"Who cares about gas, there's a game on!"

I'm getting settled down in front of the television, ready to watch what might be my last baseball playoffs in some time.

Over the last five months, things in Atlanta have been very strange. If my dad were still alive, he'd be aghast at the $6.50 gas prices, railing against how they always stick it to the working man. Mom's trapped in Kentucky, but the church and her extended family have rallied around her. I apologized for not being able to see her more often. "I grew up poor," she said, "and I'll die poor. Same difference."

Can't see Mom, not with the precarious financial situation of our family. I'm a vehicle service actuary. Right now, business at The Company has been a bit odd. Lots of people have been let go -- particularly, in the claims department. People can't afford the copay in getting their broken cars repared. That leaves more money in the reserves -- auto insurers are making a brief windfall over the crisis. However, fewer contracts have been sold, because fewer cars are being sold, so we're going to take a hit in the ol' Kinshasa a few months from now. For now, my job is secure as an actuary, because no one else brings the skills to the company I do. In a few months, actuaries might be a dime a dozen as the insurance business is taking a tumble and people are going out of work. Although, I could be let go tomorrow. "Last one hired, first one fired, and so on."

I now work full-time at home. "Telecommuting". All the work I did at work was in front of a computer; and what I can do at home, I do at home. Every now and then I go to the office to run their computer, but if I have to tinker with Excel, I can do that at home just as well. It saves gas. Right now, any job that doesn't absolutely have to be done at the office isn't being done there. It's a big paradigm shift.

My wife, however, is making out swimmingly. She sells telecommunications equipment for TPC, or the "Death Star", and offices are scrambling to get that work-at-home thing up and running. Commissions are touch and go. "Some companies will go under," she says, "and the ones that have the money are drastically trying to retool for telecommuting, teleconferencing, and the like." So far, she's done well -- we've crossed our fingers.

Right now, we're lucky. We're near gas stations, and the grocery store isn't that far away.
Frankly, I don't like to talk about how I'm doing. As a sufferer of depression, I avoid watching the news. It seems that the world is split between the bitter enders who still claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that improvement is just around the corner and we'll have fifty scent gas every day -- and the gloating hippies who tell us that the crisis won't be solved until we're making our own hemp and singing "Kumbaya". I despise both groups.

I turn to sports. The world turns to sports, baby. It always has and it always will. The world can go to hell; I just want to know when the Braves are playing.

And sure enough, the Atlanta Braves are holding up with the best of them. It has been a crazy baseball season. With oil hitting $6.50 a gallon, many teams brought out that old standby, the bus.

Imagine those overpaid players taking a bus ride from Atlanta to Houston to play the Astros. Such griping has never been seen. You'd think these princes of the diamond had been asked to mine their own coal. A few millionaires paid big money for their own flights; it's the sign that you're a sports superstar when you don't have to take the team bus.

Atlanta's a Delta hub, but these days, unless you're going far, the airlines aren't going to take you there. So team plane trips are saved for trips to the West Coast or New England.

Baseball has really taken a hard hit in attendance. Attendance has fallen across the board; with the teetering economy attending a baseball game is a luxury. Baseball plays 162 games a year, with playoffs and multiple road trips. That's a lot of gas, both used by the teams to get where they're going, and for the people (like me) who come to see them -- or in this case, came to see them. I had to forego my trips to Turner Field this year.

Furthermore, baseball is facing an incredible amount of criticism for wasting all that fuel and electricity. The Commissioner's office wants to offer more day games; the TV networks want to hold them to their contracts, and everyone is disgusted. Baseball never could get its act together; in a crisis it's turning out to be near impossible.

The owners have a few solutions. They're talking about shortening the season next year to 140 games. More day games. Maybe a realignment of the divisons to allow less travel. Possibly fewer playoff games. It isn't helping. People are railing about those selfish baseball players. However, baseball fans have circled the wagons. Baseball will not be sacrificed.

No, baseball will sacrifice itself. The owners want to shorten the season, which makes the players happy. However, Minnesota and Florida barely crawled to the finish line financially. They're in a bad way with the economy. The owners want to contract those teams.

And shrink the size of the rosters to save money. And institute a salary cap. Which the Player's Union will never accept.

Undoubtedly, the players will go on strike. Which would be akin to shooting one's self in the face to prove a point. People are frigging dying in this country, there are camps opening up, everyone's worried sick, and you think anyone's going to give two damns about a bunch of selfish, spoiled players going on strike. If they think they're hurting now, what about after a strike, when a lot of teams just go under? Then they'll have no jobs to come back to!

Heck, the NHL opened with three teams folding before the puck dropped: Phoenix, Carolina, and Philadelphia. The Flyers are no more! Well...some parts of Philadelphia aren't doing too good, and since the owners couldn't find a buyer for a gas intensive, cooling intensive sport, the Broad Street Bullies went not with a bang, but with a whimper. The other 27 remaining teams soldier on, but the joke is they'll drop like flies over the winter. If the NHL survives the winter, I'll be surprised.

The basketball fans are looking askance at the beginning of the NBA season. Dallas's American Airlines Center (how apropos) got hit by the riots in Dallas. Dallas might not open in its own arena, the owner's sold the team at an amazing loss, and the NBA franchises will probably start folding.

Football looks good. It says it looks good. There have been rumblings about the health of the Cardinals, so we'll see.

I just watched the Braves go down 6-5 in the 9th to the Giants and Barroids. The series is tied 2-2. The Twins, Angels and Mets have all advanced. Boy, an Angels/Mets series will get a lot of criticism, all that gas being wasted over chasing a small white ball.

Oddly enough, NASCAR was ready. They've hit the world by claiming that the 40 cars racing spend less gas that a baseball team uses to travel (which is true, but what about those cars that drive to watch the games), they've cut some races down to 400 miles from 500 and from 250 miles to 200. However, with the automakers taking hits, team sponsorship is really hurting.
Three races folded. Several racing teams folded. NASCAR will be a lot leaner by necessity next year -- although there has been some talk in Congress about padlocking motor sports, and that has the Red Staters furious with rage. My prediction -- nothing will be done.

I might not see another ball game in some time. I only have one wish before the world goes dark. Let my Braves beat the hated Giants and Barroids, and let us have one more sweet, sweet championship before the end.