205 Drop:Top 10 effects of the swine flu pandemic on US sports

Today's link is ripped from last week's headlines and this week's lingering paranoia, especially from your less-savvy Internet-using relatives. It's the usual chucklefest, and will hopefully get those delightful commenters to tell me that (a) poker is not a sport, (b) soccer is popular so there, and (c) CC Sabathia doesn't consume so much pork in a week as to have his name and picture hung up somewhere in a porcine revenge cult's hall of murderers. In other words, the usual crowd of people making the tragic mistake of taking life too seriously.

As for the pandemic itself, as I turn off the Snark Light and punditize for a moment, I have to say that I was amazed at the Mexican authorities reaction to it. Imagine, if you would, baseball, football and basketball games that were played, but closed to the public. I think you'd have the lawyers involved, and heavily, on a million fronts: people suing for the right to go to the game (particularly if they had tickets already), others crying that their right of free (well, far from free, but you get the point) assembly had been violated, to the vending and parking and other temp jobs that would go bye-bye without a crowd to serve. Maybe those house seats from across the street at Wrigley go for five figures then. Etc.

I'm also certain that we'd have untold amounts of Lemur coverage as to how the home team was being made to lose an incredible advantage from the non-home game, and stat geeks and degenerate gamblers working every last kernel of information to see if there was an edge in the de facto change of venue. To wit: would a silent stadium aid or abet free throw shooting? Would the lack of tens of thousands of bodies (and their subsequent, albeit probably infinitesimal, effect on the wind, humidity and temperature) help the pitcher more, or the hitter? Would offensive teams go to a silent count for fear that the clearly held QB would tip off play calling? And so on, and so on, and so on.

Heck, at this point, I'm a little intrigued by the no-crowd game. Bring on the plague!

Oh, and the Mexicans? They just played soccer and moved on; I think they're going back to normal this week. Something to be said for that, of course, but dammit... I thought you people were supposed to be more fun than the gringos, no?