Time for a fun sports rant.

In the wake of "The Decision" and Lebron bringing his much-desired talents to South Beach, there has been a slew of interviews with old athletes along with talk by sports radio blowhards about how rivalries today are not like rivalries in the old days - when players would never consider being friendly with their counterparts on a rival team, let alone joining up with some of their players on a team in the future. In regards to baseball, I recently heard a radio personality complain about how years ago, in the 1970s, the Yankees and Red Sox legitimately hated one another, but today even those fiercest of rivals are now friendly, chatting before and after games, and on the basepaths, and not displaying hate through their every facial tic and expression.

Sure, it's fine for fans to hate players - we're detached. We don't actually know any of these people. We don't hang out with them. And, yes, one of the great things about sports is that you can hate someone for absolutely no good reason, and within this sphere, it's totally okay, and even encouraged.

But players deal with each other every day, on the court (or field, or ice, or whatever) and off, and they actually hang out with each other - they're real people to each other - not just symbols or characters in a narrative. Why should they hate people they know just for your satisfaction as a fan? Should people not be friends with other people who work at rival companies? Because, really, that's what it is. Sure, they play against one another, but they work for two different companies, and they compete, and then afterwards, they're done.

It's absurd. Hang out. Be friends. It's their lives.

Maybe if we didn't have free agency, and the reserve clause, and owners could still keep players forever while paying them pennies, we wouldn't have players switching teams so often, so maybe we should go back to that too.

If I have to hear from some old-time athlete or some curmudgeonly fan again about how things were better in their days, when players on any opposing teams, let alone bitter rivals, bitterly and truly despised each other merely for the act of being on the other team, I'll, I don't know, punch them. Well, I probably won't. But I'll imagine it.