I always like to play devil's advocate with things like this. It provides for fun debate! For example, one might discuss the overall question of who is the real thief, the person who downloads a song, or the recording company who takes all of the money that would have been for the artist (a paltry sum, anyway, usually) and keeps it to recoup the money they spent patting said artist on the back for selling a million records (i.e “Congrats! Here's a new car!!! — that'll add another 3 years to your recouping costs before you see a dime of your own…”). Or perhaps the favourite: Why do you still charge an artist (and the consumer) breakage fees on royalties for digital songs — or even CDs, which rarely break, when the fee was set up for vinyl? Blah blah blah. Etc, etc. Yes, people shouldn't take advantage of the internet to acquire things for free that should be paid for, but until the industries that control these media realise that they need to change their model to match their changing situation (like all businesses, and all people) instead of railing against the universe to maintain their status quo, the system will remain broken and piracy will rise. That is just a simple fact. They are the cause of their own pain and the losses they suffer is because they cannot take their respective foots out of their respective asses long enough to see what is plainly in front of them. I say, if you don't know how to play in your current market, find someone who does and hire them, or go do something else.

All of this being a roundabout and hopefully stimulating way of saying that, Evan, I wholeheartedly agree with you. As a person with half a brain, and as a professional marketing-type, I would say the MLB should really take the time to put something more mellow in their pipe and should stop smoking the hard stuff…

It's bad for you.