DIE BASEBALL, DIE.
by Orson on Dec 13, 2007 3:26 PM EST
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PrintMinimal football noise today, so let's access that spleen and talk about how much another corrupt, shitty sport blows. No particular reason.
Full of shit, but will get you laid: Baudrillard.We're big Jean Baudrillard fans, and not because we're some organic tea-sipping grad student getting wood to the concept of actually writing crap bollocks about art, meaning, and dissecting meaning without having to actually come up with any ourselves. You're out there, we know who you are, and we will refrain from making the Starbucks serve-us-our-latte professor joke, because many of you do indeed go on to do terrible things like teach Lacan and Derrida to smartstruck private school kids cowed by your ability to string together three sentences together and use the phrase "late-stage capitalism" without shitting yourself from shame.
Plus, when you can quote shit like this pants just fly off smart ladies not quite smart enough to realize just how full of shit you really are:
Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.
That's Baudrillard, who rules like Motorhead because he's totally quotable, completely full of shit, and sold tons of books in France despite the fact that he, himself, would remind anyone he was brimming with intellectual fecal matter. He insisted, in fact, on most everything being fake and shitty--simulacra--mere imitations of things that once existed, and that most culture was just growing like the fingernails and hair on a corpse.
Drop that at a cocktail party, and someone will probably either pose thoughtfully or call you a homosexual. Either way you're going for the bullshit gold, since it's English major bongwater primo stuff. However, it may rightfully describe the EDSBS official Most Despised Game, not a sport, but a game, the hypertrophied croquet match that is baseball, and the fact that old incontinent people care enough about it to waste an ex-Senator's time on whether or nor its players are taking illegal supplements.
(Let us clarify that we don't care whether baseball players are injecting mule piss into their veins or eating the live, still-beating hearts of polar bears in order to gain a competitive edge. This is because we don't care about baseball outside of a lingering affection for fat players like John Kruk from our youth and good hooker stories involving profligate man-whores like Mickey Mantle, who once answered an ex-Yankee survey with a rambling account of a blowjob he received under the bleachers. He concluded with this quote, paraphrased as best we can remember:
She asked me what to do with the come, and I said, "Don't ask me, I'm no cocksucker."
See? Baseball's not all bad! Except for the game, the management of the sport, and evidently the whole collection of cheating bastards who made up its elite players in the 1990s/2000s)
Things die, clothes fray, computers crash, and species extinctify, and sometimes, the nails growing on a corpse simulate life. In fact, this is what baseball's done, buffeted by four or five huge major franchises while dragging the whole bleeding cripple party of other franchises along with them. Record profits! Bullshit, as exemplified by the large franchises who skew the curve. Bentonville, Arkansas, the whole thing: a little town whose average income is swelled by the immense wealth of the handful of franchises raking money in hand over fist, millionaires surrounded by the squalor of their neighbors.
And the sport itself lurches along like a reanimated corpse. After three solid years of intense football watching, we went to a Braves game this past season, and we'd say the entire exercise was an extravagant waste of time if we hadn't had Lexus level access and thus a intravenous mainline of beer and popcorn. And even after 14 beers, the game was like watching at tribe of macaques pick nits off each other: stasis periodically interrupted when, at a gusty 25% of the time clip, someone hit a tiny ball a sniper could barely pick up at one of the bored, improbably huge macaques. Then everyone settled down and began drinking again and talking on their cell phones.
Even when completely drunk, it sucked with the force of ten thousand Reggie Balls rolling downhill in a big gremlin-ball of suck. No contact, no passion, no energy, and as much strategy as a game of horse-shoes. Wait, that's a disservice to horseshoes. None. If someone preens on one more time about the strategy involved in baseball, we will drop a safe on you from a great height, because there's simply nothing going on out there. At least the British admit the whole thing is a front for beer-drinking and lolling around outside for a few days. We'd like it if baseball games lasted three days like cricket test-matches, if only because the epic drunk you'd get on would likely get Viking war songs written about you, your friends, and the time you each drank a 24-pack before noon without dying.
Instead, in baseball, you get this alleged psychodrama between batter and pitcher, who in the minds of most everyone are fighting a mental swordfight while tiptoeing on water like the assassins in Hero. In reality, baseball players are among the stupidest athletes we've ever seen--at least football players, big, lummoxy football players, may have been to college. Baseball players are recruited straight from high school, meaning they dive straight from being a high-school manchild to being million-dollar bonus babies at the age of nineteen, meaning that like the horde of Genghis Khan, the future inhabitants of the world may be by percentage all related to some baseball player, since rich nineteen year olds are only interested in pillaging the Hooters and strip clubs of this nation. Unlike you, though, they don't wear condoms and have the money to do the whole thing properly, which explains how even white bread Steve Garvey ended up spurting out a whole flock of milquetoast lustspawn intent on making him a merely affluent man.
Really, batter and pitcher are just trading ones and zeros, and doing so poorly in most instances in between all the jock-adjusting, spitting, and stepping out of the box to twitch and scope trim in the stands. (Read Ball Four. We're not making this up.) The rest of the time, everyone else just....stands around scoping trim in the stands.
Oh, but the romance! The history! It's our national pastime, hearkening back to a SAHAHAKEREEGGHGHHKKKFJDmakdfadfkjg. Apologies. That noise was us garroting George Will, W.P. Kinsella, and any of the other bullshit geysers who've built up the myth that for some reason, merely because it's very old and has been around a long time, that there's some kind of moral or cultural onus to like baseball. (God, that felt good.) No one's better at pulling a phantom peanut of sublimity from steaming turd of reality than a writer, and in baseball they've had a whole open sewer to browse in their quest to make shinola from shit. (Do you even know what shinola is? It's shoe polish, which normal people use to shine shoes, and baseball players try to eat spread on crackers before spitting it out and saying "BOOO YUCKY" and impregnating a stripper.)
There's a whole heap of turdulent literature just collecting flies out there, all of it devoted to baseball. Most of it should be burned and scattered to the winds, excepting Ball Four, which is about what rat bastard life as a player is really like, and that awesome book about how the 1986 Mets were all on cocaine, because books about people doing cocaine in the 1980s are the highest form of literature and fuck your mother if you don't agree.
The sport should have been dead for years, and if the Mitchell report surprises anyone, then you, anyone, should be relegated to the salt mines along with people who like Family Guy and those who don't use their turn signals in traffic. OMG, people are suddenly just so much bigger now in like a year! If this shocked anyone after years of stats and norms being established with interminable death-march 162 game seasons...we mean, it would have marked a spurt not just in baseball's evolution, but humanity's. Sammy Sosa should have had Waterworld gills. Mark McGwire should have been telekinetic, and Albert Pujols should have had the ability to levitate (over the border! To Mexico! For illegal steroids!).
In conclusion, we were going to say die, baseball, die, but considering it's been dead for decades anyway, there's no reason to send a duplicate death certificate around. Instead: Baudrillard, fingernails, corpse. There's your snapshot there. No one mourns the moa, no one misses the Edsel, and when we're eighty or so, no one will really mourn football since by then it'll all be flying robots with chainsaws farting balls out of their shiny titanium rectums and sodomizing each other after whatever constitutes a goal occurs while the crowd roars for Beef Supreme to enter the arena. (Personally, we can't wait for this. If brains in jars are involved, we're already looking forward to it, and it doesn't even exist yet.)
Cricket's huge in India we hear. Going offshore may be the best decision, especially with all those lax overseas pharma rules. You'll be able to inject whatever you want, and the only real threat to the sport will be nuclear war between Pakistan and India. And with that much nandralone coursing through your system, players might just breathe deep and exhale fire without harm in the face of it all.
Postscript: Yeah? But what about football problems steroids corruption blah blah blah. Ooooh, diversion! Someone graduated from the Playskool Institute of Fucktard rhetoric! Let us restate: this is about baseball, which we hate for all of the reasons stated above. Not about football, a sport crippled in its own special way. We're not arguing about which one's better. That's obvious: football, which trounces pantywaisted baseball in a street fight and smashes its face into a bus stop sign with ease. Even pro football's better than baseball. Dammit, we'll go there: Golf's better than baseball, because there's a chance we can listen to David Feherty and marvel at John Daly's ability to not die and have the DTs on air. We'd rather tie our balls to a 747 and give the clearance from the tower ourselves than watch golf, but that's the truth.
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100+ cocktails to you, sir. Could not agree more.
However, watching a game from the Left Field Lounge in Starksville is something everybody should do once, because it involves lots of ILLEGAL alcohol and BBQ.
by yoyofutbawl on Dec 13, 2007 3:35 PM EST reply actions
So Less Than Zero is among the highest forms of literature, according to Prof. Swindle?
by ProfKid93 on Dec 13, 2007 3:39 PM EST reply actions
It’s ironic because as much as pro baseball annoys me, and it’s to pretty epic proportions, it’s still the most fun non-individual sport to actually play.
by Bobby Decatur on Dec 13, 2007 3:41 PM EST reply actions
Parole Officer: “Mr. Swindle, why do you have ‘Die Baseball, Die’ tattooed on your chest?”
Orson: "No, that’s German for “The Baseball, The.”
Parole Officer: “No one who speaks German can be an evil man! Parole granted!”
by rusty on Dec 13, 2007 3:42 PM EST reply actions
That’s about fake people doing cocaine. Stories about real people doing blow in the ’80s are the shit, not fake ones.
by Orson Swindle on Dec 13, 2007 3:42 PM EST reply actions
I thought there was no one on earth who hated baseball more than my brother and I. I was wrong.
ONE. HUNDRED. COCKTAILS.
by Seven Years in Gainesville on Dec 13, 2007 3:42 PM EST reply actions
I’m a cubs fan, and for the record, every single cubs fan realizes that “the whole thing is a front for beer-drinking and lolling around outside for a few days.”
by Anon on Dec 13, 2007 3:43 PM EST reply actions
I agree.
Baseball. 162 games and they need a playoff to figure out which team is best? Stoopid.
by UgasTexan on Dec 13, 2007 3:44 PM EST reply actions
which sums up the beauty of bill james and sabermetrics, you can finally enjoy baseball without the bother of watching the boring games.
by kleph on Dec 13, 2007 3:45 PM EST reply actions
Well said, Anon. I can’t fucking stand Royals games, but I enjoy Cubs games because, well, the whole thing is a front for beer-drinking and lolling around outside. And scoping Trixie trim.
by PeteJayhawk on Dec 13, 2007 3:45 PM EST reply actions
You took the word right out of my mouth, Orson…It just sounds better when you type it. Baseball sucks. That’s all I got.
by crimson daddy on Dec 13, 2007 3:46 PM EST reply actions
Noted, Orson. Although the movie did star Robert Downey Jr., who while playing a fake person doing cocaine in the 80s was also a real person doing cocaine in the 80s.
by ProfKid93 on Dec 13, 2007 3:48 PM EST reply actions
When you look at every other major team sport in America, break it down to its simplest form, you have a war game. One team attempting to attack the other team’s territory and perform some task (typically involving a goal and a ball), while the other team tries to stop them, and vice versa. Football, basketball, hockey — all the same basic formula, just with different playing surfaces, equipment and rules.
When you break down baseball to its simplest form, you have tag. Even the terminology is the same.
“I tagged you. You’re out.”
“Nu-huh. I was on base.”
“Were not.”
“Was too!”
(Dialogue from a Yankee’s game, or your neighbor’s backyard? You decide.)
In summary: Major League Baseball is rich, roided up grown men playing tag. America’s pasttime my ass.
by HFS on Dec 13, 2007 3:48 PM EST reply actions
Okay, Orson, tell us how you REALLY feel about baseball.
by BamaTaxMan on Dec 13, 2007 3:49 PM EST reply actions
Damn, baby, I better never divorce you. You can sure hold a grudge.
by The Conscience of a Nation on Dec 13, 2007 3:53 PM EST reply actions
Even a born and bred southerner loves and respects the Trixie Trim.
by Bobby Decatur on Dec 13, 2007 3:53 PM EST reply actions
Fine, you can say that baseball is boring, but can you integrate beer drinking and playing a form of football? No sir.
However, kegs+baseball=softball and nothing can beat that.
by gej on Dec 13, 2007 3:56 PM EST reply actions
Well said, 400 Quatloos (the official currency of brains in jars) to you, sir.
by Unhappy Monkey on Dec 13, 2007 3:57 PM EST reply actions
I think us Atlantans should just form an Atlanta Beer Drinking League, and whenever the Braves are in town, we’ll just hold an alternate ABDL event…and it’ll be truly what baseball is…and excuse to loll around outside, drink beer, and scope trim.
by Eric on Dec 13, 2007 3:58 PM EST reply actions
Orson,
That was so good that it brought a little tear to my eye. It was every bad thing that I ever thought about baseball, but rolled into a coherent dialog.
Not sure what you have against Family Guy though.
by Tebow_for_Heisman on Dec 13, 2007 3:58 PM EST reply actions
I’ll also add – and I know many will disagree – but I crack up when a baseball fan says he can’t watch soccer because it’s “too boring”.
You’re a fucking fan of baseball!!!
by Eric on Dec 13, 2007 3:58 PM EST reply actions
Bret EASTON Ellis. EASTON Baseball Equipment. Coincidence?
(yes.)
by panhandler on Dec 13, 2007 3:59 PM EST reply actions
Your mention of David Feherty brought back memories of a story he told about winning the Scottish Open
That evening started with him imbibing from the claret type trophy. The next morning he awoke on the 18th hole.
Of a golf course 30 miles away.
To this day he still doesn’t know what happened to the trophy.
by hunglikehussain on Dec 13, 2007 4:00 PM EST reply actions
Also, if you want to piss off a baseball fan, ask about how many “points” are scored. Not calling them “runs” makes people nuts.
“They’re not points, they’re runs!”
“But scoring is always done with points.”
“But in baseball they ‘run’ in. So they’re called runs.”
“Okay, well will you admit that scoring a run gets you one point?”
“BWAHH!” (explodes.)
“HA-ha. You like baseball.”
by panhandler on Dec 13, 2007 4:02 PM EST reply actions
America’s real pastime? Lacrosse.
—Brought to you by a history grad student
by robert on Dec 13, 2007 4:02 PM EST reply actions
#22, affiliate it w/ EDSBS and I’m in. But this would probably be the wrong thread to suggest an EDSBS softball team?
by Bobby Decatur on Dec 13, 2007 4:04 PM EST reply actions
+100 cocktails to Eric…
a slam on soccer and baseball in fell swoop… beautiful
by The Big East, The ACC, The PAC 10, The Big 12 on Dec 13, 2007 4:08 PM EST reply actions
I got a little confused for a minute. Usually when I read a rant of this magnitude at EDSBS, it involves Phil Fulmer… who suspiciously looks a lot like a baseball player. Discuss.
by Big Jon on Dec 13, 2007 4:08 PM EST reply actions
One Billion cocktails to you sir. And one fruity one with an umbrella for the first asshole that argues against your point.
by Steve on Dec 13, 2007 4:11 PM EST reply actions
This hatred toward’s America’s true game is what lost you people the Civil War.
That, and an unholy addiction to bourbon.
by sjs1959 on Dec 13, 2007 4:11 PM EST reply actions
I don’t hate baseball, I mostly tolerate it, even kind of like it when the Braves are on, but I am in complete agreement that the grandiose heritage of the game is incredibly overblown. And no, no self-respecting sport should need 162 games in its regular season.
If football has a play clock, why can’t baseball have a “pitch clock”?
by Doug on Dec 13, 2007 4:13 PM EST reply actions
wow…and to top it all off, an ad for a baseball coaching DVD at the end…
no…words…should have…sent…a…poet…
by Anon on Dec 13, 2007 4:14 PM EST reply actions
#23: Wanna help me write an episode of Family Guy? Should take about five minutes, four if we do the chicken fight thing. We can animate it in fifteen.
by Hannibal Montegna on Dec 13, 2007 4:19 PM EST reply actions
This reminds me of the time we went to a Braves game and saw Ted Turner making love to a corpse.
by TigerNacho on Dec 13, 2007 4:22 PM EST reply actions
Why does he hate family guy?
Simple. Orson is anti-MANATEE.
In baseball, the athletes make the kids who can’t compete or don’t care as much look bad.
In football, you can find a role for every kid, even the one who plays with the grass. I still don’t like baseball because I was one of the grass kids.
Shit’s boring as fuck, but football . . . there’s something catartic and primeaval that just feels good when you play and it doesn’t take much to play, but it’s nearly impossible to master.
by The Bull-Gator on Dec 13, 2007 4:22 PM EST reply actions
This is the greatest thing I’ve ever read on this site, and I’ve read every day for about two years now.
by The Humanitarian on Dec 13, 2007 4:25 PM EST reply actions
I watched a couple of the 1AA playoff games this year. Didn’t watch a single MLB game. I think the Red Sox won the series, don’t care.
I do watch LSU baseball, though. Haven’t been able to shake that habit.
by TigerNacho on Dec 13, 2007 4:26 PM EST reply actions
catartic = cathartic
me not spel gud
me fail inglish? unpossible!
by The Bull-Gator on Dec 13, 2007 4:26 PM EST reply actions
Orson, I do so love this board and your vocabu-licious skills. The other board that i frequent is like:
Participant # 1. Fuck you!
Participant # 2. You’re a dickhead!
[/emoticon flipping birds]
Whilst you give me tidbits thusly:
“no one better at pulling a phantom peanut of sublimity from a steaming turd of reality”
Cocktails to you sir!
BTW did you know that dickhead actually exists in the spell check?
by hunglikehussain on Dec 13, 2007 4:46 PM EST reply actions
That Mickey Mantle quote was pretty awesome. We’ll how the old ball and chain responds to it on Friday evening.
by Ryno on Dec 13, 2007 4:48 PM EST reply actions
I think we all agree that the greatest American sport, by far, is College Football. Everything else is just bread and circuses designed to numb the masses.
And nothing is more numbing (mind or ass) than baseball.
The finest treatise on the fallicy of baseball’s place in American society I have yet to read. Great stuff.
Oh and ‘Ball Four’ is a must read. Ballplayers on the roof of a buidling with a telescope checking out chicks in the building across the street-that is baseball.
by conky on Dec 13, 2007 4:55 PM EST reply actions
Usually I agree with, and find everything on EDSBS hillarious. I do love baseball. Its the closest thing to comercially viable fine art that Americans produce. That’s why the whole steriods thing is such a shame. I just don’t understand people that don’t love baseball, and only have room for one sport football.
Don’t get me wrong, I love college football. It is what consumes my brain for half of the year. But there is something simple, yet complex about baseball that is just different and more subtle.
Anyway, you kids these days need to learn a little respect for our national pasttime . . . there’s room for two loves, and If you’re going to hate a sport, turn your derision on Hockey, soccer, badminton or someother non-american waste of space.
by WDBill on Dec 13, 2007 4:56 PM EST reply actions
So Orson…don’t sugar-coat it…tell us how you really feel ’bout baseball!
by Alagator on Dec 13, 2007 4:59 PM EST reply actions
Personally I can’t wait for the Mitchell Report II: Football Boogaloo. That is coming, right?
by Dess of the T'ubervilles on Dec 13, 2007 5:02 PM EST reply actions
And here I thought nothing of literary value could ever come from an English major. That sir, is a masterpiece.
by Allen on Dec 13, 2007 5:02 PM EST reply actions
@49
That one’s going to be easy, I’ve got an advanced copy of that list: “Everyone.*”
*no, seriously everyone.
by NDTom on Dec 13, 2007 5:05 PM EST reply actions
Anyway, you kids these days need to learn a little respect for our national pasttime . . .
Not my national pasttime, and never will be.
by Orson Swindle on Dec 13, 2007 5:15 PM EST reply actions
Orson,
I have to agree whole heartedly….but a guy I used to work with at UPS while I was in college , had a plan…it involved building a batting cage for his 8yr old son to learn to hit and pitch…fast forward 18yrs later…his son just signed a $53 million dollar deal after winning the Cy Young award…that son grew up to be Jake Peavey…and his dad is actually freakin nuts, but his genius cant be denied…..and he loves football, but fiquered baseball is a “career” sport..his attitude?
Baseball is safer….which means =easy money…his son was too short for Basketball, too little for football, put had a cannon for an arm, boring or not, baseball pays stupid money, even if no one shows up to watch it…..but Soccer is a communist plot from Communist countries trying to weasel there way in, like Dora the Explorer, trying to brainwash spanish and soccer at the same time on our kids…..
by Mr Pelican Pants on Dec 13, 2007 5:15 PM EST reply actions
Haven’t read Bill Lee’s “The Wrong Stuff”, have you? Far more drugs, groupies and sex with drugs while on groupies (or whatever) than Jim Bouton and the ’86 Mets combined.
It’s what America is all about.
by doctorevil on Dec 13, 2007 5:16 PM EST reply actions
In lieu of the baseball scandal, EDSBS will be having mandatory drug test to all the posters….The blogosphere has no room for perfomance enhancing drugs….so if mine comes up positive for Dianabol, Winstrol V, Deca-Durabolin, Cytomel,Viagra,Propecia,Clomid,Clenbuterol, Lor Tabs,Primobolan,Somotropin,Anadrol 50….and random fish paralyzers….I hurt my shoulder helping an elderly lady move….these keep the inflammation down…plus I play in a pretty competitive Cricket League when I am not playing Australian Rules football….I think the announcers should be able to take steroids, especially the women…..
by Mr Pelican Pants on Dec 13, 2007 5:28 PM EST reply actions
former baseball player, fan, enthusiast, basically live-and-breathe-baseball-man here……..but no longer.
there is no strategy in baseball anymore. there once was, but now it is only about home runs and strikeouts. i still play in summer leagues because i love to play. but i rarely watch it anymore and even when i do go to the park it is for the whole ballpark experience (like yelling at bullpen pitchers and winning money from high school kids at the radar gun toss). i only really watch a few innings and wander around the rest.
everything wrong with baseball starts and ends with the owners. that cartel is worse than the BCS. they didn’t give a shit about players injecting themselves because it led to more home runs, more strikeouts and, thus, more butts in seats.
baseball needs mark cuban owning the cubs, but that will never happen because of the shithead owners.
by fattus on Dec 13, 2007 5:28 PM EST reply actions
Question for baseball fans:
If the sport is so much better in person than on TV, then why does every ballpark have bars, restaurants, acrcades, Ferris Wheels, etc?
by sandman227 on Dec 13, 2007 5:34 PM EST reply actions
I will say this…..Baseball is painful for anyone with ADD or ADHD to have to watch, live or at home….
at least with football you have constant action and drama….I only tune into baseball to watch the last 2 innings or last 1/2 of the 9th when the home team is behind…it just takes too long to get there, the pitcher gets too much time to shake off pitches, the batter has a choice whether he wants to wait on the pitcher, you could literally watch someone bat for 5 goddamn minutes….I say you get up there, ya get penalized if ya step out that box, or the pitcher can bean ya if ya step out of the batters box, just to be a dick…you get in the batters box, the pitcher steps on the mound and has like 3 secs to bring it, every time…a “pitch clock” if you will…..something, hell make the ball explode every once in a while
by Mr Pelican Pants on Dec 13, 2007 5:40 PM EST reply actions
- 47
On some of these points I agree with you. If baseball is a thinking man’s sport, football is a drinking man’s sport.
Baseball is a sport you can take your elderly grandmother to see, football it’s the Romans vs. Jews part II.
Tailgating in baseball is…..to tell you the truth I have never seen it. Tailgating in football involves mounds of red meat, tribal cries and a certain alpha male type sexuality.
Baseball is General Omar Bradly. Football is General George Patton.
Baseball is Benjamin Disraeli. Football is Huey “Kingfish” Long.
In conclusion, different strokes for different folks. I hope this doesn’t make you feel like a wienie.
by hunglikehussain on Dec 13, 2007 5:46 PM EST reply actions
Baseball Is Like Smooching Dept:
Grew up in Southern California, where playing baseball almost everyday was a whole lot of fun. Also enjoyed playing football, basketball and other sports.
But, watching baseball on TV, or even at Dodger Stadium or The Big "A"_hole, where the Los Angeles Angeles of Whiney-Heim play, when I get free tickets… man, I must agree with #55 (Fattus), it is pure torture.
Baseball reminds me of smooching…I like doing it myself, but do not care to see others do it one iota (whatever ‘iota’ means)…..
by Stacy Keibler Luvs Me on Dec 13, 2007 5:53 PM EST reply actions
Baseball is watching a game with your father. Having a cold beer and hot dog on a warm day in the summer at the ball park. Baseball is arguing statistics and salaries. Some of the best memories I have with my father were going to the ball park. We went to football games too, but baseball games were just more laid back and we talked more (I guess there’s alot more breaks and yes, less action, to talk).
I would never argue that baseball is more exciting or a better sport than football. But it is a nice diversion on a summer day, especially if you have a great ballpark in your city to go to.
I played for about 10 years until a motorcycle injury ended any aspirations of playing in college. But as Pelican Pants suggested, as soon as my son can throw a ball or hold a bat, I’ll teach him how to play.
by Palouse on Dec 13, 2007 5:54 PM EST reply actions
I love baseball, but I think this is hilarious stuff. Good work.
Sidenote regarding one of the comments: The constant action argument is pretty weak given that in the 3.5 hours of watching a football game you get about 10 minutes of actual “action” in between the quarterback standing around hunched over men making signals with his hands and yelling about, watching the referees dawdle over to the replay cam or slow drawl the official verdict on a penalty we already knew about, etc etc etc. Sports are boring except when their not. Every sport has downtime.
by Mat on Dec 13, 2007 5:54 PM EST reply actions
Mr. Pelican Pants, no more cocktails for you!
by hunglikehussain on Dec 13, 2007 5:56 PM EST reply actions
#58
people go for the ballpark experience, not to watch the game.
by fattus on Dec 13, 2007 5:56 PM EST reply actions
Can’t add much… baseball does suck. But, I did like Less Than Zero (book only). Of course I was one of those real people doing blow in the eighties, so I feel okay about that.
by Mr. Wrong on Dec 13, 2007 5:58 PM EST reply actions
Orson:
So you got cut from Little League . . . time to get over it, my friend!
Still, an enjoyable read, and I happen to agree with you on The Family Guy.
In my view:
College football and college basketball (and most other college sports) > Pro Tennis > Major League Baseball > all other pro sports
by Big Ten Joe on Dec 13, 2007 5:58 PM EST reply actions
I am an English grad student. I came here to take a break from writing a final in which I talk about Baudrillard. And there he is staring me in the face.
Thank you for making life just that much more absurd. And wrathful.
by KenyonBuck on Dec 13, 2007 6:07 PM EST reply actions
I don’t hate baseball like Orson does, but it’s not something you can watch straight through. Ok to have a game as a backup while you avoid commercials from your main shows.
Baseball is long periods of boredom followed by short periods of intense action.
Football is short periods of boredom followed by short periods of intense action.
Basketball is almost continuous action, but not very intense.
Hockey is complete continuous action, overwhelming and impossible to translate to TV.
I’ll say this for baseball, though, it can be hela good to listen to on the radio. Much better than football, the announcers just don’t have enough time to describe everything.
by Reasonable_Bama_Fan on Dec 13, 2007 6:15 PM EST reply actions
After reading this, yea, even as a baseball fan, I am left to gasp in rapt amazatation.
A batting helmet filled with potent cocktails to you, sir.
by NRBQ on Dec 13, 2007 6:18 PM EST reply actions
Baseball will always trump football in my book! As for the no tailgating comment, just go a see game at Wrigley. It’s 81 games of pure tailgating gold in Wrigleyville.
And lets be honest, that loser doing the imitations of Madden doesn’t even come close to the pure awesomeness of Farrell doing Harry!
by Wippuh on Dec 13, 2007 6:22 PM EST reply actions
My Bad Dept:
- 66 Mr. Wrong asks: “Not even if its two beautiful girls?”
Mr Wrong: I was wrong there….that would be cool! But, both babes have to be hot. I remember seeing Madonna and Brittney Spears kiss a while back on TV. It looked like someone kissing their aunt on the lips. Kind of wierd.
by Stacy Keibler Luvs Me on Dec 13, 2007 6:24 PM EST reply actions
#64
I was just making a point…I was actually pretty good at baseball…played baseball/football since I was 5, and many of my friends went onto pro baseball out of high school…I just hated catching unless I got to hit somebody at home plate…and thats why I loved football, some one talks smack, and its legal to knock their heads off when you catch em on a reverse or interception when they dont see it comin…plus baseball at the park ball level usually means getting home at 11pm or later depending on the game schedule, then getting up at 6am for school when your 7-8-9-10-11-12yrs old, plus playing doubleheaders on Saturdays got to be like a job with all the hrs and schoolwork….had to pick one to drop and I gladly picked baseball on time consumption alone
by Mr Pelican Pants on Dec 13, 2007 6:24 PM EST reply actions
To each his own, but I love it.
Tailgating in baseball = Wrigleyville or Yawkey Way. If you haven’t done it, you should.
And while a previous poster noted the home run dominance of this era, it’s so much fun to watch teams with payrolls under 50 mill play small ball, even if Billy Bean thinks it doesn’t work.
In my opinion, hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports. Couple that with the mental games between pitcher/batter, double switches (managing in the AL is shit), pinch runners, Jake Peavy pinch hitting in the 13th because he is literally the only player left, Glove Gems, spikes high, high and tight, Old Style, summer… rambling. I love it.
And the best part about baseball, ever? Thirsty Thursday at a AA stadium.
by Tater Salad on Dec 13, 2007 6:26 PM EST reply actions
I have to agree with most of the recent comments. As an English major myself, I applaud your commentary. However, one of the first things you learn is that this world is one full of “both/and”s instead of “either/or”s.
College football has an unrivaled atmosphere, and I have some of my greatest childhood memories going to AU games. Those experiences continued through college and into today.
The atmosphere with baseball is different, but in a different way. As compared ot football, in my opinion, the landscape of baseball has changed less drastically over time than has football. When watching a baseball game, I can’t help but think that I am participating in the same experience that generations upon generations of Americans have experienced.
As for being a Southerner, the tilt in the “tailgating” or social experience/atmosphere category definately tilts in favor of football. In the south we never had a major league baseball franchise until the Braves moved to ATL. As everyone knows, this is why college sports are more important in the south than up north; we didn’t have any professional teams to get behind.
There is nothing like a cool saturday with a cooler full of cocktails tailgating for a football game though.
by WDBill on Dec 13, 2007 6:36 PM EST reply actions
Well its gonna be hard to convert football types to baseball when there is no Spread offense….just saying
by Mr Pelican Pants on Dec 13, 2007 6:42 PM EST reply actions
Thirsty Thursdays ROCK! I’m only missed a handful of Birmingham Baron’s Thirsty Thursdays in the last 7 years!
by Wippuh on Dec 13, 2007 6:47 PM EST reply actions
I’ve told several people this before, but I think it bears mentioning again: Orson used to be the biggest baseball fan I knew. He was a stat hound, could explain the infield fly rule so that even my mom could understand it; we’d watch Baseball Tonight with Peter Gammons every evening and went to UF baseball games on dates all the time. I remember some lovely afternoons spent watching the Cardinals spring training at Al Lang Stadium (which, if you’re from St. Pete, you know is thisclose to heaven on a sunny day.)
Oh, and Big Ten Joe— he didn’t get cut from Little League; he was a volunteer umpire.
It’s not that he doesn’t get baseball. Really. He just stopped loving it, bit by bit, scandal by strike. It was sad to watch, actually, like a messy divorce between friends.
by The Conscience of a Nation on Dec 13, 2007 6:48 PM EST reply actions
We all know the moon isn’t made of green cheese…but if it was made of pork ribs, would you eat it????
by Ltrain on Dec 13, 2007 6:53 PM EST reply actions
Kinda like I’ve stopped loving this thread. I just don’t understand the antagonism for another American institution. Like I said earlier, save your vitriol for soccer. Most people that I have found that dislike baseball are kinda ambivilent to it.
by WDBill on Dec 13, 2007 6:55 PM EST reply actions
#78
Mr. pelican pants, that’s spread EAGLE offense.
I meant to differentiate between that and the Las Vegas spread offense, which is a favorite of mine.
by hunglikehussain on Dec 13, 2007 6:58 PM EST reply actions
In my opinion there are only three sports that matter: college football, non-US futbol, and wrestling. College football is America’s pastime. More schools were playing ball when baseball was still only played in the Northeast. I also forgive Jim Thorpe for having played baseball. His biggest accomplishments were at Carlislie and the Olympics. Non-US futbal has all the passion of college football and there is no thing like the World Cup. Also I respect the hell out futbal officals since they are also running and all theletes are in insane shape. Wrestling is the real test of manhood. It is just you and the other guy going mano a mano. Boxing should also be included.
by Anonymous IV on Dec 13, 2007 7:11 PM EST reply actions
Well I’ll say this…the best thing about Spring training in Florida….the gold diggin groupies….I was in Ft. Lauderdale in during spring training, met A-Rod in a dive bar, he had a AMEX Centurion card that the bar tender said kept getting declined…
by Mr Pelican Pants on Dec 13, 2007 7:13 PM EST reply actions
Soccer Dept:
#82: WDBill, You write about saving hate for soccer. But, may I ask by soccer, what do you mean? If it is the ghastly MLS, I totally agree. That is one mess on top of another mess.
But, World Cup soccer is awesome. Multiply the passion (or hate) between ’Bama vs Auburn 100 times.
Top professional leagues, (England, Italy, Spain and some South American countries) play at great levels.
A lot of fun to watch, while drinking Irish beer, blah, blah, blah….
by Stacy Keibler Luvs Me on Dec 13, 2007 7:19 PM EST reply actions
I just turned in a 22-page paper on Baudrillard, hyperconformity, mediation, and sports spectatorship. It was awful.
looks over shoulder, expecting to find Orson standing there
by Land of Os(borne) on Dec 13, 2007 7:41 PM EST reply actions
i love baseball at all levels, but purely as a specator sport it can’t carry football’s jock. i grew up playing both so i have an appreciation for the intricacies of both. football is now america’s sport, but i would say it only has been for about 15 years or so.
and don’t even fucking bring soccer into this. any activity where acting hurt is a regular occurance and even encouraged is being played a bunch of ass clowns.
by gerry dorsey on Dec 13, 2007 7:43 PM EST reply actions
Fattus:
It was a facetious question.
I’m not casting stones at anyone who loves baseball, but the talking heads repeating “record attendance” stats need to give it a rest. The fact of the matter is that no other major sport has to resort to having amusement parks in the stadium in order to drive attendance.
I can understand minor league teams having “bat night” and other events, but major league teams shouldn’t need gimmicks to draw people in.
by sandman227 on Dec 13, 2007 7:44 PM EST reply actions
And a Pulitzer in journalism for you, Mr. Swindle.
Now run tell that shit on the mountain.
by She Blinded Me With Violence on Dec 13, 2007 7:56 PM EST reply actions
Orson, if you get run out of the country for your hatred of baseball, you are welcome in Canada. Our football is subpar but at least our national sports are hockey and lacrosse.
Baseball isn’t a sport it is a pastime like knitting or stamp collecting.
Baseball is America’s national pastime. Football is America’s national sport.
by Go Blue, Eh on Dec 13, 2007 8:24 PM EST reply actions
Oh, boy. Yeesh. I haven’t seen a tantrum like that since the last big family holiday with my 3-year-old niece.
But seriously, after taking note of TCOAN’s #80, I truly feel sorry for Orson. Nobody should have to go through anything that painful. But that’s what a true artist does: takes his pain and turns it into something beautiful. One hundred cocktails to you, genius. I couldn’t disagree with you more, but at least in a few respects, this is still a free country.
Some people like football, some people like baseball. Some of us swing both ways. If we had a hockey team in SF, I’d go to a few games, but that’s because I grew up where you could build your own rink for three months out of the year, if the weather held.
(My own estrangement from pro football isn’t rage-filled, just cold-blooded. The best I can do these days is muster a half-hearted yippie for the Packers, because no NFL team in Alta California is worth a damn, and the less I think about the Lions, the happier I am.)
Just my 2¢…
by PJ from NU in SF on Dec 13, 2007 8:27 PM EST reply actions
On a separate note, I’ve never understood the whole “soccer is a commie conspiracy” meme, since professional soccer in Europe is far closer to a capitalist system than MLB, to say nothing of the parity-enforcing socialism of the NFL.
by Chuck on Dec 13, 2007 8:32 PM EST reply actions
i actually think roland barthes’ ‘mythologies’ offers a more useful model to critique the baseball phenomenon than baudrillard. plus, it’s very short.
(tries desperately to hide massive wood for this bullshit)
by ESMjr. on Dec 13, 2007 8:36 PM EST reply actions
I used to like baseball well enough. The Braves sucked, but Dale Murphy was the shit. All of a sudden the Braves started winning, and I was happy. Then, somewhere around age 26 I realized that baseball was really dull. Maybe it was the psychotropic drugs catching up with me, but it became a meandering evening of high, low, outside, linedrive, homerun(still boring), leaping catch, diving stop, pitch count, trip to the mound, and so on, and it just bloody sucked. I’ve watched football high and it was a wonderful excursion into strategy. I wondered what the guard might do on a given play. What a well designed play, I’d think as I watched an off-tackle run go for seven yards. I’ve seen baseball high and fallen asleep. I lost it or it lost me. I’m not sure which, but I agree with this entire rant by Orson.
by Biggus Rickus on Dec 13, 2007 9:10 PM EST reply actions
Dude,
I’m only halfway through the screed and I had to stop and tell you how perfect it is. You have given written form to my total disdain for all that is baseball and for that I cannot thank you enough.
by Hokie Andrew on Dec 13, 2007 9:23 PM EST reply actions
Sorry, you totally lost me after you pissed all over Motorhead. To say musicians are full of shit is like saying a baseball game is boring. While true, it is unnecessary because everyone has accepted it as fact.
by John on Dec 13, 2007 9:32 PM EST reply actions
Also I gotta agree with SKLM. I’m not a huge fan of soccer, I played when I was younger like every kid in the burbs but it holds no interest for me now as an adult. But living in Brazil for a little while earlier this year I have to say that the atmosphere surrounding a soccer game down there is akin to any great rivalry game. It’s absolutely incredible.
And bundagaiting is just fucking awesome.
by Hokie Andrew on Dec 13, 2007 9:56 PM EST reply actions
Eeeeuch, baseball. Eeeeeeeuch. Give me football or give me death. Or hockey, hockey is actually pretty fucking fantastic.
It’s a damned shame that people will watch a hockey game on TV and then decide they don’t like it. TV hockey != real actual hockey.
God, what a glorious sport. And college hockey, too, for actually playing a game instead of just trying to fight as many other players as possible.
by Erik on Dec 13, 2007 10:06 PM EST reply actions
I’m sure you knew this already, but fingernails and hair do not grow on corpses. They appear to grow as the surrounding flesh loses moisture and pulls away. Kind of like the process for making beef jerky.
by Chris on Dec 13, 2007 10:14 PM EST reply actions
- - Soccer is fun to play, but the Red Card is the most heavy-handed penalty in all of sports because it makes you play shorthanded for the rest of the game and the player is out the next game.
Maybe it was a good idea before ACLs could be repaired, but in this day and age, it just encourages sissified flopping. Americans who grew up on football know what contact looks like, and a shoestring hitting your shin isn’t contact, no matter how much you wince in fake pain on the pitch.
by NewAZTiger on Dec 13, 2007 10:15 PM EST reply actions
Some of these guys (apparently) paid for illegal drugs using personal checks. Who buys drugs with a check?! That’s a whole new level of stupid. That’s approaching London Fletcher-type levels.
by Flatlander on Dec 13, 2007 10:31 PM EST reply actions
You got that right. The only decent thing about baseball is that it spawned wiffle ball, which can be played by as few as three drunk people in an area the size of a living room.
I think this would havve been an appropriate critique on any given day, but considering an official report on cheaters is out, I guess it is even more poignant.
Long live wiffle ball. Let us never speak the name of it’s pathetic ancesor again.
by bama_buck on Dec 13, 2007 10:56 PM EST reply actions
hunglikehussain @ 60
“Baseball is General Omar Bradly. Football is General George Patton.
Baseball is Benjamin Disraeli. Football is Huey Kingfish Long."
You had it going there, for awhile, but then you lost me. PLEASE don’t liken football to the “Kingfish.” I love football, and Huey Long was…you know…a thieving, slimeball douchebag.
by StageCoach on Dec 13, 2007 11:01 PM EST reply actions
Flatlander @ 102
Jerry Springer paid for a hooker with a check. While he was Mayor of Cncinnati. THAT, sir, is a new level of stupidity. OK, maybe not so new a level…but it did set the bar pretty high.
by StageCoach on Dec 13, 2007 11:05 PM EST reply actions
I think that’s German for “The Baseball, The”
by irishoutsider on Dec 13, 2007 11:07 PM EST reply actions
Orson
Since you referenced George Will, I am surprised you didn’t include his remark about football. It was quite a few years ago, in an editorial about his love for baseball:
“Football represents the worst aspects of American society, moments of extreme violence interspersed with committee meetings.”
by StageCoach on Dec 13, 2007 11:17 PM EST reply actions
You know why some of the people on this thread want to teach their sons to play baseball? Because it’s a game for children. When I first moved to the States, we watched baseball – why? Because it’s obvious, and when it’s late August in southern California and you have no a/c, staying still is a plus.
If you want to get a sense of the intrinsic value and excitement of baseball, take a look at how it’s traveled to other countries. People like to talk about how American sports are unique, but that’s not strictly true as it relates to whether they get played elsewhere. So let’s take a peek, shall we?
Football doesn’t travel because it’s corporate rugby – more rules, more equipment, similar ass-kicking ethos. Just look at American Samoa and (formerly Western) Samoa: two areas with enormous Polynesians who have adapted to sports for hitting people, depending on who took them over. So there’s that, it’s no knock on football.
Basketball has traveled all over the world because all you need is a couple of hoops and a ball. Ten genetic freaks are a help, but not strictly required.
Baseball? Only taken a hold in countries that the US has invaded or quasi-occupied, when there was no competing sport already in place. You think it’s a coincidence that it’s popular in Japan, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba? (I’m excluding Australia because they’ll play anything.)
As for the hacking on “communist” soccer, whatever. No salary caps, no anti-trust exemption, promotion / relegation between leagues, and championships based on the results of games played vice voting on who looks good. Yeah, that’s socialist all right. Maybe there’s no room left for that data in amongst all the baseball stats that fans carry around in their heads – and that to me is really the most damning thing of all about baseball:
It’s a sport so tedious that people amuse themselves with accounting exercises to fill in the time.
by DC Trojan on Dec 13, 2007 11:24 PM EST reply actions
Part of me wonders whether Irigaray would say if she evaluated the baseball world. It wants to make a joke about how everyone, even those not on steroids, is thought of as a user.
But then the rest of me tells that part of me to shut up, and forget ever having taken French 311.
by Chuck on Dec 13, 2007 11:56 PM EST reply actions
I agree with all of this, a great rant on a blog full of great rants, except that Test Match Cricket lasts 5 days not 3, unless, of course, England are playing where their defeat is usually assured in 3!
I did attend a Braves game once with a diehard Braves fan who assured me that the genius of the game was in the subtle battle between Maddux and whatever fat fool was batting. I was sitting half a fucking mile away! And yet somehow I missed the nuance of Maddux cutting the corner of home plate. Three hours of my life I will never get back but never another three wasted on baseball.
by Nobody Else on Dec 14, 2007 12:08 AM EST reply actions
Mr Pelican Pants way back @ #59:
“…you could literally watch someone bat for 5 goddamn minutes…”
One of my favorite stories about baseball sucking came from a buddy who went to an astros game in the late 80’s and witnessed Kevin Bass foul off something like 17 straight pitches. You could grow old and die watching shit like that.
On a side note, my sister goes to school with Bret Saberhagen’s daughter and she just recently returned the only Saberhagen cards I could dig up (two ‘87 Fleers and something from a box of Quaker chewy granola bars) signed by the very man who broke my heart when he lead his Royals to victory against my beloved Cards (in about the last year I remember actually caring about baseball—1985). Lucky he even had the chance…everyone knows that Todd Worrell’s foot was clearly on the bag.
And finally, this is about the most memorable thing I’ve seen on EDSBS since I became a daily regular, after getting hooked by the first thing I read on here (the ESPN checklist) what was it, two years ago? Very well done Orson.
by DT on Dec 14, 2007 1:05 AM EST reply actions
I guess my loss of the love of the game of baseball started with my moms hate for the time it took out of her schedule since she divorced my dad when I was 7….he was the coach of our park league team,and by coach I mean Bad News Bears style coach with Budweiser on tap…we were usually done practicing by Happy Hour…..she HATED washing clothes and socks full of red dirt and wondered why in the hell baseball just had to have white pants and had to play on red clay, since that always meant having red dirt or blood stains engrained into them on a daily basis….I slid every where, even if I was safe by a mile and that always pissed her off, which in turned meant us getting home at 11pm on game nights and her having to wash and bleach and destain the uniform for the 9am game the next morn….I am sure there are women everywhere who used to be fans of baseball til their sons tracked in red clay into the house…..
by Mr Pelican Pants on Dec 14, 2007 1:10 AM EST reply actions
Of course I meant “…when he LED his Royals…”
(I only received a minor in English, although I once attended a seminar on proofreading.)
by DT on Dec 14, 2007 1:11 AM EST reply actions
Now hockey, on a semi pro level, is fun to watch…..just for the live up close fights, you have to have mad skillz to fight with skates on, especially while getting pummelled at the same time, trying to keep your balance while throwing some sort of bizarre rapid fire hay makers…that makes hockey and for that fact
“SLAP SHOT” the best sport movie ever….long live the Hansen Brothers…….that movie made me want to put down my baseball gear and learn hockey,alas, there is no hockey in South Alabama in 90 degree heat….
by Mr Pelican Pants on Dec 14, 2007 1:27 AM EST reply actions
Moneyball was a pretty acceptable little book, I thought.
Otherwise, dead-on. This is the best EBSDS in a minute; thanks a lot for the laughs.
by Nick Black on Dec 14, 2007 2:09 AM EST reply actions
(yes, I know I’m a Johnny-come-very-lately, but… fuck you)
Orson, you’re a golden god for writing this. I’m going to print it off, lovingly frame each page and simply point to it every time my roommate tries to get me to watch the fucking Indians. This needed to be written more than anything ever.
by poguemahone on Dec 14, 2007 2:15 AM EST reply actions
Say what you want about baseball, Orson, it’s had its day in the sun.
But bashing English grad students? Haven’t they suffered enough?
by Joe on Dec 14, 2007 3:41 AM EST reply actions
DC Trojan -
Soccer is also immensely popular because, um, you only need a fucking ball for people to play.
That’s part of the beauty and mass appeal of soccer. You don’t need special equipment to play it at its most rudimentary level…you just need something to kick around. Part of the limited appeal of baseball is the need for gloves, bats, balls, bases measured 90 feet apart, an elevated pitching mound, etc
by notthequarterback on Dec 14, 2007 5:03 AM EST reply actions
I’ve been a Braves fan since moving to Montgomery in 1979. Thank God for TBS showing every single game. I remember summers playing all day outside and then coming in to watch the horrible Bravos try to not lose another game. I remember the bus trips up to Atlanta for games. Good times indeed.
Others have pointed out that going to games these days rivals circus acts on speed. The distractions MLB has put into place to keep interest levels up are embarassing. Kids want the side action, not the main action.
I couldn’t agree more with Orson’s take on the state of the game. What an absolute sham. Thankfully my 4 year old son is too young to even know that this game is forever tainted. He just finished his first t-ball season and it was the most thrilling thing I’ve ever been a part of. T-ball fucking rocks. Baseball fucking blows.
Fuck you Dave Justice.
by Bama93 on Dec 14, 2007 8:22 AM EST reply actions
107
We have stupider ones here in Charlotte, where a business owner paid for a high end hooker w/ a $3000 business check. The memo said “software consulting”.
Also, one client named “Skipper” left his
“meeting” in a white Mercedes SUV with a dealer tag. The Mercedes dealer here? Skipper Beck.
Dumb & Dumber.
by yoyofutbawl on Dec 14, 2007 8:26 AM EST reply actions
What I do not get about baseball is the following: Why does the Manager wear a uniform? That fat freak is not going into the game anytime soon. Actually, that would be funny if it were applied to college football. Seeing Mangino squeezed into a size XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL jersey with a helmet painted on his head (simulacra-style, like the Froggy Baudrillard would note), now that would be worth seeing.
by Harvey Wireman on Dec 14, 2007 8:48 AM EST reply actions
And then there is the Australian way to watch cricket:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/england/6169186.stm
by Not a Fifer on Dec 14, 2007 8:52 AM EST reply actions
That was a fun night in the All You Can Eat seats. Will have to have another Pants Party next season.
by UkraineNotWeak on Dec 14, 2007 8:52 AM EST reply actions
Orson, can you please post this in Spencer’s “mainstream” blog. You’re obviously preaching to the choir here and the rest of the world needs this. Maybe clean up the language a little.
Yes, DC, baseball is a sport for children, and I can’t wait for my three-year old to be ready for t-ball.
But even he sees football’s superiority: Last night, after his bath, I handed him his baseball underwear some grandparent had given him. He said “don’t we have any football ones?”
But I digress. Soccer is also a children’s sport. It’s entertaining to watch children play because, until they become skilled enough to play defense, there is actual scoring. At least when a football team doesn’t score, the drive can still affect the outcome through establishing field position.
by TIGERinATL on Dec 14, 2007 8:56 AM EST reply actions
“Plus, when you can quote shit like this pants just fly off smart ladies not quite smart enough to realize just how full of shit you really are:
?Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.?"
How true, how true. And yes, pseudo intellectuals, we know who you are and we hate you. That is why we will always vote Republican and hate the Dave Matthews Band.
by meatybob on Dec 14, 2007 8:57 AM EST reply actions
MLB baseball sucks, but at least it is better than synchronized swimming, male figure skating, NASCAR, curling, bocci ball, and the skeleton.
Nah, I like the skeleton, which I think is a winter sport where they throw some bloke down a slide on a two-by-four that just covers the ass and hopes he makes it alive down the slide.
by Harvey Wireman on Dec 14, 2007 9:12 AM EST reply actions
Fuktard rhetoric:
It’s probably just me, but I can’t look at any sport that involves money and think it’s free from cheating. No diversion here, just sad to me. Private enterprise one step ahead of anti-doping agencies and testing. All sports are a bunch of Flo-Jo-esque prima donna shitsticks.
by Tater Salad on Dec 14, 2007 9:13 AM EST reply actions
Sports = Professional athletes. What motion for summary judgment?
by Tater Salad on Dec 14, 2007 9:14 AM EST reply actions
Slow clap…
I also share your disdain for pro baseball. I do love college baseball though. I grew up going to Clemson games with my dad and brother, and my brother worked on the grounds crew while he was at Clemson which meant I got to meet some of the players. Once I arrived at Clemson, I watched many a game from a truck bed/scaffolding behind the outfield fence while drinking reasonably priced Busch Lights bought at the Lil Cricket. The people next to us had their own music they played between innings, and we routinely made the outfielders wish they had never made the trip to Clemson…one guy even changed jerseys in an attempt to get out of the heckling.
As for soccer, I played from the time I was 5 until I graduated at 22, and I loved the game. I used to always get pissed off when people would dive though…that crap is ridiculous. I also loved playing goalie because it was the only position where you could clobber somebody and get away with it. I’ll take soccer over the MLB anyday.
by Clemson327 on Dec 14, 2007 9:18 AM EST reply actions
This is some seriously impressive writing here, I’m just having a problem juxtaposing such eloquent nerdism with “hate of baseball”…
For the record, I root for the Tribe. I’m not sure if that really makes me a baseball fan though…It’s really just more of a hipster accessory, like claiming to actually like The Boredoms…
by Pants McPants on Dec 14, 2007 9:31 AM EST reply actions
AA Thirsty Thursdays with the Jacksonville Suns = teh awesome.
At least dumbass Baseball players provide us with spectacular and foolish deaths. High speed bass boat at night with no lights? Run that sumbitch under the nearest dock! Had a few drinks at the bar? Go full speed into the back of that tow truck that’s lit up like Rockefeller Center! Billy Martin? Billy Martin!
by Allahver Fist on Dec 14, 2007 9:33 AM EST reply actions
Skeleton belongs in the list of sport that should only be performed to blasting speed metal.
by Orson Swindle on Dec 14, 2007 9:42 AM EST reply actions
nothequarterback @ 121 – I’m glad that someone finished making my point since I was so riled up that I left it out.
TIGERinATL @ 128 – you plainly have a discerning son who is going to go far.
As for soccer being a low scoring sport – true, very true. If you don’t enjoy watching the ebb and flow of the game, it would be tedious in the extreme – but if nothing else, at least they are moving for the majority of the game. Run, you monkeys, run!
by DC Trojan on Dec 14, 2007 10:24 AM EST reply actions
hummmm….shiney titanium rectums
yupp…got yer new rock band name there Orson
well, that or Shit Vs Shinola
by Futbawl Fan on Dec 14, 2007 10:24 AM EST reply actions
meatybob-
“How true, how true. And yes, pseudo intellectuals, we know who you are and we hate you. That is why we will always vote Republican and hate the Dave Matthews Band.”
What a vicious, partisan, unfair thing to say. Hatred of the Dave Matthews Blah knows no party bounds. ;)
by The Conscience of a Nation on Dec 14, 2007 10:26 AM EST reply actions
After a lifetime of ignoring baseball and having attended a beer party that broke into a snoozefest Braves game, I share your sentiment…although I am still trying to find the inspiration for such phrases as “…pulling a phantom peanut of sublimity from a steaming turd of reality…”. Hats off for that gem…oh, and the multitudinous cocktails in your honor, of course…if its gin, I’m pourin’…
by sb on Dec 14, 2007 10:38 AM EST reply actions
Suffice it to say, I disagree. And I would only note in protest (since you appear to have this well thought-out) that judging baseball by a night out at Turner Field would be like judging all of college football based on seeing a game in the two-thirds empty Division II stadia of your choosing. Shit, I’d hate baseball, too, if that was my only major-league option within a half-day’s drive.
That, and the “impregnating strippers” thing being more a general attribute of any pro athlete regardless of sport — I think Brian Urlacher knocked up two strippers and a cocktail waitress during his morning commute yesterday.
by Papa Lou BSU on Dec 14, 2007 10:51 AM EST reply actions
Papa @ 141
- I would argue that comparing Turner Field to a “two-thirds empty Division II” stadium is going too far. The Theodore is more like what I imagine a Boston College game is like. No matter how good either BC or the Braves are, they would be outdrawn by hypothetical sub-0.500 Pats or UGA squads.
Also, are the LOOOOOOONG action-less stretches at, say Yankee Stadium, Fenway, or Busch Stadium any more bearable than the ones in Atlanta? I have been forced by the authorities to be sober at several Auburn games and, though not my first option, still enjoyed the games immensely. Could you honestly survive any 9+ inning baseball game sans lubrication? I know I couldn’t.
by TIGERinATL on Dec 14, 2007 11:29 AM EST reply actions
Not a fan of MLB, but a huge fan of college hardball. you still signs of strategy, desire to win, enthusiasm, and quality ball at the college level whereas in the pro’s it really is only about strike-outs and home runs. In college, small ball wins a lot of games. Gorilla ball is gaining ground and also gets the job done (LSU in its hayday, USCe now), but small ball is still fun to watch. A quick single, steal second. Sacrifice to third, and then Oh Shit it’s a squeeze at the plate!
by Out of Conference on Dec 14, 2007 11:33 AM EST reply actions
Could you honestly survive any 9+ inning baseball game sans lubrication? I know I couldnt.
The last time I tried was an Orioles afternoon game in the bleachers – it was about 104 in the sun so i spent my time swilling water and spraying SPF 9000 on my pale carcass. Some drunk bank manager called me an Iraqi raghead because I didn’t stand up during “God bless America” for the 7th inning stretch. It was the best.
In fairness, I did got to a couple of PawSox games in Pawtucket RI when I lived up that-a-way, and those were enjoyable – but when you get a bunch of Rhode Islanders in one place, hilarity ensues. The phrase “local color” hardly does them justice.
by DC Trojan on Dec 14, 2007 11:35 AM EST reply actions
Clarification on my Braves/Boston College FB comparison:
Unless the magnitude of the game is astronomical (world series or MNC implications) the passion is “meh” at best because these teams are NO ONES primary and rarely even secondary emotional sports investment. They are just distractions between UGA (or your SEC team of choice in the transplant city that is Atlanta)/Falcons games in Atlanta or Red Sox/Pats/Celtics/Bruins games in Boston.
by TIGERinATL on Dec 14, 2007 11:40 AM EST reply actions
We second that—please don’t lump democrats or even wily independents in with DMB fans. It’s grotesquely unfair to all concerned.
by Orson Swindle on Dec 14, 2007 11:55 AM EST reply actions
The text has become spectacle and is now more real than reality. The pdf is mightier than the syringe. The sensational has become sad (baseball) and the sad (Orson) has become sensational.
I like ______ . I dislike ______ .
You like _______ . You dislike _______ .
Some people like mayonnaise on their French fries.
Taste divides.
Very truly yours,
Pierre Bourdieu
by Pierre Bourdieu on Dec 14, 2007 11:56 AM EST reply actions
I like the fact that a football website is taking a shot at another sport for all their players using steroids…..that’s funny. Pot meet kettle.
by tom on Dec 14, 2007 12:14 PM EST reply actions
Sandman wrote:
“If the sport is so much better in person than on TV, then why does every ballpark have bars, restaurants, acrcades, Ferris Wheels, etc?”
A two-fold response…
a) Not every ballpark. Some of us don’t even need the amenity of having electricity flowing through our home team’s scoreboard.
and…
b) As opposed to the stadium clubs, bars, buffets, “family fun zones”, Home Depot-sized “team stores,” party decks, 20-acre jumbotrons and such that populate nearly every NFL stadium and an increasing number of college football stadiums these days?
I won’t defend the ferris wheel… but while I’m a Cub fan who lives within walking distance of Wrigley, I know plenty of Tigers fans, and they hate that damn abomination at Comerica Park more than anyone.
As a baseball fan, I can acknowledge that there are plenty of reasons to hate the sport (hell, you could start and end the argument by saying “Tim McCarver” and even the most rabid seamhead wouldn’t have a response). I think even Orson would agree your objection is not one of them, however.
by Papa Lou BSU on Dec 14, 2007 1:01 PM EST reply actions
#80: Ive told several people this before, but I think it bears mentioning again: Orson used to be the biggest baseball fan I knew. He was a stat hound, could explain the infield fly rule so that even my mom could understand it; wed watch Baseball Tonight with Peter Gammons every evening and went to UF baseball games on dates all the time. I remember some lovely afternoons spent watching the Cardinals spring training at Al Lang Stadium (which, if youre from St. Pete, you know is thisclose to heaven on a sunny day.)
Oh, and Big Ten Joe he didnt get cut from Little League; he was a volunteer umpire.
Its not that he doesnt get baseball. Really. He just stopped loving it, bit by bit, scandal by strike. It was sad to watch, actually, like a messy divorce between friends.
Comment by The Conscience of a Nation December 13, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
Thank God, then, that Orson managed to fill that void in his life with the non-hypocritical, scandal-free, non-profit wonder that is Division I-A football.
by DevilGrad on Dec 14, 2007 1:20 PM EST reply actions
#149
A sentiment echoed by my 1L Civil Procedure prof.
This was said after the Multi-state portion of the final was handed in..(He had written in a footnote on the essay portion that every third answer on the Multi-state portion was B)
by CapstoneAlum on Dec 14, 2007 1:31 PM EST reply actions
I only peripherally monitor baseball for two reasons:
1. David and Goliath matchups. I always tune in when a scrappy Marlins team is trying to take down the Yankees, for example.
2. The zen of being able to actually hit a baseball, or become a dominant pitcher. Zen-type stuff is big in practical shooting, golf, etc. and it’s really interesting to read about how guys suddenly lose it or get their mojo back. Of course, this has nothing to do with actually watching a game.
by Tim on Dec 14, 2007 1:45 PM EST reply actions
TCOAN (@80):
My Little League comment was simply intended as half-joking speculation, but your explanation is both appreciated and fascinating. Thanks.
Before college, I was a big fan of several pro sports—NFL, NBA, MLB—but now, while I spend an unbelievable amount of time engaged in following college sports, MLB is the only pro team sport I still regularly enjoy watching. Interestingly, I have grown sick of the NFL and NBA for many of the same reasons you say Orson fell away from baseball—and I agree there are major problems with MLB—but for some reason (maybe because I have been a fan of my hometown Twins—the quintessential small market team—since kindergarten, or that I spent a lot of time as a toddler watching my dad play softball) the problems with baseball have not been enough to keep me from coming back every April. Going to college in Evanston, which provided me the fortunate opportunity to spend several sunny late-spring and early-fall afternoons in and around Wrigley Field probably sealed the deal. Plus, one of my great-grandfathers was the catcher on the 1909 National Champion semi-pro team from Deadwood! (If you ever visit the No. 10 Saloon in Deadwood—where Wild Bill Hickock died—look for an old frame with photos of the team members. If you find it, you’ll see my great-grandpa Henry.
Orson’s experience does sound sad, as you say. Maybe there’s hope for the future, though. I’m still teaching my kindergarten-aged son and two younger daughters to catch, throw, and swing, just in case. :)
by Big Ten Joe on Dec 14, 2007 2:42 PM EST reply actions
I do agree with a lot of the problems you have with the game itself, Orson, but I think you really threw in a cheap shot with regard to how players make the MLB.
MOST players spend anywhere from 3-12 years scrapping around in the minors, making jack shit cash, despite being signed to a particular organization. Even then, most rookies have to prove their consistency and adjust to the MLB for another 2-4 years before even thinking about sniffing a big-money contract.
Football is way more egregious in this sense…Jamarcus Russell made 28 million WITHOUT TAKING A SNAP in the NFL. If that isn’t ridiculous I don’t know what is.
by Bay Area Bear on Dec 14, 2007 4:26 PM EST reply actions
Minor league baseball is just the counterpart to college football. Playing four years basically for room and board. If a minor leaguer hasn’t made it by four years, I guess he doesn’t have much shot.
Also, don’t a few big time high school players cash in on $ million signing bonuses to go develop in the minors? So there are a few who get big $$ up front.
There are also a lot of NFL players making league minimum and the top end NFL salaries are not close to A-rod money.
Finally, Jamarcuss Russell and every other NFL draftee has risked crippling injury playing college ball for, what, a $50 K public college education – call it $100 K when you factor in room and board. An education is great, but no gurantee of success. And after all, can you put a price on your ability to walk?
by TIGERinATL on Dec 14, 2007 5:18 PM EST reply actions
Just saw the link on Deadspin… of all the things written in the wake of the Mitchell Report yesterday, this was officially the dullest and least thought out. Congrats!
by John Kruk on Dec 14, 2007 8:52 PM EST reply actions
p.s. – For the record, baseball’s still the second most popular sport in America, behind only the NFL and ahead of college football. So, again, great job all around.
by John Kruk on Dec 14, 2007 8:54 PM EST reply actions
Okay, baseball is a pretty easy target right now with our substance use issues, refusal to join the 21st century in regard to profit sharing, salary caps, and the like, not to mention the boasting of record profits (which isnt fooling anyone). Football fans can easily scoff at the national pastime tag baseball gets since it is not true NFL, the NBA, and NASCAR all probably net more dollars, but to call baseball a hypertrophied croquet match just shows want of wit.
Anti-intellectualism is rampant in todays society, and its critical mass seems to be southern football fans the people who claim anything they do not understand must be for Yankees and queers. Dont get me wrong, football is great so is baseball, hockey, tennis, basketball, and curling if you want to devote the brain power to pay attention. My point here is simple: if one chooses, it takes virtually no cerebral power to enjoy a football game. I know this. I have done it hundreds of times. If one chooses to use his brain, football does provide opportunities to crawl deeper inside the game, but lets face it football is about crashing into each other, throwing / kicking / running the ball, and cheerleaders. Simple. That is why I like it. It is similar to the way I enjoy pornography. It (football) is masculine; it is primal; it is all the things that people who do not use all of their brains love.
But what about Madden, Bellecheck, Lombardi, Walsh, and the other football geniuses? I do not wish to take anything away from these guys; they are masterminds at football like McArthur and Eisenhower were masterminds at warfare. These guys are geniuses, as football can produce, and they are completely aside from the point I wish to make: you do not need your brain to enjoy football.
Many football fans want to make baseball fans and the game that we love out to be ridiculous, irrelevant, and for some reason, offensive. Anti-intellectualism is the reason. The short of wit, regardless of sport of choice, will look down at those who have the ability to do what they cannot: thinking abstractly, understanding nuance, pronouncing often without the t, writing in parallel structure, and understanding the beauty and strategy of baseball.
We understand why baseball is boring to the football-only. Football-only fans do not want to take the time to understand the difference in strategy in a 2-1 count, a 2-1 count with a runner on base, or a 2-2 count because no matter the count, the positions of the fielders, the runners on base, the right/left pitcher/batter match up, nobody is getting tackled; nobody is going to do a stupid little dance to draw individual attention in a team sport; and there is no chance of a do-over. We understand you dont get the whole nuance thing, and we dont care. So why to football-only fans spend so much of their energy hating on baseball? Anti-intellectualism.
Baseball is an endangered sport. Most of the energy previously spent recruiting and developing players has been shifted from the American inner-city to the Caribbean. There is not as much reason for inner-city kids to be as excited about baseball as there is to be about football or basketball, which has reduced baseball to an elitist sport in many peoples (outside the Caribbean) eyes. Baseball focuses on records, many of which are becoming irrelevant because of drug use, but many of these records could be irrelevant because of segregation, a dead ball that was used for the earliest decades of the organized game, the change to mostly night games, the lowering of the mound and the bringing-in of the outfield wall, and countless other reasons that go beyond the football-only fans level of cerebral ability.
Everybody knows baseball has its problems, and one of the worst is its image as being targeted at old men in tweed jackets. Baseball fans realize our game is not enjoyable for everyone, but what we dont do is bash every other sport because it is not baseball. We are not good at that thing anyway, we are far too busy trying to calculate Ty Cobbs numbers if he ever had to face Bob Gibson. Oh, nevermind.
by The Merkin Man on Dec 17, 2007 12:23 PM EST reply actions
Merkin Man-
You could have just written “You big stupid rednecks are just too dumb to appreciate baseball”; you’d have been equally mistaken, but I wouldn’t have lost a minute or so of my life to a very silly freshman-year persuasive writing exercise.
by The Conscience of a Nation on Dec 17, 2007 6:38 PM EST reply actions
I was too busy watching wrestling to read that comment, Merkin Man. Would you type it again, but this time, use more words?
by Orson Swindle on Dec 17, 2007 9:17 PM EST reply actions
I’ll start working on the pop-up book version for you then.
by The Merkin Man on Dec 18, 2007 1:51 PM EST reply actions
Ah, I see I touched a nerve. Best of luck to you.
by The Conscience of a Nation on Dec 19, 2007 6:39 PM EST reply actions
Eh, I’m full of shit. My boss totally busted me for writing “What data is being collected onsite?” today on a report. Strunk and White would have my hide.
by The Conscience of a Nation on Dec 19, 2007 6:58 PM EST reply actions
I have not the time to read everyone’s comments. I don’t even give a fuck really. But I believe most readers missed the point. The arguments here against Baseball, Baudrillard, and various in-squeezed anomalies are not the point. In fact, there is little that is conclusive or particularly insightful here. But it is a wonderfully executed rant, delighting in word play, invention, and absurdity. All done with balls. And tits. Huge areola’d tits. Bravo.
by MonkeyMan on Mar 27, 2008 3:30 AM EDT reply actions
ayo you are completely right baseball sucks ass football is the ultimate sport fuck baseball
by Big tim on Apr 15, 2008 11:45 AM EDT reply actions
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