the backs of the planet’s exploited. and whats worse about nike is that they dont need to be doing it since they already charge more for their shoes than any of their competitors.

but you know all this.

currently i have one ad. amazon. i like amazon. i like who they were when they were just starting out, i like how theyve grown, i like their service, i like their commission plan, i like that theyre still very much a dot com gone bigtime.

i dont make hardly anything off of them, but if i can get a book or two for free a year by having their link up on my page, then fine.

one day i will really sell out. i will blog for someone other than you. i will blog for a company. and when that day comes i will hopefully be able to keep the busblog as it is. but if i have to tone it down, i will still update daily, which isnt that hard because as long as this blog has been around ive had a full time job and ive still been able to make this page and all the photo essays and all the pictures and everything.

having a gig where i write for a living should make it easier to maintain this thing too, not hurt it. so fear not.

and how great is it that drudge is being called a blogger.

happy birthday nicky, the not-so-slutty, quieter, brainier libra hilton sister.

instapundit + the chicago tribune discovered blogs today + bruner blog