The neverending season(s)

So here we are in mid-June, and if you're a sports fan that means - what? It's baseball season, right?

Well, yes and no.

True, baseball has been under way for just more than two months. Best of all, our vaunted Milwaukee Brewers are in first place in the National League Central Division (let's hope I can still write that in three months).

But, hard as it is to believe, it's still basketball season. The NBA Finals might not finish for nearly another week, which might come as a surprise to those who always thought of basketball as a winter sport.

Even hockey - yes, a sport played on an ice sheet even as temperatures hit the 90s in some places - just finished last night! What's worse, it starts again in four months!

It's obvious that some professional sports leagues never learned the meaning of "enough is enough." The seasons have gotten so long, the playoffs so diluted and stretched out, that only the most hardcore fans (and those whose teams are still contending) care at the end.

This isn't hard to figure out. Professional sports are a business above all, as cold as that sounds to some followers who live and die with their teams. It explains the contract holdouts, the complaints about playing time (playing time equals stats, which equals bigger contracts), the personal seat license fees at new stadiums, and the $7 beers at said stadiums (and older ones, as well). The more games played, the more TV coverage that gets paid for, the more revenue comes in.

But does the NBA really need an 82-game regular season to separate the contenders from the pretenders? Even then, only half the teams are eliminated from the playoffs!

Counting playoffs, the NBA season lasts a mind-boggling 8-1/2 months. It slops over into baseball and the warm summer, when the last thing that any sane person wants to do is sit inside and watch the finals of a league that started playing in November!

Sure, we could sit and discuss the merits (or demerits) of the NBA game, which many view as a bastardization of James Naismith's original idea. Anyone familiar with the rule of "continuance" in the NBA might find it hard to argue with that. Most NBA games are relegated to cable TV channels. Meanwhile, the bonkers network TV ratings generated by the annual NCAA tournament are evidence that many basketball fans vote with their remotes.

Let's get back to season lengths - baseball isn't much better, frankly. Its season lasts seven months. What baseball does correctly, however, is to only allow four teams from each of its two leagues into the playoffs. This creates much greater importance for the regular season (162 contests!) and exciting races at the end of that marathon.

If there's one sport that probably has it right, it's football. The NFL season lasts just over five months and only 16 regular-season games. Its finale, the Super Bowl, is a marketing and entertainment spectacular that Hollywood can only dream of. This might explain why the NFL is the pro sports juggernaut, the one league that consistently garners huge TV ratings and some perpetually sold-out stadiums.

What's the point of all this? Probably to blow off some steam, and express my ire at the arrogance of some sports executives - NBA's David Stern, are you listening? - who somehow believe that I should still care about their product long after its annual shelf life has expired.

I don't care, and I suspect there are many, many others who feel the same. Hockey in June - who are we kidding? Summer is here - let's get outside and enjoy it! In fact, let's go to the ballpark - the baseball park!

That said, I confess that I'll be mailing my ticket package order next week for the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks. I've been a lifelong fan and truly enjoy attending the games. But there's no hurry - the start of that season always means the onset of cold weather.

So, I'll be happy to wait - even if David Stern doesn't like it one bit.