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Retro baseball isn't going to happen, TV revenues being the non-OPEC fuel that powers today's sports, but how wise an investment it would be to modestly retrack to bygone habits by playing weekend World Series games in the daytime.
Red Sox-Cardinals delivered a captivating Red October, but how many Little Leaguers hung past midnight until bullpen closers and/or walkoff sluggers could finish the deal?
It's not just tykes but working people, many with mandatory habits of rising at 6 or 6:30 on job days. Altering weekend body clocks to remain hardball-alert well into the Leno/ Letterman time zone can be a drowsy near-impossibility.
What if major league bean counters were to relinquish a ministack of television prime time green, getting a deal from Fox or whatever network to have Saturday and Sunday first pitches no later than 4 in the East?
That could urge a minigeneration of kids, and other ages, too, to fully experience four opportunities of a possible seven-act play. Millions more would stay upright to absorb pulsating dramas that tend to surface in seventh, eighth, ninth and innings beyond.
MLB won't do it, of course. Makes too much sense. Baseball is too ravenous for every dollar it can squeeze. So far, the NFL, an organization operated with similar greed but more intelligence, has stonewalled against 9 p.m. Super Bowl kickoffs that would reap more income but also put millions to sleep before the verdict.
Wise up, hardballers.
PINE-ELLAS: He was a hot St. Petersburg item during my early years at the Times, a Gibbs High and Florida A&M football hero who elevated to two Super Bowl championships and two Pro Bowl appearances in the 1970s secondary of the dominating Pittsburgh Steelers.
Glen Edwards played 11 NFL seasons, seven for coach Chuck Noll's unmatched Steel Curtain dynasty and four more in San Diego. They called him "Pine," because running into the 190-pound free safety was akin to smashing into a tree.
Now 57, Edwards since has endured bittersweet times, including financial pains, IRS battles and a marriage that shattered after 21 years.
Life is better now. He's still a Pinellas guy and long since reunited with the former Shirley Hutchinson, who became Glen's girlfriend back at Gibbs when it was an all-black school.
There is a captivating Edwards chapter in a revealing new hardback, Lambert, written by Pittsburgh journalist Jim O' Brien, centering around Hall of Fame linebacker Jack Lambert, one of the notably vicious Curtain hitters involved with winning four Super Bowls in six seasons along with Joe Greene, Jack Ham, Mel Blount, Andy Russell and L.C. Greenwood.
It's worth most any Florida football historian's effort, especially fans of those Steelers, to ease through 496 pages that significantly deal with the aforementioned as well as Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, Franco Harris, Rocky Bleier and an extraordinary old-style team owner, Art "Chief" Rooney, who was still around for the greatness that followed 40 years of NFL mediocrity.
QUICK KICKS: UCF fans must be wondering if George O'Leary has again falsified his resume, claiming to be a "football coach." ... Two years ago, I wrote about our state's massive flow of high school talent that creates a Florida foundation on most every NFL roster, but I decried the mystifying fact that we'd never produced a homester quarterback with Pro Hall of Fame propensities; but I should now amend that, doing some sunshine crowing over Daunte Culpepper, the Vikings power bloke from Ocala and UCF. ... Boston's speedy Ape Man has done terrific things this baseball season, but think what Johnny Damon could further achieve with 30 clean-cutting minutes in a barber's chair. ... Speaking of MLB players: Seems to me they generally come off in Fox taped interviews as being easier for the American public to embrace than the constant splattering of NFL and NBA ego nuts we are served.
ZOOK SUCCESSOR: Should football-zany Gators be concerned that the two-man jury to select the coach who follows Ron Zook is composed of UF president Bernie Machen, a non-Floridian and nonjock, along with athletic director Jeremy Foley, who must be stinging from his failed long-shot stab with Zooker and could be prone to acquiesce to even some questionable leanings of his boss in the big academic chair?
Hubert Mizell can be contacted at mizell3@cox.net