Sports Changes

2020 continues rampaging our house as now I have come down with a cold. Ugh. LL came home yesterday from physical therapy on her foot and she was as white as a ghost (or as pale as Jim Gaffigan). She had to stop on the way home and throw up more than once. No fever, but she had had a headache.
Not sure what the root cause was, but we tried to eliminate things.
Food poisoning was an option.
What did she eat?
She had some hashbrowns from Burger King. Seemed safe enough. Oh and 1/4th of the sandwich she made for Marissa's lunch.
What was on it?
Salami, cheese, mayo.
Uh oh. Let me check the mayo.
It has a "best if used by date" of July 2019. That can't be good.
Call the school and get them to pitch the rest of that sandwich just in case. Make a new sandwich. Run it to school before lunch is over.
Mission accomplished.
LL is feeling better today, but I got worse overnight. And so the year rages on.

As usual, I've been thinking about my dad, especially when I hear of people passing like Robert Conrad. RC starred in a show my dad and I watched in black and white, The Wild, Wild West. It was James Bond meets spaghetti westerns and it was great. Pops and I rarely missed an episode (and this was pre-DVR mind you).

But the topic I wanted to write about was changes in sports that my dad has seen. We always talked about the sports news of the day when we spoke on the phone and often we'd discuss how we'd make a particular sport better. Many of those changes have actually occurred and I'm confident more of our improvements are to come (except quarterbacks wearing tutu's, which was more of an indictment on the lack of hitting and aggressive plan than a literally idea to improve football).

So I thought I'd list out the changes that my dad and I have seen in our lifetime, though I'm certainly missing some from his. These don't really include improvements in sports equipment. It's more about the rules or the way the game is played.

For baseball, he saw the DH introduced in the American League, but neither of us like that rule. We saw limits put on mound visits, automatic walks, screens put up in foul territory, phantom tags of bases and runners being eliminated by play reviews (all things we discussed frequently) and wildcard teams for the playoffs. Even lights at Wrigley qualifies I guess!

In hockey, TV review was a big one along with automatic icing being called, the trapezoid behind the net where goalies can play the puck, two line passes being allowed, and the addition of a second referee, not to mention the overtime shootout.

Football introduced challenges, 2 point extra points, moving back of kicked extra points, playoff expansion, the number of teams and divisions expanding, though we sort of went backwards on defining what a catch actually is. In college football, their overtime is one of the best things in sports and they have also created a four team playoff for the national championship.

In college basketball, they introduced a shot clock and the 3 point line at both levels. I remember many a low scoring game because a team went into the four corner stall. 

Two changes we didn't talk much about were the use of lasers in tennis for line calls and leaving the flag in now when you putt in golf. 

Changes I'm sure my dad would agree are still needed: actually be able to hit QB’s again, college football have to play in a conference tournament to be in playoffs, Super Bowl Sunday needs to be moved to Saturday, four pre-season NFL games reduced to two (starters don't  plays anyway), move the kickoff back to the 30, remove the DH in baseball and move to an electronic strike zone. 

Yeah, my dad (and me quite frankly) have seen a lot of changes, mostly for the better. Now though, I don't get to talk to him about the improvements left to be made or how "they" screwed it up.