Good game, baseball. Been around a while. Respectable. Rules are pretty much accepted and understood by everyone. Could use some minor tweaking (doing away with the satanically inspired designated hitter rule would be nice), but the game doesn’t need major alterations.

I’m sure, for instance, we could hand Randy Johnson a bowling ball and make him use it, but it’d only cause a lot of fuss and confusion.

Too, if we did it, it’s likely his slider would die coming off the mound and inside fastballs would be a thing of the past.

Then there are those pesky "unintended consequences" that seem to crop up whenever we change things in a big way.

Foul balls would be awe inspiring what with 16-pound spheres dropping out of the sky. I’d bet some of the folks who originally went along with the idea might rethink their positions after seeing the crater next to them.

It probably wouldn’t work even if you painted the bowling ball white, drew stitches on it, got "umpires" to say it was legal and had some fans hooting and hollering that it was high time we changed.

Sorry, but if we gave Randy that bowling ball, no matter how hard some fans wished or wanted or said otherwise, most everyone would know it wasn’t baseball any more.

Which brings us to gay "marriage." (I know. Pretty fair jump there, but stay with me.)

A couple thousand years ago, it became obvious that men had this hard-wired tendency to go off and mate with anyone who could get past the smell of almost-cured animal hide and a decade-old case of body odor.

This left a lot of women with kids but no father and the tribe stuck with managing the results.

Such events soon gave rise to the notion that if a man took up with a woman, it should be for more than an evening and, if kids resulted, he should stick around and care for them.

After a bit, it became apparent that this idea provided some stability to the tribe and, since 1 plus 1 still equaled 3 where men and women were involved, ensured its continuation.

Finally, someone said, "You know, maybe we ought to do more to encourage this."

(Note: History books probably provide more detail, but I only have 800 words and a small margin for license here.)

"How?"

"Well we could call it marriage and provide the couple with societal approval, religious ceremonies, tax breaks, survivor benefits, medical plans and such."

"What’s all that?"

"Don’t know, but it sure sounds good."

Thus beginneth an institution.

Now, it’s a given that heterosexual marriages don’t always work. That 50 percent divorce rate is purely awful and we "heteros" can sure put up some impressive abuse numbers. Too, there are husbands and wives who don’t want or can’t have children.

Still, we should have an ideal and that ideal should be "marriage." Further, "marriage" should remain defined as the union of a man and a woman.

Now, before the name calling starts, ("bigoted homophobe" and "homophobic bigot" can be used interchangeably for those of you who’ve already started writing), let’s get some other stuff out of the way.

It’s none of my business what consenting adults do in private. Rotating ceiling fans, olive oil and leather masks? Fine. Just as long as no one gets hurt and I’m not asked to join in, clean up, "celebrate" anything, or pay for the olive oil.

Too, it’s past time to drop the idea that gays should be shunned or shamed or hurt in any way. The Lord I pray to takes a dim view of hateful behavior and has said a few things about "Golden Rules" and "casting the first stone" and such. Too, gays stack up every bit as well in the "good citizen" department as any other group. You could look it up.

But I’m against gay "marriage" because, if nothing else, there’s still that "unintended consequences" thing (I could mention "slippery slopes" too, but I’m running out of room).

We give the go-ahead to this and, pretty soon, we’ll have others like the NAMBLA crowd (a stomach-churning bunch if there ever was one) asking why can’t they marry 9-year-olds and others asking "What’s wrong with 20 wives?"

Then, it’d get worse.

However, recognizing civil unions and granting the extension of all legal benefits to those who choose to commit to one another should be supported.

Anyway, the bottom line is this: Once we hand Randy that bowling ball, we’d be playing a whole different game.

And whatever it’d be, it wouldn’t be baseball anymore.

And it wouldn’t be long before we wished we hadn’t done it.

Larry Simoneaux is a freelance writer living in Edmonds. Comments can be sent to larrysim@att.net.