Baseball Woodstock getting panned in media

Yesterday I questioned the wisdom of this baseball farce that will take place Saturday night in Los Angeles involving the Red Sox. I thought I was alone in wondering if this was a good idea but turns out I was only a day early.

Eric Wilbur unloaded today on Boston.com

It's difficult to imagine that the Red Sox could find themselves in a land more foreign than the one they just vacated, but that will be the reality Saturday night when they (or perhaps a minor league lineup wearing Sox uniforms) take on the Dodgers in a Charles Steinberg circus production at the famed Los Angeles Coliseum, a place that hasn't been used for professional baseball in almost a half-century.

There's a reason.

LA Times sports columnist T.J. Simers was even more blunt

The McCourts say they will sell no more than 115,000 tickets in the Coliseum, which coincidentally is just how many they need to sell to set the world record for the largest baseball crowd, the Australian national team setting the mark in the 1956 Olympics.

I don't know how many times my next-door neighbor has told me, "If only the McCourts can break that Australian record."

Who cares how many people fill the Coliseum other than the people who have to line up to go to the bathroom?

On a bright note, maybe it'll be like every other Dodgers game, the Dodgers announcing a crowd of 115,000 and only 25,000 sitting in the stadium.

The Dodgers could have cut ticket sales off at 90,000, everyone having a grand time without falling all over each other, but just how many people can you cram into a dump?

To help pad the attendance, the Coliseum entrance has been moved back from the building. Fans sitting by the Olympic statues outside the Coliseum will now be considered inside for attendance purposes, and will be watching the game on big-screen TVs.

Sports Illustrated's Jon Wesiman also thinks this is nuts.

And with the transcendent lure of bad traffic, bad parking, bad seats and utter meaninglessness as far as the standings go (even though the regular season will have already started for the Dodgers' opponents, the Boston Red Sox, in Japan of all places), more human beings will venture inside the Coliseum peristyle than have ever been to any single baseball game.

"This is more of an event than it is a game," Dodgers broadcaster Charley Steiner said. "It sounds a little grandiose, but it is kind of like a baseball Woodstock. People are coming to be there not necessarily for the outcome of the game. It's a celebration."

Please let nobody get hurt in this fiasco.