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The World Series Weight Loss Clinic

By David Feela

Let us suppose that professional sports represent the epitome of good health and physical fitness in its players. If you watch baseball, you'd be wrong. Some of these guys are not in the best shape, and they also have habits that can turn a spectator's stomach. In the dugout and in the locker room there may be other habits to not talk about, and we're lucky they don't often allow television cameras in there either.

Somehow the advent of widescreen, digital television was suppose to usher in an era of unparalleled spectator enthusiasm. As Queen Victoria might have said had she been born a baseball fan, I am not enthused. Actually, the only baseball I watch tends to occur during the summer when I'm stuck on the couch with my relatives in Minnesota. They watch a ton of baseball, and at least a couple more tons of other sports each spring, fall, and winter. They all own big televisions.

If you've stayed with me this far, no doubt you're beginning to suspect I have nothing good to say about baseball, our good old American pastime. Ken Burns did a film - 10 discs and 1,140 minutes - and he never mentioned the subject I want to discuss. You see, this summer I understood why watching baseball may be beneficial, even healthy. I found I can lose about about a pound of weight in nine innings, and up to three pounds during a double-header. All I have to do is turn on the television and focus on all these professionals on a 36 inch high definition plasma screen spit. It kills my appetite.

Yes, I said spit, though I could have said hocking a loogie. That guttural whoosh that resonates deep in the chest and ends with a plug of part snot and part saliva forcibly ejected from one's mouth. To cough up a phlegm wad. Sputum, spittle, snot ball, slobber, drool. You know, spit. That disgusting little habit that makes men men.

If America wasn't so stuck with rotating its seasonal sports, baseball's major leagues could operate a successful weight loss clinic in its off season, bringing in millions of additional revenue dollars. All the producers would have to do is zoom the cameras in on the spit, not the ball. They could call this new season Spitball. There might even be a slogan, something like "Drop pounds of weight while you expectorate." You see, the body is mostly comprised of water and spitting as repeatedly as professional baseball players spit must account for their attempt at staying fit. I don't know how else to explain it. As for the rest of us, we might try to keep up with the pros by spitting into a bucket (once fashionably known as a spittoon), or if that's too disgusting we could always induce a little nausea by intently watching to see if the spit hits the fans.

Whoever wins the World Series will be irrelevant. Well, maybe not entirely irrelevant, but at one time I was cheering for the Rockies. Now, if I drop a few pounds watching the Series I can consider myself a loser and feel good about it.