The Video Game Critic

Its the National Passtime for ME!

Overall, I think there is a lot more good than bad about baseball today, and the fact that the league and the game continue to grow internationally is a big boost for the sport too.

I'll never understand the growth of soccer in the USA. True Ameircans will always hate soccer. (Just teasing).

Hey, if a true superstar like Pele couldn't bring soccer over the hump in the late 70's, that bum Beckham won't either.

[QUOTE=The Video Game Critic][QUOTE=Atarifever]
People who don't like baseball usually just don't undersand baseball and just don't want to admit that.  As a result, they say silly things that pass in a group of other people who don't like the game, but doesn't fool anyone who understands the game.
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That's not true at all.  I think most of the people who so vehemently rail against the sport are people who truly care about the sport, but have seen it degenerate into a shadow of what it once was, for the many reasons listed throughout this post.  People who don't know anything about it rarely want to get into a discussion about it.

I've been going to Oriole games with my dad since the 1970's.  When I was young I played baseball (or whiffle ball) every day after school.  I still have the thousands of baseball cards I collected as a kid.  I have boxes of memorabilia.  Believe me, I know a thing or two about baseball.

But while other sports have improved through salary caps (NFL), rule changes (basketball), or other means, baseball is getting worse.  Anybody who still regards it as "the American Pastime" (as it was undisputed 20 years ago), is living a life of denial.
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Oh, I don't mean people who don't like MLB ball.  Certainly not, overpaid cry babbies.  I mean people who claim that baseball as a sport is boring.

[QUOTE=The Video Game Critic]
That's not true at all.  I think most of the people who so vehemently rail against the sport are people who truly care about the sport, but have seen it degenerate into a shadow of what it once was, for the many reasons listed throughout this post.  People who don't know anything about it rarely want to get into a discussion about it.

I've been going to Oriole games with my dad since the 1970's.  When I was young I played baseball (or whiffle ball) every day after school.  I still have the thousands of baseball cards I collected as a kid.  I have boxes of memorabilia.  Believe me, I know a thing or two about baseball.

But while other sports have improved through salary caps (NFL), rule changes (basketball), or other means, baseball is getting worse.  Anybody who still regards it as "the American Pastime" (as it was undisputed 20 years ago), is living a life of denial.
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I understand what you're saying Critic...but I personally don't buy into that arguement.  If I was going to stop loving everything that has gotten worse over the past twenty years I might as well sell my possesions and live in a cardboard box!  Movies are pretty much a shallow, awful waste of time...Same goes for the countless amounts of crap that floods primetime TV.  Sports have just followed suit. 

The MLB isn't the same as it was back in the 70s, but the game itself is still great.  Mark Buehrle's no hitter a few weeks ago was just as exciting as it would have been in 1975.  Some things never change and watching baseball is still great to me.  The league maybe a joke, but I'm not cynical to the point where I let it bother me.  Besides the NHL, NBA and NFL are just as bad compared to the MLB in my eyes.