Stanley Cup baseball.

For me the National Hockey League (NHL) became pretty much a joke around 1985. Fans were supposed to get all worked up about some outrageous behavior by an opponent and crave retribution by their team. It wasn't much above professional wrestling, except that most people knew that the wrestling fans were being manipulated.

Tonight the Red Sox start a three game series in Yankee Stadium. In the previous series between these teams there was a brawl centering around Red Sox pitcher Joe Kelly deliberately hitting Yankee first baseman Tyler Austin, who charged the mound to fight Kelly. All team members became engaged in the melee and both Kelly and Austin eventually served suspensions during which their teams played shorthanded.

By now you've probably heard mainstream media people speculating about a continuation in this series and ultimate retaliation by the Yankees as the aggrieved party, if not in this series, then later in the season.

What? Are we nuts? Have we accepted criminal conduct as part of our national pastime? This lunatic protocol has existed for more than a century. But instead of saying enough is enough, we mindlessly go along, like a mob.

Maybe the worst part is that we are being played for fools, like NHL fans. At least pro wrestling fans know down deep what they are getting. But hockey and baseball fans continue to delude themselves and to be manipulated. Otherwise rational people have expressed excitement about the most recent violence between Red Sox and Yankee players. They cannot wait to see what will happen in these next three games.

What a disgrace. We should make it clear to the billionaires who own the major league teams that their maintaining conditions for violence as part of their baseball games is no longer acceptable. If there were a commissioner concerned about the good of the game rather than maximizing profits, the traditional nonsense could be stopped quickly and easily. It happened with dangerous slides into second base and home plate. Remember only a couple of years ago all the morons who opposed those changes?