Pulling for Lokasenna's Nats

[Canoerebel]

Lokasenna is a dedicated Nationals fan. I'm sure he's relishing the franchise's first World Series appearance - and they're off to a good start, leading 5-2 after five innings.

As a Braves fan since 1974, I shouldn't be pulling for the Nats, but I am. There's a lot to like about that team - the pitching, Rendon, Suzuki, to name a few. They got rid of Harper, who mostly no one likes, and now have just one irritant - Steven Strasburg.

Loka and I exchanged some fun emails at the start of the baseball season, hoping for good things for our respective teams. He knows baseball. Let's hope his Nats can pull it off.

[obvert]

He does. He plays himself a bit too.

As an American living abroad this is part of our culture I miss. Those World Series games in a local bar with fans from one or sometimes both sides cheering. I've been in NYC while the Yankees were in it and that was incredible, however much I dislike the Yankees!

Over here the time difference means I might see a game on the weekend, but it's tough. Hope you all enjoy with family, friends and strangers somewhere!

[Ian R]

What sport are you guys talking about? The world series - is that like a world cup competition?

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Ian R

What sport are you guys talking about? The world series - is that like a world cup competition?

Haha! I see you're from Sydney, and I assume you're taking the piss, but maybe not?

It's true that baseball exists in other countries, but it's decidedly an American centric game with a long history. Professional teams had a lore and mystique about them, players were legends, long before other countries took up the sport and began leagues of their own, mostly through American influence in those places (like Japan, where an American academic introduced the game in the 1870s, and many Carribean countries).

So the World Series is an American professional sports event, but these are the best professional teams in the world.

[Ian R]

ORIGINAL: obvert

ORIGINAL: Ian R

What sport are you guys talking about? The world series - is that like a world cup competition?

Haha! I see you're from Sydney, and I assume you're taking the piss, but maybe not?

It's true that baseball exists in other countries, but it's decidedly an American centric game with a long history. Professional teams had a lore and mystique about them, players were legends, long before other countries took up the sport and began leagues of their own, mostly through American influence in those places (like Japan, where an American academic introduced the game in the 1870s, and many Carribean countries).

So the World Series is an American professional sports event, but these are the best professional teams in the world.

So calling it the 'world series' is a bit of a stretch then [;)]

Yes I'm taking the piss. The Olympics appears to be, or rather was, the actual world wide competition, but the Americans didn't even bother sending their best team, by the look of it, and the sport was dropped.

[Macclan5]

Hyperbole is hardly limited to 'North' American Sports.

However I too find myself wistfully hopeful for the Nationals - the 'Nats'.

This franchise at one time was the Montreal Expos. (short for Expositions I suspect from the 1967 World Fair)

The Expos were equally a hard luck franchise having developed 2 great teams that 'could have / should have / would have".. won the World Series.

Cira 1980 with young Hall of Famers - Gary Carter, Tim Raines, Andre Dawson.. and great other players like vet Dale Murphy Tim Wallach, Steve Rogers

Circa 1994 : IIRC best record in Baseball AT the STRIKE Cancelled season. Larry Walker, Rondell White, Moises Alou and HOF pitcher Pedro Martinez

Go Nats !

Go Blue Jays

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: obvert

ORIGINAL: Ian R

What sport are you guys talking about? The world series - is that like a world cup competition?

Haha! I see you're from Sydney, and I assume you're taking the piss, but maybe not?

It's true that baseball exists in other countries, but it's decidedly an American centric game with a long history. Professional teams had a lore and mystique about them, players were legends, long before other countries took up the sport and began leagues of their own, mostly through American influence in those places (like Japan, where an American academic introduced the game in the 1870s, and many Carribean countries).

So the World Series is an American professional sports event, but these are the best professional teams in the world.

The highest attendance per game played is the NFL, with 68,776 average attendance per game. Nobody else is even close. Second is the Bundesliga (Germany) with a mere 43,500.

MLB per game attendance is 30,346, which places it fifth on the per game attendance chart. However, since there are 162 games in an MLB season (versus 16+ for NFL), the total annual attendance at MLB games is 73.3MM. Second on that list is NPB (Japanese baseball) at 22.8MM.

Where does 'soccer' rank? A pathetic 6th place, with EPL (UK) with only 13.3MM. That's lower than the two aforementioned baseball attendance figures. Lower than the NBA. Lower than NFL. Lower than NHL (Hockey).

So, baseball games are hugely popular globally. Point of fact.

Baseball is a popular game in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Japan and other countries. Sure, it's probably not as universally played on playgrounds and whatnot as 'soccer' is around the world. But to say that it's not a global enterprise and is invisible except to Americans is ignorant.

https://www.businessinsider.com/attenda ... rld-2015-5

Here's 2018 figures below. I hadn't appreciated how high the attendance for AAA and AA baseball is domestically. AAA baseball is in 'danger' of eclipsing some of the European soccer leagues soon. I had also omitted the popularity of baseball in Korea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_a ... ts_leagues

[Chickenboy]

I'm torn on the World Series affinity.

On the one hand, Southern Texas is Houston Astros country. Lots of support here for a largely homegrown team that has committed to being very competitive for a long time. The Astros have been moved around quite a bit (in terms of the divisions within MLB) and have finally found a place to call home in the AL West. I regularly watch them dismantle my Oakland A's and have mixed emotions about that too. But I appreciate that they've risen to the fore in terms of the AL competitiveness after so many years being the butt of jokes. Nobody in the AL is laughing anymore. They're for real.

On the other hand, the Washington Nationals (formerly Montreal Expos) have never been there before and they're the vestiges of the defunct Expos. Much of my family hails from Montreal and it's almost like the 'local boy makes good'.

I think the tie breaker for me will be the league affiliation. Sorry to start a flame war ([:D]) on our War in the Pacific Forum, but I still can't get past the lack of a DH in the National League. Having pitchers at bat has always seemed such a frivolous waste of an at bat and I have always had trouble supporting National League teams, except in a pinch. Its 'fighting talk', I know-but there it is.

[Ian R]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

I read all that carefully and agree it is a very popular game in North America, and Japan and some other areas including South Korea and Cuba. I have little doubt that the US team would be the best team in the world with a long gap to second.

I also think that if in, say, Australia or England, the board room members of a sport had called a presser one morning and declared they would not make their country's best players available for the world championship of the sport, they would have been hanging from lamp posts by lunchtime.

What was MLB's excuse for not allowing players' to attend the Olympics?

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Ian R

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

I read all that carefully and agree it is a very popular game in North America, and Japan and some other areas including South Korea and Cuba. I have little doubt that the US team would be the best team in the world with a long gap to second.

I also think that if in, say, Australia or England, the board room members of a sport had called a presser one morning and declared they would not make their country's best players available for the world championship of the sport, they would have been hanging from lamp posts by lunchtime.

What was MLB's excuse for not allowing players' to attend the Olympics?

My guess (and it's only a guess because I don't currently manage a MLB team) is that players' existing contractual obligations to their professional teams are immiscible with taking a Spring / Summer off to field a team for Olympics baseball competition.

The MLB season is quite long. It's early-mid February when the four most beautiful words in the English language are spoken: "Pitchers and Catchers report". Spring training starts shortly thereafter. Then preseason baseball in Florida or Arizona holds sway until the beginning of April, when the regular season starts. Most teams will wrap up their seasons in September. Playoffs (including the World Series) are in October. So the only off season is November-early February.

The NBA is 'off' during the summer, so it's more manageable for their team integration.

With the average MLB salary being USD $4.1MM in 2019 (and 43 players making more than $20MM last year), that's a pretty hard sell for the managers / owners and players all.

[Ian R]

In Rugby, the IRB has regulations to the effect there are certain international "windows" where, for example, clubs in Europe have to release all their Argentine/NZ/Aust/RSA/PI players to their national sides if selected to represent their country. No ifs, no buts. A couple of months a year.

Are you saying that the MLB clubs hold their own parochial interests above any consideration of national pride - especially given the US team should not be be losing to, e.g. South Korea?

that's a pretty hard sell for the managers / owners and players all.

Don't those players want to represent the US of A?

Sounds like the way the round ball code carries on.

[Canoerebel]

I prefer the National League, which doesn't use the designated hitter. It adds a considerable amount of strategy to the game, and each team is playing by the same rules, so there's no inherit advantage or disadvantage when one NL team faces another. There's an ebb and flow to the game, as you move through the lineups. Some pitchers are good hitters, which does give their team a bit of an advantage. And some of the most uproarious moments in sports have been unlikely pitchers hitting homeruns - Bartolo Colon for the Mets and Rick Camp for the Braves (a long time ago - look it up on YouTube). I don't care that the AL uses the DH; I just don't want the NL to adopt it. It probably will, and I'll miss the old ways.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Ian R
Are you saying that the MLB clubs hold their own parochial interests above any consideration of national pride - especially given the US team should not be be losing to, e.g. South Korea?

Well, it's probably a mutual understanding. The owners should not be under any obligations to pay their best players $20MM so that they can go off competing for another baseball team. The players likely have the right to NOT accept their $20MM if they choose to play for the Olympics team. But few choose to do so for some strange reason.

[Canoerebel]

Rick Camp home run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVpjWNfnHww

This happened July 4, 1984, in the 18th inning. Camp had never hit a home run before. He was an awful hitter. The Mets led 11-10 at the time. I think the Mets went on to win the game. It finished at something like 3 a.m., after which the Braves went ahead with the postgame Independence Day fireworks, which wrought havoc in the neighborhoods around the ballpark.

"Uproarious" is the right word for the ending(s) of that game.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I prefer the National League, which doesn't use the designated hitter. It adds a considerable amount of strategy to the game, and each team is playing by the same rules, so there's no inherit advantage or disadvantage when one NL team faces another. There's an ebb and flow to the game, as you move through the lineups. Some pitchers are good hitters, which does give their team a bit of an advantage. And some of the most uproarious moments in sports have been unlikely pitchers hitting homeruns - Bartolo Colon for the Mets and Rick Camp for the Braves (a long time ago - look it up on YouTube). I don't care that the AL uses the DH; I just don't want the NL to adopt it. It probably will, and I'll miss the old ways.

I enjoy interleague play and am glad that MLB implemented it 22 years ago. It gives me a chance to see teams competing against my A's that I ordinarily wouldn't see in the AL rotation.

But I prefer the ALs "pure" focus on pitching as a game within a game. I couldn't care less if AL pitchers know one end of the bat from the other and think that the NL system produces a 'joker of all trades, master of none' mentality WRT pitchers at-bat. So when they get together for interleague play (or the World Series), this juxtaposition is prominent.

[Ian R]

What?

Its not just "another team". Its the USA team. Wearing red white and blue shirts, and representing their country on the field of (sporting) battle. Carrying the emotions, hopes and dreams of all Americans with them.

I don't care how much they get paid, representing your country's #1 side in any international sport should be the pinnacle of the sport. And the MLB clubs should be forced to release the players for that national team.

We are going to have to disagree on this one.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Ian R
And the MLB clubs should be forced to release the players for that national team.

"Forced"? Should the MLB owners be similarly forced to pay the players for the time that they won't be playing for their team? Nah mate-it's a mutual choice. Players should be allowed to play for the national team if they choose to do so. Owners should not have to pay for it out of their own pockets. Then the players can choose how much that Olympics medal means to them.

Like I said-if you boil it down to the nuts and bolts of it, the players likely have an unspoken affinity for $20MM moreso than beating the stuffing out of the South Korean national team. But it's their choice-as it should be.

[geofflambert]

Pitchers not being worth spit at the plate used to be common for catchers as well. Perhaps the AL should have DHs for the catchers, too. If you don't care about pitchers at the plate you never saw Greg Maddux who was also excellent at fielding his position. There's lots of pitchers who only know one thing, like a tennis player who only has a serve and nothing else. If the pitcher and catcher really know the game inside out and learned swinging a bat early it can be really marvelous to watch. A favorite pitcher is Bob Forsch, two no-nos, two Silver Sluggers, a grand-slam, and he was part of 7 double plays in '75. Catchers? Yadier Molina.

[geofflambert]

I believe there was more than one occasion with Forsch, where instead of retiring him in a game in order to bring in a specialist for the batter in question, Whitey would retire an infielder instead and have Forsch take that position, then back to the mound.

[Macclan5]

Hyperbole

"World Cup of Cricket"

Okay so how many nations actually participate in the World Cup of Cricket ??

10 ? 20 ? I really don't actually know.

Further of those that actually participate how many actually understand the game ? [8D]

3 = India Pakistan and England. [:)]

The World Series (Baseball) is hyperbole however

-At least 2 Nations are potentially represented - Toronto Canada having won in 93/94

-The actual players competing on the teams come from approximately as Nations as participate in the World Cup of Cricket - USA, Dominican Republic, Japan, Cuba, Canada, South Korea, Costa Rica, etc etc

North American Sports continuously have this challenge - allowing players to participate in "World Cups" or Olympics.

They pay their star players millions annually and are consistently balancing "insurance coverage in case their star player gets hurt - verses lost revenue - verses championship aspirations"

NHL Hockey fighting this
NBA "Dream Team" Fighting (Canada's NBA dream team lite as well)
MLB and their World Cup
NFL - at least tried to organize a Euro League and garner more international presence

(English - World) Football or Soccer in North America seems to have the easiest infrastructure in this.

Perhaps because all the players fall down like they were shot - when merely touched [8D][:-]