What's wrong with baseball

[Dennis]

Baseball is to football what chess is to checkers.  It's a game for thinking people who want to appreciate the strategy and pace instead of seeing men shove and pummel each other.

That said, I too am sick of ESPN's constant coverage of Yankees/Red Sox.  I also am sick of the constant coverage of other rivalries, including OSU/Michigan - and I live in Columbus!  People eat this stuff up, but it doesn't mean any more than any other game.  If the Yankees lose to the Royals in April, it means just as much as a loss to the Red Sox in September.  I mean, the Reds were in the playoff race until the second-to-last day of the season last year, and Baseball Tonight that day was too busy talking about the Yankees to even mention it!

[IronKnux]

Not to cast aside anything that anyone else said, but personally, baseball is no longer a sport. It's a business now more than anything else.

I find it downright offensive that some of these players make more money in one game than my family does in an entire year; and on top of that, there have actually been strikes by the players unions because they weren't receiving enough! What ever happened to the motivation to actually play the sport for the love of the game rather than the greed that players have now? How is it that teachers make under $50,000 a year and yet a major league slugger makes more than that in one swing of the bat? It's a crazy, crazy society we live in.

[snakeboy1]

[QUOTE=IronKnux]How is it that teachers make under $50,000 a year and yet a major league slugger makes more than that in one swing of the bat? It's a crazy, crazy society we live in.

[/QUOTE]

As someone with a teaching degree, I agree that it certainly isn't fair.  But the reason why it is the way it is is because baseball generates billions of dollars annually.  If I was a ballplayer who was helping a multi-billionaire owner get even richer, I would want my fair share, too.

[Atarifever1]

Try being a Blue Jays fan.  Think what hockey is in the Southern U.S.  That's what baseball is like here by default.  Very, very, very few people watch it or are excited about it.  Then, take that, and put the only team in your entire country in the same division as the Red Sox and Yankees, pretty much ensuring they'd have to have a superhman team just to have a shot at maybe getting the wildcard sometime.  Now, put that team in Toronto, a city that is only considered a Canadian city by the smallest of technicalities as far as most of the country is concerned.   Yeah, it's real easy to get excited about baseball up here.

[Adamant1]

Eh, sports in general is pretty boring to me. When you have all these rules and regulations, you're generally just dulling things up. Give me a movie with some actual story any day. When I was a kid, we were always running around playing soldiers, cops and robbers, knights, superheroes, spacemen, you name it. Not sports. Those involved rules, and that made things less fun.

Okay, I admit that football can be somewhat entertaining at times, especially when there's beer and buddies around, but still, matches have a tendency to go on way too long (4 effin innings? Yawn).

It can be a lot more entertaining in videogame form, though, but even here the rule is that the less attention paid to actual rules, and the more arcade-style the gameplay, the better.

[Atarifever1]

[QUOTE=Adamant]

Okay, I admit that football can be somewhat entertaining... (4 effin innings? Yawn).

[/QUOTE]
Well there's the problem; you're apparently watching little league softball, not footbal at all.

[Atarifever1]

By the way, I meant ot add a  after that post, as I hated when my brother made fun of me when I'd say something like that by mistake when I was younger.

[chrisbid1]

sure, seven different teams have won the last seven world series, but that leaves 23 that have not, even with perfect parity, winning one world series every thirty years is a bit much

i have no real problems with player salaries, if they generate the revenue and have top .01 percentile talent, there is no reason for them not to be paid.

sports are drama, plain and simple. if there is no emotional tie to what you are watching, any sport will be pretty boring

[Alienblue]

Two things I'm glad I never got addicted to, SMOKING and SPORTS. Not to dis anyone who DOES like it, but I find ALL sports games rather boring to watch, although I enjoy ENGAGING in some games like Bowling. Games are for playing, not watching. I never got that. I like playing scrabble but wouldn't want to watch others play. Just me I guess.

I have to add...when you get interested in girls, not being addicted to sports and caring who wins the Home Stanley's Cup
Prize (Why would you WANT stanleys CUP..EWWW!) ...helps a lot since most girls are not into sports.

Now If I could just do something about my stupid, silly VIDEOGAME addiction I'd be set!

[Sudz1]

[QUOTE=Dennis]Baseball is to football what chess is to checkers.  It's a game for thinking people who want to appreciate the strategy and pace instead of seeing men shove and pummel each other.
[/QUOTE]

I just had to respond to this because I've heard this argument from baseball 'pureists' for decades and I've never understood it.  In baseball, there are precious few things you can even attempt to do with regards to "strategy" - really, outside of the batting lineup and whether to bunt, hit, or try and get walked what "strategy" is there?  Oh yeah, catch the ball and/or try to tag out a runner.  Wow, tons of strategy!  There is SO much more  strategy in football; you can call a running play, a passing play, a QB sneak, or any of a 100 variety of each of them (or combination of them).  Nevermind misdirection or developing a play on the fly because something completely unanticipated happened. 

I think baseball fans fool themselves into believing there is strategy involved because it's such a stat-dependent sport.  This so many statistics being tracked and rank, that HAS to mean there is loads of strategy right?  Wrong.  I'm not saying there is no strategy at all in baseball, just that it is the merest fraction of that available in football.
Sudz