Take me out to the cold ball game

The World Series begins tonight in the South Bronx, and the baseball gods will have blessed us, if the forecast is any guide, with crisp 55 degree temperatures and rain. Yep, that's baseball weather if I ever knew it. Of course, thanks to Commissioner Bud Selig's moronic decision to extend the season through November to wedge the utterly meaningless World Baseball Classic into the schedule, we'll be lucky if none of the games are snowed out, much less rained out.

As you might expect, tickets to this exciting matchup are at a premium. Some are even resorting to turning tricks for the chance to watch their team turn two. Yes, several media outlets were reporting yesterday that one enterprising female Philadelphia fan went on Craigslist offering sex for World Series tickets. Yankees fans, of course, have nothing but sympathy for the woman's plight, as paying new Yankee Stadium ticket prices have screwed them all season long.

If you can't shell out the $15,000 to $20,000 Stubhub.com is asking for World Series tickets, you can always relax in your warm home with a cold one and the TV turned all the way up. Unfortunately, this means you have to deal with the coverage provided by FOX. Now, I have professed my admiration for many of Rupert Murdoch's ventures in this space before, and will likely do so again.

But FOX's baseball coverage is mediocre at best and atrocious at worst. Play-by-play man Joe Buck is handsome, has a good voice, cracks a good joke once every seven months or so, and is utterly unmemorable otherwise. Analyst Tim McCarver is a nice old man who offers penetrating insight approximately five minutes after everyone watching has said the exact same thing. Sideline reporter Ken Rosenthal specializes in distributing "exclusive" information that you can find on any website worth its salt. The FOX Studio hosts are not much better. Hosts Chris Rose, Eric Karros and Mark Grace have nice hair, bland personalities and nothing else.

It's enough to make you turn to the radio. Of course once you get there, New Yorkers will find the comedy team of John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman. Both have mastered the art of the banal and obvious observation and mindless, irreverent small talk to such an extent that compared to them, Tim McCarver resembles Bill James.

Having said that, I can't help but like Sterling a little bit, for these reasons: he has a good voice, he actually gives credit to the other team for a good play (and occasionally criticizes the Yankees for playing poorly) and when he does his "Yankees win! THEEEEE Yankees WIN!" call, he holds out his arms and shakes his fists like a five-year-old erasing an invisible Etch-a-Sketch. So he has that going for him.

And lest we forget, the World Series is the perfect time for meaningless gambling. As evidence, New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have bet Pennsylvania Sens. Bob Casey and Arlen Specter on the outcome of the Series. If the Yankees win, Sens. Schumer and Gillibrand get cheesesteaks. If the Phillies win, Sens. Casey and Specter get cheesecakes.

And as you contemplate the utter pointlessness of that wager, allow me to give my prediction: Phillies in seven, if the deluge doesn't wash the whole thing away.

Samuel Chamberlain is opinion editor.