Yo, Are Ess

Why, just because it's old?

 

I'm all about baseball in person, jsut cant seem to get into it on TV... of course with the proper inspiration...


This town ain't big, this town ain't small.
It's a little of both they say.
Our ball club may be minor league but at least it's triple A.
We sit below the Marlboro man, above the right field wall.
We do the wave all by ourself.
Hang off, a blind man could've made that call.

We like beer flat as can be.
We like our dogs with mustard and relish.
We got a great pitcher what's his name.
Well we can't even spell it.
We don't worry about the pennant much.
We just like to see the boys hit it deep.
There's nothing like the view from the cheap seats.

The game was close, we'll call it a win.
Go off to toast the boys again.
That local band is back in town.
They got a kinda minor league sound.
They're not that bad, they're not that good.
But all in all it's understood.
We wanna dance, they wanna play.
We wouldn't have it any other way.

We like beer flat as can be.
We like our dogs with mustard and relish.
We got a great pitcher what's his name.
Well we can't even spell it.
We don't worry about the pennant much.
We just like to see the boys hit it deep.
There's nothing like the view from the cheap seats.
Cheap seats

Now the majors called up oh what's his name.
And one more buildin' rises come.
And suddenly we're all grown up.
And this old town not quite so small.
But I'll always miss the middle size town.
In the middle of the middle-west.
With no name pitchers and local bands,
and mustard and relish and all the rest.

We like beer flat as can be.
We like our dogs with mustard and relish.
We got a great pitcher what's his name.
Well we can't even spell it.
We don't worry about the pennant much.
We just like to see the boys hit it deep.
There's nothing like the view from the cheap seats.
Cheap seats

 

Power pitchers today do not throw any harder than Bob Feller did in the 40's. If you go back and look at the records, you'll see that many of teh career marks are pretty old. Players are bigger now, that's true, but bulk don't mean squat if you can't make contact. Pitches come in and out of vogue, but the major ones (fastball, curve, change up, slider) have been in the game for a long time. The split finger is basically just a reinvention of the forkball. The players of today aren't really that much faster - Mickey Mantle (pre knee injusry) would still be one of teh fastest players around.

Actually - if anything - the overall quality of baseball has declined over the years, IMO.

 

Interesting... That leaves someone like me, on the outside looking in, with only two possible conclusions -- either the game was perfected long before I was even born, and will never get any better than it used to be, or the game has been stale for 50 years. Which do you think?

 

i almost cried. thats beautiful.

 

More than perfecting the game, I think it is more just a limit of human capability. I don't think that people will ever be able to throw a baseball more than about 100 miles/hour, and while there are some eye exercises people can do, hand/eye coordination is not going to improve much either.

I think that Earl Weaver and Sports Center have ruined baseball. The problem with Baseball over the past 10-15 years is that an inordinate amount of runs are scored on homers, so you take one of the best parts of baseball out of the game - baserunning. I hated the A's - mostly cause they used my Sox for canon fodder - in the late 80's early 90's, but it is an absolute thing of beuty to watch what Ricky Henderson did to pitchers when he was on 1st base. They had to pay so much attention to him that they couldn't focus on the batter. But every time I want to get cynical, a great story - the 88 Dodgers (I think), the 91 Twins, the Angels last year, the Royals this year make me remember that this is such a great game - especially when played correctly.

Free Agency has also done much to hurt the game. The fact that only 10 teams had a chance to make the playoffs by June 1 makes for a pretty tedious summer.

 

i'll agree to the free agency bit. but as far as the teams making the playoffs. if this were any other proffessional sport, where roughly half their teams make the playoffs, then it wouldn't be that way. that is another one of the things that makes baseball so awesome. you HAVE to have a great season to make the playoffs. every single game could make the difference in you playing in october, or sittin on the couch. those 8 spots are hard to come by. sure glad they don't allow 12 or 16 teams.

 

I mean that because of economics - most teams have no chance at having a good team. I like that there are few team in the playoffs.

 

well i'm the first in line to sign a salary cap petition, so i agree with ya there. i hate the yankees, remember?

 

Another Bull Durham line:

"The luckiest people in the world are those born with no sense of self awareness"


Tintin