Poker Players Are The New Athlete

Thank god for televised poker. No really, thank him now, because he knows that if it wasn’t for the celebrity poker matches now firmly entrenched in cable sports programming, we’d all be watching pyjama-clad men trying to hit a ball with a stick.

Televised poker is exciting. I love it in the same way I love to hang around the fringes of a party to which I was not invited and eavesdrop on the conversations of the cool people I wasn’t invited to mingle with in the first place; the conversations are horribly shallow, but everybody looks so good. Plus, there’s cards. And money. B-list celebrity money.

Money is exciting, but not when bound in a ballplayer’s paycheque. Mansions and Bentleys are swell, but where are the fans left? On the outside looking in. We deserve a piece of the pie extraneous to any alleged enjoyment gleaned from watching a baseball game.

The solution is as simple as it is obvious.

Watching baseball players play baseball is boring; watching baseball players play poker is not. There’s all the strategy, the tense anticipation and the resultant payoff without any of the silly uniforms and drunken fans to ruin the ambience.

Baseball is slow.

Poker is slow, but it’s a card game — it’s supposed to be slow. Ballplayers would be right at home.

I say abolish MLB and start up a major TV poker league, populated entirely by former ballplayers. They’ve already got the money and they’ll soon have the time. They could even keep their old uniforms to placate any sore feelings on the part of deprived baseball fans.

Baseball is often played on grass, poker on felt; both are green, but only one is hypoallergenic.

The doping scandals would be solved, important things like television rights and corporate sponsorship deals would remain intact — although Nike might have to adjust their product line slightly and Easton would have to come up with a few ideas for aluminum poker accessories.

Cards! Aluminum playing cards! Not fit for the pros, but think of the college game.

Good idea, right? As good as turning the NFL into a televised weekly Auction 45s tournament.

Fox Full-Contact 45s, sponsored by Colt 45.