Try these changes on for size

Better not put me in charge, or else …

World Series games will be played by the light of day, in October’s fading sunshine. East Coast kids will get to watch the games on TV, and West Coast kids will get to try to convince their teachers to let them listen to the start of games on the radio, and then will hurry home to catch the tail-end on the tube.

College football will clean up its bowl-season mess once and for all. Every other college sport has its postseason play dictated by a “Selection Committee” as designated by the NCAA. But major bowl participants are determined by computer programmers, sportswriters and coaches, while the lesser bowl contestants are selected by portly, middle-aged bowl representatives in loud blazers. Please, NCAA: form a football committee, lock them up in a hotel somewhere early in December, and don’t let them leave until they’ve made all the bowl pairings.

In the NBA, slam dunks will count for only one point. Then we’ll find out who the team players are, and who’s in it only for their own personal notoriety.

High school athletes who find themselves academically ineligible will not be allowed to be with their teams during games watching from the sidelines, but rather would be made to spend the time in the school library, curing their deficiencies.

Palindromes will be celebrated as a complex art form, with competitions springing up nation-wide. I wish I could say that I was the one to devise: “may a moody baby doom a yam.”

The arithmetically-challenged Big Ten Conference will either rename itself the Big Eleven, or, given the nature of many of its mascots (Gophers, Wolverines, and Badgers), start calling itself the Big Rodent Conference.

The National League would get in step with every other baseball league in the country, and utilize the designated hitter. The DH may be a curse and a pox on our houses, but it is here to stay, for good or bad.

As school kids learn every November the story of the Pilgrims and the message of Dr. King in January, so, too, should the story of Jackie Robinson be part of the curriculum each spring.

Those who have been chosen to serve in public office would remember every day that we are the masters, and they are the servants.

Everybody who is fed up with professional sports (i.e. the expense of attending games, the attitudes of the players, owners blackmailing the citizenry for expensive palaces to count their money in) would be encouraged to attend a local high school game of their choosing, if only as a reminder of how the games used to be played back when you could sit up close, be able to afford it, and see players perform with passion, if not precision.Lake Forest Park resident Frank Workman is a regular contributor to The Enterprise Newspapers. Questions and comments may be sent by e-mail to entsports@heraldnet.com, by fax to 425-774-8622 or by mail to Sports editor, The Enterprise, 4303 198th St. SW., Lynnwood, WA 98036.