Saturday afternoon, I had an epiphany.

Remember that movie Rookie of the Year? The one where a kid jacks up his arm in such a way that he pitches greased lightning? But then, when they sign him to the big leagues, he's far too erratic and untested to be a threat?

That kid, if I may mix my sports metaphors, is Anthony Morelli. He's got a rocket, sure, but his crosshairs haven't quite grown in yet.

I don't mean to criticize; it's a half-formed idea, really, and if Saturday's game proved anything, it's that Morelli's learning what works, even if doing what works means Tony Hunt plays the entire game himself.

But as with all my half-formed ideas I'm considering squeezing a column out of, I decided to gather some evidence.

It might've worked had YouTube, that foul temptress, not once again sucked me into its web. But after happening on both an oddly-framed clip of Rookie of the Year's infamous "funky butt loving" scene and Morelli's misleadingly glorious inaugural pass from the Akron game, my focus had shifted from theorizing to finding those "Messin' with Sasquatch" beef jerky commercials.

Were they there? Of course.
Everything is. That's why YouTube is the single greatest Web site in the history of the Internet.

With a little imagination and the right search terms, YouTube will spit out Ring Pop commercials, that Ghostface Killah video where Speed Racer raps, and several thousand clips of people playing Guitar Hero. It manages to be both a fantastic historical record for a culture with a violently scattered collective memory and the most perfect waster of time since those "Which 'Sister Sister' sister are you?" quizzes.

Since its inception, the site has provided a service no other Web site has: unfettered access to an unendingly vast library of all imaginable interest and obsession, a field recording of every moiré of our age. If you can remember it, it's probably on YouTube. When Al Gore invented the Internet, I reckon YouTube is the kind of thing he envisioned: a smorgasbord of information, available to anybody savvy enough to type "table salt" or "Dippin' Dots" into the search bar. Since intellectual property laws have meant a vast reduction in genuinely useful public domain resources, YouTube's both a technological marvel and a singular anomaly.

Starting soon, though, YouTube could be in for the fight of its life. Everyone knows that plenty of the free-to-view content on the site is of questionable legal status, though for a while, nobody seemed to mind much. It does neither Ice Cube nor St. Ides Malt Liquor any harm if YouTube hosts the ad in which Cube tells America of that particular beer's ability to "put hair on your chest" and "get your girl in the mood quicker" to boot. Lawsuits have been periodically threatened, but the good people at YouTube have been shrewd enough to pull content immediately whenever its proprietary rights become an issue, and the site has thusly outlived and outpaced all expectations.

So, late last week, when it was revealed that the monstrous Google was in talks to purchase YouTube, culture warriors the world over heaved a collective dismayed sigh. Sleek and essential as Google is, it's also the very definition of 21st century American corporate technology, the antithesis of the YouTube aesthetic. There's no indication that YouTube will cave to the boatloads of money the Googlers are doubtlessly offering, or that even if they did, there'd be any drastic changes to the site.

But the true beauty of YouTube -- the ability for anyone to access virtually anything at any time, for free -- seems unlikely to withstand a storm of dollars and all the trappings that come with big-name sponsorship, and regardless of the outcome of the Google deal, the question of YouTube's demise isn't a matter of if, but when. Considering all the garbage on the Internet, it's a shame that something as revolutionary, simple, and universally likeable as YouTube would seem to be first on the chopping block.

So maybe I should write my Rookie of the Year column while I still can. There's always next week, I guess.

I'll get right on it, right after I finish watching all these Boyz II Men videos, that is.