Joe Posnanski has another great piece, this mostly about the use of instant replay.
This excerpt was actually an aside, but I liked it. I offer it here for those who don’t want to click the link and see what Joe has to say, but if you follow baseball or football you really should.
Anyway: I have a pretty high tolerance for showboat moves in the NFL. It’s like my friend Michael MacCambridge says — these guys take extreme punishment, they wreck their bodies for money and glory and our entertainment, they really are something close to modern gladiators, as cliche as that has become. And so if they want to celebrate themselves by making exaggerated first down gestures or by flexing when they make a great defensive play or by sounding their barbaric yawps over the rooftops of the world when they score touchdowns, hey, I’m not saying I LOVE it. I’m not saying I don’t reserve special admiration for the Barry Sanders’ move of flipping the touchdown ball to the official. But I’m not bothered by it. Football is a game played best with emotion, with joy, with ferocity, and I can understand and even appreciate the excess.