Colorado at Boston-- 8:00 EST

"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again."

Sometimes I worry about baseball. I know that's a funny thing to say. I don't worry about the people making millions off the sport, or steroid use, or many of the other troublesome things surrounding the sport.

I worry about the children.

Namely the children on the east coast, home to the most famous and successful teams. I worry that a 6 year old Red Sox fan can't watch his heroes in the World Series tonight because the game starts too late. Or worse, that he has to go to bed in the 7th inning of a tie game and misses a 14 inning nailbiter that ends when his favorite player hits a home run. Those are the kind of games that can turn a casual baseball fan into a lifelong baseball fanatic.

Baseball is sacrificing a generation of baseball fans for ratings. Starting a World Series game at 8 eastern makes sense for a tv network. You get prime time on the east coast and catch people coming home from work in the west. But it doesn't make sense for a sport desperately trying to gain more fans. I'm not saying this is going to be the death of baseball, but I can see it becoming more of a niche sport.

So what's the answer? Saturday and Sunday. Move the weekend games to 5 or 6 eastern so everyone can watch. Kids at school will talk about the games on Monday. They'll wear hats and jerseys to class. And people will still watch at the earlier time because it's the fucking world series.

Don't believe me? I became a diehard baseball fan in 1992. I'd always liked the sport, but never really had a favorite team. That changed during the 1992 NLCS. See I irrationally liked the Atlanta Braves and hated the Pittsburgh Pirates. And during the series the Braves jumped out to a 3-1 lead but the Pirates came back to tie the series with two straight wins. So for the second year in a row the two teams would play in a game 7 to decide who got to go to the World Series. The Pirates led 2-0 in the bottom of the ninth when the Braves mounted a comeback, scoring on a double, an error and a sacrifice fly. But Brian Hunter popped out to short, making the second out. It was up to Francisco Cabrera, the last guy on the bench, some dude I've never heard of. Of course he singles to left, scoring Dave Justice from third and Sid Bream from second. I jumped up and down and shouted and scared my mother who thought I'd cut a finger off or something.

I was a baseball fan.

The time that game 7 started-- 8:30 PM. Is it plausible that another 13 year old in Michigan who kinda liked the Braves watched the first 6 innings before his well meaning mother put him to bed? Is it possible that that kid never really became a baseball fan because he missed that game? I think so. Tonight that 28 year old is probably going to watch CSI: Cleveland instead of the World Series. That makes me sad.