Baseball Is Teh L0se
MMZ_Torak
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 3770Members
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 3770Members
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::points below for flames about leet speak::
Baseball would be far better if the baserunner could carry the bat!
For example, American football. The offensive and defensive lines on a football team basically get paid a million dollars to take 3 steps forward. That's it. The whole position. 1-2-3-push the guy in front of you-stop. Utterly boring beyond belief. In fact, football would be much more interesting if there was only a quarterback, a wide receiver, an offensive lineman, and a safety. Then you would have nothing but action, and not 3 hours of people (for the most part) moving the ball 5 feet forward, then kicking it back to the other team on a 4th down conversion, which is about 95% of a footbal game.
How about another example? Basketball. A sport where (if you look at Yeo Ming or Shaquille O'Neal) your only prerequisite to play is to be born tall. If you are tall enough, you are good at it, and no matter how good shorter players are for the most part, your tallness will win the game. Then there's the incredible boredom that is NBA play. Inbound, run run run, travel by at least 2 extra steps as well as usually double-dribble, dunk. Repeat endlessly, with the most occasional enlivening 3 pointer that is almost amazing in its rarity. Let's not even go over the fact that players that make 25-30 million dollars a year like Shaq cannot perform the fundamental act of basketball, from which all else is drawn, the freethrow.
Now baseball. Unlike most sports, you have a fundamental offensive AND defensive roll. You play as part of a team half the game, but also are by the rules expected to make several solo appearances. Also, players can work very very hard and get into the big leagues, and not necessarily be born with certain abilities like being 6'10" or 300 pounds. It's more pluralistic, more American in its character by that virtue. There is always something happening (you may not recognize it if you don't go to the ballpark, because the TV camera stays focused only on the batter and pitcher, but there is a lot). And finally, hitting a round ball with a round bat in only 3 chances where the ball goes 95 miles an hour (that's a 153KM, non-Americans) and curves in the air is the hardest thing to do it sports, bar none. Hence why a hitter is considered phenomenally good if he somehow manages to do it 33% of the time over the course of a season - in fact, the greatest ball player of all time only managed to do it 40% of the time during a season, Ted Williams. I will be happy to go on and on and on, as I have been honing this argument on my almost-wife now for years (which, unfortunately, puts you all in the same category as most women - ouch).
A good analogy for baseball is NS - action, with strategy, teamwork, individual achievement, and finess. Something is always happening if you keep your eyes open and understand it all. And for the same reason that some DMer might not like NS, you might not like baseball: just can't get your brains around all the complexities.
Retort?
It can be boring to watch at sometimes but sometimes it is hard to force yourself from watching it because you want to see just one more pitch. But hey, if you don't like it, fine with me. Some people like golf, that's beyond me, but if they like it, so what. Sometimes I think arguing over sports is pointless because you aren't going to convince them not to like it, or vice versa.
So baseball is teh winz0r!!!
UGL|Jon #32 LF
My NaliCity friends once jokingly called american football "sissy rugby" (because players overuse protections... lol) and started joke threads about it. Theses had a big response... anyway , good old european football (soccer) is way better , even if I'm not fond of it. It's not just about running fast and aiming well , it's a strategy team game with physical elements. Just imagine playing NS in real life... tiring your opponents and breaking their morale would have much more impact on their way of playing the game. Scoring goals can be compared to taking a hive in NS <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
While perhaps more action packed than football, and less importance given to a berserk pituitary than basketball, hockey is still forced to be relegated to the wayside. Let's face it. The entire game is pretty much basketball on ice, but where the hoop has a fat frenchman sitting on it. Skate-skate-skate-shoot-blocked shot. Repeat. Really, if you watch 10 minutes of a hockey game, you could never watch it again and get the same effects. A tiny rink full of Russians and Canadians, basically all just chasing the puck around for hours and having no endresult. FFS, most games are a 1-0 win! It's the same sort of disinteresting back and forth that you know instinctly is some magical gameplay, but all it looks like is guys chasing a black disk around for hours and accomplishing nothing. No pitching duels, no home run hitters being challenged by a wicked splitfinger. No close calls at the plate. You can boil hockey down to: Hit puck into net. An uncomplicated game not serious enough to warrant serious attention. And the whole need for ice, special equipment, complex stadiums - it's a sport for the wealthy and the unfortunate icy, not for the world masses.
Plus, it has people that shove sticks into a black guy's face in the 21st century - it's like some Klan holdout against the 1800's. F that.
Naturally this is matter of opinion <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Edit: I don't see hockey like MonSe describes. Imho it's very tactical game where moral and personal strength are rewarded too. I would really like to write more but my english skills are not good enough for longer debates(I have noticed) <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I hate to say this but American sports just don't do it for me, I don't know if thats a cultural thing, but they seem (as I'm sure has been reported ad nauseum) to be derivations of sports that are played in more pure forms in Europe: baseball/rounders; american football/rugby; basketball/netball. Adding smaltz, incomprehensible extra rules and an organist don't make them any easier to watch.
I remember when the US hosted the soccer (hehehe) world cup. One complaint is that is was too long between scoring. I think this is one of the main problems. In other sports, anticipation makes up a good portion of the pleasure. When you have scoring every 10 seconds, it loses an uniqueness, and becomes part of the routine. If you're expecting a point a minute, how an you get exciteda bout each one and by extension the final score?
Also, soccer in the US is often considered a 'girls' sport, which lessens its appeal to many people, the same way the female leagues of traditionally men's sports are often mostly ignored.
And to say that a sport is a derivation of a 'pure' european version is to be at best, elitist and gross. Sports evolve like everything else. To say that rounders or cricket is superior to baseball simply because they came first is to dismiss almost all sports, since europe had an extra 2000 years of civilization to develop them before America. It's a silly argument. Is Australian Rules Football to be dismissed? It has a pedigree far longer and more refined than Rugby, yet is much more the basis of US football rules than rugby, for example. Is cricket impure becuase of its complex rules and teams that are far more intricate than baseball?
I don't understand the organist portion of your argument. It's just music. Should I ask why it's important for all the fans of Manchester United to riot and overturn cars in some french stadium parking lot in order to help their teams?
Apologies for the "pure", I meant that it had a longer heritage, not that the offspring were any less valid. That you'd taken an old concept and adapted it, no slur intended, honest. By adapting them, you have run the risk (and fallen foul) of alienating the majority of people that play the older version. Not only that, but the adaptations you have made seem (to outsiders) to make the game less interesting.
Its interesting that football is seen as a girls sport, because its precisely those accusations that are levelled at the majority of "American" sports, they are too childish or effeminate. Rounders is a game played by um...kindergarteners? (hope thats right) netball almost exclusively female, and American footie just rugby with big padding so you don't get hurt...
Oh, and Aussie rules is perceived (over in merrie england) as a game for psychopaths, but I'm not sure it has a longer pedigree than rugby, whichever version we're talking about.
I'll stand by what I said about the organist though. I still can't see a reason for it, it detacts from the gameplay, and is just, well, silly. Almost as silly as your point about crowd violence.
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I'll try to illustrate my situation. I live only an hour or so away from the stadium used by the state baseball team. We've had fairly little success in baseball; admittedly I don't follow any sport in particular, period, but it's common knowledge in the area that turnouts for our games tend to be pretty weak because our team is so...<i>average</i>. Except for one year, no World Series games, no nothing. The stadium itself is made in such a way that sunny days can bring excruciating heat to the spectators. The 10 or so games I've gone to haven't brought me particularly memorable experiences, mainly because the majority of them were when I was too young to have the attention span for all 9 innings.
Add to this the fact that I was never (and still am not) as good at throwing or hitting a baseball as I am at jumping or kicking stuff, and I suppose you could say I've almost grown prejudiced towards the sport. The reason I think "prejudiced" is such an appropriate word is because, this...descrimination towards the sport is probably more than unjustified. All the same I seem to stubbornly stick to my opinions despite knowing I could be entirely wrong about baseball -- it's just that since I've never been to a game in another stadium, with friends and cheering and so on, I've never been exposed to how the sport could/should be.
Compare this with something I've had good experiences: american football and soccer. In elementary and middle school, I was a pretty chubby guy. Not anywhere near as obese as these people you hear are bringing lawsuits to fast-food places, but chubby enough that I wasn't much of a sprinter. So when my team in PE (physical education) class applauded by work as a football linebacker or soccer goalie, I didn't really care whether or not the jobs took as much skill as those in other sports. It was a role that let me have fun in the sport, and as far as I know, that's the whole point.
So am I qualified to call one of these sports I've mentioned better than the rest? No, probably not--but at least I recognise that fact.
It's the most popular sport in a country with over a billion people in it. I hardly call all of india insane. Whether or not it is a tool of cultural imperialism, or more likely a remnant of British Imperialism, is a subject for a different topic. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Just to answer Beasts other points, Rugby rules were not formalized until 1895. ARF rules were formalized in 18<b>59</b>. So from a professional standpoint, with accepted standards, ARF pre-dates Rugby. Before that there were dozens of variations, and playing 'rugby' in one part of england was an enitrely alien game to players in another part of england. ARF has its roots in gaelic football (makes sense if you think about it - all that headbutting and wrestling <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> ). And you can tell from the get-go that there was not much to do in Australia, early on. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Also, the organist is a tradition, not a rule. Much like soccer hooligans. I think your point was valid in that sense. But its detraction is pretty subjective. Besides, if you watch minor league baseball, for example, there is no organist. Your point is somewhat limited by your experience being with 'TV sports', rather than coming to America and seeing it firsthand. For every professional ball-club with an organist, there are (litterally) 25 without one.
As for other points on them being children's games... all sports are childrens games. Children play soccer. Children play hockey. It's, well, not a valid point. Games are for kids. Some games are big enough to stay with us as adults. But it's still a game, an inherently childish thing.
I won't bother with the 'rugby is more macho than football' issue, as it's nonsense. The rules of tackling in rugby make it so that padding is unnecessary. If you were allowed to tackle and hit in rugby the way you are in American football, you would have broken necks and backs on nearly every play. To say otherwise is to be ignorant of the rules of both sports. Which I am not... <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Theorhetically, you could watch an hour of a baseball game and not see the teams change sides or the batter even get out.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Plus, it has people that shove sticks into a black guy's face in the 21st century - it's like some Klan holdout against the 1800's. F that. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It is also common practice for a pitcher to hit a batter with a pitch. Hockey is a contact sport, baseball is not. High Sticking is a major infraction and can garner you a 10 game suspension even if no penalty was assed in the course of the game. That player was arrested for that action and prolly hasn't played since. Baseball is no better, can you say John Rocker? Now I can't say for sure about Marty McSorely (stick shover) but i doubt it was racially motivated. John Rocker on the other hand...
Most of what you outlined was very common in hockey, in the 70's. Today the rules are rather strict about contact, what is a legal hit and stick use as a weapon. SAdly hockey is not given the attention it deserves beacue it is seen as a canadian sport. Well out of 30 teams, there are only 4 canadian teams remaining. True about 50% of the league is canadian, 20% american and the rest european; however, how many players in MLB are hispanic?
I'll admit to the untrained eye hockey is quite confusing, but what isnt. Can you explain in infeild fly rule? What about a balk? These thing are not intutive either. I do not expect to change your mind about hockey, but to take a sport that has well over 100 years of history, and dismiss it causally as "awful" is simply wrong. I do not like baseball, i find it very boring to watch. However, it does take significant skill to hit a round ball with a round bat, squarely. Just as difficult as it is to skate 200 feet at 30 mph all the while keeping a 3.5 inch disk on the end of a stick safely away from people skating at you at 30 mph with the intention of knocking you into next week.
(incedentally the topic was meant as sarcastic and to grab attention, I don't hate baseball, I just choose not to watch it)
(He starts talking about base ball about a minute and 20 seconds through so you could probably skip the first bit.)
Yes he even mentions the organist!
<a href='http://www.eddieizzard.com/audio/eddie_izzard_circle030k.wmv' target='_blank'>Eddie Izzard Circle</a>
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MonsE breaks awaaay he shootsss he sscccooooorrrrreesssssssss!!!
(ps: boring no hitters? You seem to have a sense of irony there or just plain silliness... there is not more pressure-driven, edge of your seat, heart in your throat game than watching a no-hitter, where an entire team of 9 guys can make 0 mistakes against a team of the best baseball players in the world. Hence the fact that there are often none in a season, between 30 teams and a total of 4860 games. And I won't go into the joy of statistics that makes baseball fun for the logically inclined, especially opposed to the lugnut football crowd that comes up with stats that are generally meaningless and retarded).
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->the lugnut football crowd that comes up with stats that are generally meaningless and retarded<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
lol what other sport bets on the coin toss?!?
By boring no hitter i mean simply this, your average fan comes to the park/stadium to see scoring. Things like no hitters and 1-0 shutouts really only appeal to hardcore fans. If no hitters were to become common, they'd change the game in a heartbeat, and have. There is talk in the NHL about removing the redline, big mistake if you ask me, for the sake of scoring.
Want me to ask why you have a "world series" only has one nation permitted to compete? <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
for clarity: On the whole I find US sports boring. Most people on the planet agree. You're welcome to disagree, but as above ^^^ not everyone does.
I'm sure in person, the events would be better and more exciting than through TV, but then so would televised/RL spectator gardening.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Although the "Fall Classic" as we know it didn't begin until 1903, major-league baseball had several versions of a post-season championship series before that. In 1884, the Providence Grays of the National League outplayed the New York Metropolitan Club of the American Association in a 3 game series for what was originally called "The Championship of the United States." Several newspapers penned the Grays as "World Champions" and the new title stuck.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
From <a href='http://baseball-almanac.com/ws/wsmenu.shtml' target='_blank'>Baseball-Almanac.com (highly recommended by MonsE)</a>
So you can go back to blaming the news media for that one, and the rest of the world's poor communication. As for baseball and football, I post this famous list:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Why Is Baseball So Much Better Than Football? (from baseball columnist Thomas Boswell, Washington Post, January 18, 1987)</b>
# Reasons Why
1 Bands.
2 Half time with bands.
3 Cheerleaders at half time with bands.
4 Up With People singing "The Impossible Dream" during a Blue Angels flyover at half time with bands.
5 Baseball has fans in Wrigley Field singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" at the seventh-inning stretch.
6 Baseball has Blue Moon, Catfish, Spaceman and The Sugar Bear. Football has Lester the Molester, Too Mean and The Assassin.
7 All XX Super Bowls haven't produced as much drama as the last World Series.
8 All XX Super Bowls haven't produced as many classic games as either pennant playoff did this year.
9 Baseball has a bullpen coach blowing bubble gum with his cap turned around backward while leaning on a fungo bat; football has a defensive coordinator in a satin jacket with a headset and a clipboard.
10 The Redskins have 13 assistant coaches, five equipment managers, three trainers, two assistant GMs but, for 14 games, nobody who could kick an extra point.
11 Football players and coaches don't know how to bait a ref, much less jump up and down and scream in his face. Baseball players know how to argue with umps; baseball managers even kick dirt on them. Earl Weaver steals third base and won't give it back; Tom Landry folds his arms.
12 Vince Lombardi was never ashamed that he said, "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing."
13 Football coaches talk about character, gut checks, intensity and reckless abandon. Tommy Lasorda said, "Managing is like holding a dove in your hand. Squeeze too hard and you kill it; not hard enough and it flies away."
14 Big league baseball players chew tobacco. Pro football linemen chew on each other.
15 Before a baseball game, there are two hours of batting practice. Before a football game, there's a two-hour traffic jam.
16 A crowd of 30,000 in a stadium built for 55,501 has a lot more fun than a crowd of 55,501 in the same stadium.
17 No one has ever actually reached the end of the restroom line at an NFL game.
18 Nine innings means 18 chances at the hot dog line. Two halves means B.Y.O. or go hungry.
19 Pro football players have breasts. Many NFLers are so freakishly overdeveloped, due to steroids, that they look like circus geeks. Baseball players seem like normal fit folks. Fans should be thankful they don't have to look at NFL teams in bathing suits.
20 Eighty degrees, a cold beer and a short-sleeve shirt is better than 30 degrees, a hip flask and six layers of clothes under a lap blanket. Take your pick: suntan or frostbite.
21 Having 162 games a year is 10.125 times as good as having 16.
22 If you miss your favorite NFL team's game, you have to wait a week. In baseball, you wait a day.
23 Everything George Carlin said in his famous monologue is right on. In football you blitz, bomb, spear, shiver, march and score. In baseball, you wait for a walk, take your stretch, toe the rubber, tap your spikes, play ball and run home.
24 Marianne Moore loved Christy Mathewson. No woman of quality has ever preferred football to baseball.
25 More good baseball books appear in a single year than have been written about football in the past 50 years. The best football writers, like Dan Jenkins, have the good sense to write about something else most of the time.
26 The best football announcer ever was Howard Cosell.
27 The worst baseball announcer ever was Howard Cosell.
28 All gridirons are identical; football coaches never have to meet to go over the ground rules. But the best baseball parks are unique.
29 Every outdoor park ever built primarily for baseball has been pretty. Every stadium built with pro football in mind has been ugly (except Arrowhead).
30 The coin flip at the beginning of football games is idiotic. Home teams should always kick off and pick a goal to defend. In baseball, the visitor bats first (courtesy), while the host bats last (for drama). The football visitor should get the first chance to score, while the home team should have the dramatic advantage of receiving the second-half kickoff.
31 Baseball is harder. In the last 25 years, only one player, Vince Coleman, has been cut from the NFL and then become a success in the majors. From Tom Brown in 1963 (Senators to Packers) to Jay Schroeder (Jays to Redskins), baseball flops have become NFL standouts.
32 Face masks. Right away we've got a clue something might be wrong. A guy can go 80 mph on a Harley without a helmet, much less a face mask.
33 Faces are better than helmets. Think of all the players in the NFL (excluding Redskins) whom you'd recognize on the street. Now eliminate the quarterbacks. Not many left, are there? Now think of all the baseball players whose faces you know, just from the last Series.
34 The NFL has -- how can we say this? -- a few borderline godfathers. Baseball has almost no mobsters or suspicious types among its owners. Pete Rozelle isn't as picky as Bowie Kuhn, who for 15 years considered "integrity of the game" to be one of his key functions and who gave the cold shoulder to the shady money guys.
35 Football has Tank and Mean Joe. Baseball has The Human Rain Delay and Charlie Hustle.
36 In football, it's team first, individual second -- if at all. A Rich Milot and a Curtis Jordan can play 10 years -- but when would we ever have time to study them alone for just one game? Could we mimic their gestures, their tics, their habits? A baseball player is an individual first, then part of a team second. You can study him at length and at leisure in the batter's box or on the mound. On defense, when the batted ball seeks him, so do our eyes.
37 Baseball statistics open a world to us. Football statistics are virtually useless or, worse, misleading. For instance, the NFL quarterback-ranking system is a joke. Nobody understands it or can justify it. The old average-gain-per- attempt rankings were just as good.
38 What kind of dim-bulb sport would rank pass receivers by number of catches instead of by number of yards? Only in football would a runner with 1,100 yards on 300 carries be rated ahead of a back with 1,000 yards on 200 carries. Does baseball give its silver bat to the player with the most hits or with the highest average?
39 If you use NFL team statistics as a betting tool, you go broke. Only wins and losses, points and points against and turnovers are worth a damn.
40 Baseball has one designated hitter. In football, everybody is a designated something. No one plays the whole game anymore. Football worships the specialists. Baseball worships the generalists.
41 The tense closing seconds of crucial baseball games are decided by distinctive relief pitchers like Bruce Sutter, Rollie Fingers or Goose Gossage. Vital NFL games are decided by helmeted gentlemen who come on for 10 seconds, kick sideways, spend the rest of the game keeping their precious foot warm on the sidelines and aren't aware of the subtleties of the game. Half of them, in Alex Karras' words, run off the field chirping, "I kick a touchdown."
42 Football gave us The Hammer. Baseball gave us The Fudge Hammer.
43 How can you respect a game that uses only the point after touchdown and completely ignores the option of a two-point conversion, which would make the end of football games much more exciting.
44 Wild cards. If baseball can stick with four divisional champs out of 26 teams, why does the NFL need to invite 10 of its 28 to the prom? Could it be that football isn't terribly interesting unless your team can still "win it all"?
45 The entire NFL playoff system is a fraud. Go on, explain with a straight face why the Chiefs (10-6) were in the playoffs but the Seahawks (10-6) were not. There is no real reason. Seattle was simply left out for convenience. When baseball tried the comparably bogus split-season fiasco with half-season champions in 1981, fans almost rioted.
46 Parity scheduling. How can the NFL defend the fairness of deliberately giving easier schedules to weaker teams and harder schedules to better teams? Just to generate artificially improved competition? When a weak team with a patsy schedule goes 10-6, while a strong defending division champ misses the playoffs at 9-7, nobody says boo. Baseball would have open revolt at such a nauseatingly cynical system.
47 Baseball has no penalty for pass interference. (This in itself is almost enough to declare baseball the better game.) In football, offsides is five yards, holding is 10 yards, a personal foul is 15 yards. But interference: maybe 50 yards.
48 Nobody on earth really knows what pass interference is. Part judgment, part acting, mostly accident.
49 Baseball has no penalties at all. A home run is a home run. You cheer. In football, on a score, you look for flags. If there's one, who's it on? When can we cheer? Football acts can all be repealed. Baseball acts stand forever.
50 Instant replays. Just when we thought there couldn't be anything worse than penalties, we get instant replays of penalties. Talk about a bad joke. Now any play, even one with no flags, can be called back. Even a flag itself can, after five minutes of boring delay, be nullified. NFL time has entered the Twilight Zone. Nothing is real; everything is hypothetical.
51 Football has Hacksaw. Baseball has Steady Eddie and The Candy Man.
52 The NFL's style of play has been stagnant for decades, predictable. Turn on any NFL game and that's just what it could be -- any NFL game. Teams seem interchangeable. Even the wishbone is too radical. Baseball teams' styles are often determined by their personnel and even their parks.
53 Football fans tailgate before the big game. No baseball fan would have a picnic in a parking lot.
54 At a football game, you almost never leave saying, "I never saw a play like that before." At a baseball game, there's almost always some new wrinkle.
55 Beneath the NFL's infinite sameness lies infinite variety. But we aren't privy to it. So what if football is totally explicable and fascinating to Dan Marino as he tries to decide whether to audible to a quick trap? From the stands, we don't know one-thousandth of what's required to grasp a pro football game. If an NFL coach has to say, "I won't know until I see the films," then how out-in-the-cold does that leave the fan?
56 While football is the most closed of games, baseball is the most open. A fan with a score card, a modest knowledge of the teams and a knack for paying attention has all he needs to watch a game with sophistication.
57 NFL refs are weekend warriors, pulled from other jobs to moonlight; as a group, they're barely competent. That's really why the NFL turned to instant replays. Now, old fogies upstairs can't even get the make-over calls right. Baseball umps work 10 years in the minors and know what they are doing. Replays show how good they are. If Don Denkinger screws up in a split second of Series tension, it's instant lore.
58 Too many of the best NFL teams represent unpalatable values. The Bears are head-thumping braggarts. The Raiders have long been scofflaw pirates. The Cowboys glorify the heartless corporate approach to football.
59 Football has the Refrigerator. Baseball has Puff the Magic Dragon, The Wizard of Oz, Tom Terrific, Big Doggy, Kitty Kaat and Oil Can.
60 Football is impossible to watch. Admit it: The human head is at least two eyes shy for watching the forward pass. Do you watch the five eligible receivers? Or the quarterback and the pass rush? If you keep your eye on the ball, you never know who got open or how. If you watch the receivers . . . well, nobody watches the receivers. On TV, you don't even know how many receivers have gone out for a pass.
61 The NFL keeps changing the most basic rules. Most blocking now would have been illegal use of the hands in Jim Parker's time. How do we compare eras when the sport never stays the same? Pretty soon, intentional grounding will be legalized to protect quarterbacks.
62 In the NFL, you can't tell the players without an Intensive Care Unit report. Players get broken apart so fast we have no time to build up allegiances to stars. Three-quarters of the NFL's starting quarterbacks are in their first four years in the league. Is it because the new breed is better? Or because the old breed is already lame? A top baseball player lasts 15 to 20 years. We know him like an old friend.
63 The baseball Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown, N.Y., beside James Fenimore Cooper's Lake Glimmerglass; the football Hall of Fame is in Canton, Ohio, beside the freeway.
64 Baseball means Spring's Here. Football means Winter's Coming.
65 Best book for a lifetime on a desert island: The Baseball Encyclopedia.
66 Baseball's record on race relations is poor. But football's is much worse. Is it possible that the NFL still has NEVER had a black head coach? And why is a black quarterback still as rare as a bilingual woodpecker?
67 Baseball has a drug problem comparable to society's. Pro football has a range of substance-abuse problems comparable only to itself. And, perhaps, The Hells Angels'.
68 Baseball enriches language and imagination at almost every point of contact. As John Lardner put it, "Babe Herman did not triple into a triple play, but he did double into a double play, which is the next best thing."
69 Who's on First?
70 Without baseball, there'd have been no Fenway Park. Without football, there'd have been no artificial turf.
71 A typical baseball game has nine runs, more than 250 pitches and about 80 completed plays -- hits, walks, outs -- in 2 1/2 hours. A typical football game has about five touchdowns, a couple of field goals and fewer than 150 plays spread over three hours. Of those plays, perhaps 20 or 25 result in a gain or loss of more than 10 yards. Baseball has more scoring plays, more serious scoring threats and more meaningful action plays.
72 Baseball has no clock. Yes, you were waiting for that. The comeback, from three or more scores behind, is far more common in baseball than football.
73 The majority of players on a football field in any game are lost and unaccountable in the middle of pileups. Confusion hides a multitude of sins. Every baseball player's performance and contribution are measured and recorded in every game.
74 Some San Francisco linemen now wear dark plexiglass visors inside their face masks -- even at night. "And in the third round, out of Empire U., the 49ers would like to pick Darth Vader."
75 Someday, just once, could we have a punt without a penalty?
76 End-zone spikes. Sack dances. Or, in Dexter Manley's case, "holding flag" dances.
77 Unbelievably stupid rules. For example, if the two-minute warning passes, any play that begins even a split second thereafter is nullified. Even, as happened in this season's Washington-San Francisco game, when it's the decisive play of the entire game. And even when, as also happened in that game, not one of the 22 players on the field is aware that the two-minute mark has passed. The Skins stopped the 49ers on fourth down to save that game. They exulted; the 49ers started off the field. Then the refs said, "Play the down continued on page 47 over." Absolutely unbelievable.
78 In baseball, fans catch foul balls. In football, they raise a net so you can't even catch an extra point.
79 Nothing in baseball is as boring as the four hours of ABC's "Monday Night Football."
80 Blowhard coach Buddy Ryan, who gave himself a grade of A+ for his handling of the Eagles. "I didn't make any mistakes," he explained. His 5-10-1 team was 7-9 the year before he came.
81 Football players, somewhere back in their phylogenic development, learned how to talk like football coaches. ("Our goals this week were to contain Dickerson and control the line of scrimmage.") Baseball players say things like, "This pitcher's so bad that when he comes in, the grounds crew drags the warning track."
82 Football coaches walk across the field after the game and pretend to congratulate the opposing coach. Baseball managers head right for the beer.
83 The best ever in each sport - Babe Ruth and Jim Brown -- each represents egocentric excess. But Ruth never threw a woman out a window.
84 Quarterbacks have to ask the crowd to quiet down. Pitchers never do.
85 Baseball nicknames go on forever - because we feel we know so many players intimately. Football monikers run out fast. We just don't know that many of them as people.
86 Baseball measures a gift for dailiness.
87 Football has two weeks of hype before the Super Bowl. Baseball takes about two days off before the World Series.
88 Football, because of its self-importance, minimizes a sense of humor. Baseball cultivates one. Knowing you'll lose at least 60 games every season makes self-deprecation a survival tool. As Casey Stengel said to his barber, "Don't cut my throat. I may want to do that myself later."
89 Football is played best full of adrenaline and anger. Moderation seldom finds a place. Almost every act of baseball is a blending of effort and control; too much of either is fatal.
90 Football's real problem is not that it glorifies violence, though it does, but that it offers no successful alternative to violence. In baseball, there is a choice of methods: the change-up or the knuckleball, the bunt or the hit-and-run.
91 Baseball is vastly better in person than on TV. Only when you're in the ballpark can the eye grasp and interconnect the game's great distances. Will the wind blow that long fly just over the fence? Will the relay throw nail the runner trying to score from second on a double in the alley? Who's warming up in the bullpen? Where is the defense shading this hitter? Did the base stealer get a good jump? The eye flicks back and forth and captures everything that is necessary. As for replays, most parks have them. Football is better on TV. At least, you don't need binoculars. And you've got your replays.
92 Turning the car radio dial on a summer night.
93 George Steinbrenner learned his baseball methods as a football coach.
94 You'll never see a woman in a fur coat at a baseball game.
95 You'll never see a man in a fur coat at a baseball game.
96 A six-month pennant race. Football has nothing like it.
97 In football, nobody says, "Let's play two!"
98 When a baseball player gets knocked out, he goes to the showers. When a football player gets knocked out, he goes to get X-rayed.
99 Most of all, baseball is better than football because spring training is less than a month away.
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I challenge you all to read it in its entirety (although few will). It is gospel <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> .
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Now, I find that highly offensive. Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Britian, Zimbabwe, the West Indies and South Africa all love cricket. As an Australian myself I can tell you that when 100,000 people turn up to watch a game of cricket it's a popular sport. Now compare this to American football which is loved and played in 1 country.
I gotta say, I've never understood that game. What exactly happens? I've watched it a few times (fallen asleep I must confess) and what I saw involved 2 lines of very very padded men crouch down, stare at each other, then crash into each other. A ball flew out, was thrown through the air and a guy somewhere deep in enemy territory (how did he get there?) catches it, walks across a line and does the can-can. Forgive me for being slightly confused <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
That said, I understand and recognise that millions of Americans love the game, so there must be something to it. So if I can understand that it is a loved game, you can extend me the same treatment with regards to cricket.
Cricket is also certainly not a tool of cultural imperialism. Go to India and ask people playing cricket (note: find a patch of open space. There will be cricket players there) if they regard themselves as British. They will laugh in your face. Oddly enough the nations that Britian taught cricket to now all beat the pants of Britian whenever a game is played <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> . Sports transend most cultures and societies; new people adopt it and start playing it for fun. No-one FORCED Indians, South Africans, Australians or West Indians to play cricket. They adopted it of their own free will, and they love it! The British introduced it, but never set down a law saying "All members of this coloney must partake in 1 game of cricket per week". Hell, the British mostly didn't even teach the locals, the locals picked it up for themselves.
Also, to all the non-Commenwealth thread posters if you ever want an explaination of cricket just ask me <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Note to self: Be more careful with the casual flippant remarks.
Cricket, as you rightly pointed out, was adopted by "locals" in emulation of the occupying British officer class, which cuts both ways. In Britain its seen as eliteist (generalisation) in post-empire coutries, its origins in those attempting to emulate the British still seem (to me) as cultural imperialism. I'm sure you know about aggressor identification, MonsE.
I read the first 20 or so of the list MonsE, but I felt the sands of my life running through my fingers. The list (well the first 20) seemed to be a list of reasons why the majority of planet Earth dislike or are disinterested in American sports.
For the record, music is acceptable (to me) before the sporting event, after it, and in any intermission. What grates is a school music teacher bashing out 4 or five notes which bear no relation to the action on the field/pitch etc. Its horrible. If I wanted to hear it, I'd buy "One organ great" by Dave the talentless organ destroyer.
Hmmm...... /checks note to self.......nah......
Wasn't there a season where Japanese teams competed in the World Series, or is my memory going? It probably is, I couldn't find my shoes this morning.....
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Perhaps you made a typo, but I'll go by what you said. Cricket in Britain WAS seen as eliteist, but this ended far before the imperial period. By the first world war cricket was a popular urban sport in both Britian and Australia, although it was only just starting to catch on in other imperial colonies. Today it is by far not seen as elitest nor is it seen as an attempt to emulate the British: South Africa, India, Pakistan, the West Indies and Zimbabwe are all very proud to be independant of Britian. Try saying to an Indian that he's trying to emulate the British. You'll be lucky if you escape with only your pride wounded <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
I guess the central issue here would have to be if sports can actually be seen as cultural imperialism. I note that America plays Ice hockey, does this mean the US is being culturally dominated by Canada? Sports tend to transend these things, depite their origins. You could claim, for example, that Japan taking up baseball in a big way is culutral imperialism, but the Japanese love baseball and it wasn't forced on them (occupation forces were but baseball wasn't). I think that something like sports can't be cultural imperialism simply because of their nature as games. If anything, they provide a completly legal and legitimate way to fight back at the "oppressors"; India today loves beating the English at cricket <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->