As if you need another reason to not watch the Olympics...

The Summer Olympics are boring. They always are, with three exceptions USA basketball, water polo and baseball. Well you can strike one of those out after this year. Baseball is done, I'm sure most of you don't know this, but baseball and softball are being cut from the Olympics after this year's games. Don't worry, archery and horse jumping are safe.

For baseball fans this may not be a bad thing, the IOC has come up with some half-cocked rules for extra-innings in order to speed up the games. Everything will be normal for 10 innings and then things get weird, at the start of the 11th the manager will get to start his lineup wherever he wants AND place two guys on base also. That means if I am a manager I stick my 1 & 2 batters on 2nd and 1st and start with my number 3 hitter followed by the heart of my order.

Sounds like fun right?

Wrong! It is ridiculous. I am no baseball purist, I like the DH, I like different rules for the AL and NL, I want the All Star Game to count and I want instant replay on home runs, but this is going to make the game a joke. The head of USA baseball is a "traditionalist" but he thinks time is a factor,

"The traditionalist in me says, 'no way,' " Seiler said. "But you know, in the Olympics, where you have [a] finite amount of time to get your program finished [and] the early game goes 15, 16, 17 innings, then what does that do? Television is affected, transportation is affected — a lot of logistical things that we don’t have to worry about on a Friday night in Durham. It’s a domino" effect.

Yeah because the 10, 11 & 15 innings are boring. Let's not work on the 3 and a half hours of crotch grabbing, helmet adjusting and needless walks to the pitchers mound, it takes to get there, let's remove the potential for extra inning drama. Because, a great game like this year's 15 inning All Star Game definitely would not show the world that baseball is a great game