History is rife with instances where the actions of individual animals had a significant impact on humans. We’ve all heard of how Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern and caused one of the biggest fires in Chicago’s history, and of course there was that pig or whatever it was that cracked the secret code used by sheep.

As I recall, the gallant pig, "Babe" I think his name was, said bah-ram-ewe to the sheep, thereby convincing them to come to Zion with Neo and Morpheus and defeat Seabiscuit, or something like that.

Okay, maybe there aren’t that many examples of individual animals having a big impact on the way we live, but there is one that inadvertently affected the way, believe it or not, sporting events are televised.

It happened in 1975 during game 6 of the World Series. If you’re any kind of sports fan at all, you know that game 6 between Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine and the Boston Red Sox was possibly the best baseball game ever played.

The game was tied, 6-6 in the bottom of the 12th inning. At 12:34 ET, Boston’s Carlton "Pudge" Fisk stepped up to the plate. Pudge blasted the second pitch down the left field line.

Back then, television cameras almost always followed the ball, but for some reason this particular camera stayed on Fisk. Millions of viewers were treated to the sight of Fisk standing at home plate, wildly motioning his hands in an effort to mentally, psychically, magically push the ball fair.

There it goes...a long drive...if it stays fair...home run!

The ball hit the meshing of the foul pole for a game winning, series tying home run.

Fisk went nuts. Boston went nuts. The country went nuts. Grown men everywhere were wiping away tears from their eyes almost as if someone had told them that from that day forth, beer would replace water in drinking fountains.

Why, though, had the camera stayed on Fisk instead of tracking the ball? It turns out it wasn’t deliberate. Just as Fisk hit his homerun, the cameraman stationed behind the giant outfield wall known as the Green Monster noticed a giant rat scurrying towards him. Instead of tracking the ball, the cameraman backed away from the rat and left the camera trained on Fisk.

Maybe the rat had good intentions, but I wish the cameraman had taken a Carlton Fisk signature bat and clubbed his brains out because the legacy of that rat’s effect on sports broadcasting is causing me to smack my forehead so hard and so often that a nice Neanderthal-style cranial ridge is forming. I’m starting to look like George W. Bush’s separated-at-birth twin.

Watch any baseball broadcast today and it’s all about reactions: the player’s reactions, his teammate’s reactions, the player’s parents’ reactions, and the reaction of the fans. The game has almost taken a back seat.

They must reason that if they can capture emotion through the camera lens, then you sitting at home must experience that same emotion vicariously. If Derek Jeter grimaces, you feel his pain. If Manny Ramirez picks his nose, you feel his booger. And of course, feeling is good. Feeling equals ratings.

The producers think this much sought after empathic bond between player and viewer can be facilitated by repeatedly showing extreme close-ups of the players. I was watching a game between the Braves and the Astros last week when the camera zoomed in on Chipper Jones’ profile.

Were it not for the Braves’ cap on his head, I would have thought that I was looking at the crater-pocked surface of some drought-ravaged tuber. I almost puked up my Cheetohs. I should give Chipper a call, though, because I noticed a small polyp deep in his right nostril that might need medical attention.

Of course, the poor little rat from Boston can only be blamed for so much. Game broadcasts have changed in oh-so many ways. I remember when they used to fill dead time between innings by scanning the audience for hot-looking babes. No longer. That sort of thing isn’t right, no sirree; it’s just not proper.

Humbug. Instead, they now show kids eating.

I love my triplets, Giselle, Malibu and Satchmo, but God help anyone who has to watch these kids eat anything. If I had to choose between watching the monkeys at the zoo eat their shit or watch my kids–any kids—-eat a chilidog, I’d have to think about it for a while.

Last but not least, let’s give a giant raspberry to FOX, who’s systematically trying to destroy American culture, one cultural icon at a time. Since baseball needs to play up to the video game obsessed youth, FOX has added sound effects to the game.

During the regular season and the first game of the baseball playoffs, each pitch was accompanied by a dramatic whoosh sound. Hell, when somebody like Roger Clemens is pitching, the rapid-fire whooshes remind me of the high-powered toilets Tim Patterson had installed in the building to handle his high-roughage diet.

And it’s not just the pitches. When the batter swings, we got the same whoosh noise. No doubt FOX will someday further "enhance" the game by having Bill O’Reilly’s face in the corner shouting "Pinhead!" when anybody strikes out.

Just last night, when Houston Astro Morgan Ensberg came up to bat, FOX flashed a graphic below the screen:

                                   FAVORITE GIFT AS A KID: RED BIG WHEEL

Jesus wept, or at least DiMaggio did.

While broadcasts of baseball games have done everything to bring more artificial color into the game, it seems football is going the other way, partly because of the networks and partly because of the NFL itself, which is arguably the biggest pussy in the world.

Consider that players aren’t allowed to do the worm, the Icky Shuffle, or anything else remotely entertaining in the end zone after scoring a touchdown. Nope, contrived emotion is okay, but they sure as hell can’t show genuine emotion. Geez, it might detract from the dignity of the sport.

Listen NFL, football is violence punctuated by committee meetings and all of the activities are done with a welcome backdrop of sex, courtesy of some of the juiciest cupcakes and loamiest loins imaginable bouncing around on the sidelines. You know it, we know it, everybody knows it.

We watch hockey for the fights; we watch stock car racing for the crashes; we watch boxing for the blood; and we watch baseball for...well, nobody knows why we watch baseball but for sure we watch football for the sex and violence. While the XFL sucked, at least they weren’t disingenuous or coy about this sort of thing.

Of course, it’s not all your fault, NFL. The networks are to blame for screwing up your sport, too, just as they’re screwing up baseball. They’ll only show the briefest glimpses of the cheerleaders, lest the association between sex and violence become too stated, too honest.

I was watching Tampa Bay play last week and while I imagined–based on the nanosecond camera shots—-that their cheerleaders were wearing some really hot outfits, I wasn’t sure. The networks wouldn’t shoot below the waist.

Until I went on the Internet and found out otherwise, I figured their cheerleader outfits must have included built-in latex camel toes that could, in an emergency, be pulled out and used as kicking tees.

No such luck. Turns out that their outfits are nice but relatively tame. I guess this Puritanical attitude is a toilet bowl stain left over from the Superbowl fiasco with Janet Jackson.

Of course, the one female they’ll show—ad nauseam—is the compulsory female reporter on the field. In an effort to introduce some safe, not really blatant sex appeal, the networks took to hiring babes to interview players and coaches on the field. How progressive! However, the bimbos they hired didn’t know anything about football. They asked stupid questions, made mistakes, and were embarrassed, confused, and more than a little offended by terms like "ball snapper," "end zone" and "loose ball".

The mistakes were more than male viewers could bear, sexiness notwithstanding. The network scam became too transparent but rather than trash the whole female-reporter-on-the-field concept, they hired less attractive women who were more knowledgeable to fill the role and so there they remain, needless distractions from the game—mere window dressing.

All of this makes me wonder how Game 6 would have been broadcast today. Some female reporter would ask Pudge how hitting that home run felt and Pudge, I swear to God, would give her a thong wedgie.

No doubt FOX (they can’t help themselves) would throw in one of its patented whoosh sounds.