Sox, Yanks To Join Forces?

Did anyone else see this? It seems the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are in the preliminary stages of discussion about joining their cable television networks, YES (N.Y.) and NESN (Boston), into a single regional sports cable network superpower. Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea all over the place.

The most obvious reason I oppose this premise is that the last thing the Yankees and Red Sox need is more money. Do the Yanks and Sox really need to financially separate themselves further from the rest of baseball? I've never been one to rally behind the small market team debate, but moves like this one do give me reason to believe the big boys are getting just too big. Worse yet, there is talk that the Mets may join in. The Mets need money, too?

My second fear is the old pay-per-view concept. I could see the new network charging cable providers ridiculous high rates and, eventually, forcing fans into pay-per-view games. I cannot imagine paying extra to see a Yankees/Red Sox series on tv, but I can imagine them wanting me to.

There is also an even seedier side to this proposal. A merger of such rivals smacks of something worse than collusion. (Although, it would be collusion by New York and Boston against the rest of the game.) Such a deal leaves the door far too open for fixing games. Wouldn't ratings go up if the series between the game's biggest rivals were close? Wouldn't ad rates for those series go up significantly if the teams were close in the standings? Couldn't they charge even higher pay-per-view fees if the Yanks and Sox were, let's presume, only a game apart in September?

With all that potential shared revenue available, the possibility of something dirty occurring increases. Why wouldn't the ownership of both teams "encourage" the pennant race to be even tighter? I know what you are thinking. Brian, they aren't going to do that. Too much is at stake. Too many people would find out.

At the time, lots of people couldn't believe the White Sox threw the 1919 World Series. Today, far more people are in denial over Pete Rose's gambling problems. Even a larger number simply refuse to contemplate the indiscretion that Rose may have committed along the way. Why? It is just too inconceivable. The Black Sox and Rose lost their credibility for far less money than a Yankees/Red Sox cable television merger would create. Is throwing games today still that unimaginable?