"Hot" hot stove helps Major League Baseball

Coming on the heels of two of the best league championship series ever, and the somewhat surprising World Series championship of the Florida Marlins, baseball is finally beginning to experience the renaissance that began with the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run race in 1998.

The most telling sign of the coming resurrection of the original American pastime?

We heard absolutely nothing from Bud Selig during the postseason.

Are things perfect with the sport? Of course not. Not while the Red Sox and the Yankees continue to fight to see who can be the first team to collect a $200 million payroll. Not while the Montreal/San Juan Expos continue to be Major League Baseball's answer to the Washington Generals (since they do not win enough to be the Globetrotters.) Not while the other 27 teams jockey for some semblance of respectability in the volatile market. However, the game is still not without its charms.

I am a 25-years old, African-American male. By all accounts, I should be ignoring baseball. I can't. I am still drawn to the game. Maybe it is the mythology, or the leisurely pace, or the smell of hot dogs, freshly cut grass, and a sip of a watered-down beer that keeps drawing me back.

This is part of who I am.

And while the hot stove league conversation surrounding Alex Rodriguez's potential trade to the Red Sox was somewhat droll by the end, there was an important fact about it that I believe many in the sports media overlooked. The important fact was, ultimately, not whether or not A-Rod was traded. It was the fact that it was considered important news in the first place.

People were not having long debates about whether or not the Rangers and Red Sox should have made the deal. People were talking about the mere speculation that these two teams were considering such a deal. Especially since these debates were taking place during the National Football League season.

The buzz surrounding player movement this off-season signals to me that baseball has begun to come back. Does it need some work? Of course it does; every sport needs a little tweaking to fix it (even the NFL.) And while baseball may never be number one again, it can hold steady at number two. The ball is moving in the right direction. The owners and the players just need to make sure that they don't drop the ball the next time. Because there is a chance that the next screw-up may be the last.