Letters

Changing Baseball
Steve Rushin hit a home run with his March 1 POINT AFTER. Few baseball fans would disagree that interleague play and an eight-team playoff would spread the game too thin. Baseball owners are wrong about the economics of the sport if they think that increasing the supply—more teams, more playoffs—would increase the demand. Rather, it would dilute the playoffs, making the teams less important and the World Series anticlimactic. When the drama and continuity of baseball are lost, so are the fans.

Keep the protest alive, Steve!
KEETON GEER
New York City

I disagree with Rushin. Expanding the baseball playoffs would be the best thing the owners could do. Shortening an already too long regular season and replacing those games with ones that count for something would keep more fans interested. The playoffs would allow teams that are playing well late in the season to show how good they really are and would make the end of the season more exciting.
CHRIS LEMMO
Oxford, Ohio

Dr. Naismith
Jack McCallum had a brief item in INSIDE THE NBA (March 8) stating that the league was thinking of expanding to Canada. Why not? Basketball was invented by a Canadian, Dr. James Naismith.
NATHANIEL STROHL
Atlanta

?Indeed, Naismith was born in Almonte, Ont., on Nov. 6,1861, and educated in Montreal at McGill University and Presbyterian Theological College, which he was attending when the picture above was taken, before moving to Springfield, Mass., where he invented the game of basketball in 1891.—ED.