MLB (Baseball)
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Greatest game there is. There's a lot more going on in baseball than a casual observer would ever realize.
But mainly during the postseason and the run up to it in terms of watching it on TV.
Always fun live.
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@neph93 I think that’s subjective. If you like baseball or not. I had 81 game season tickets to
The Yankees for 25 years and it was fucking awesome. I went to
Every single home Yankees play off game from 1995-2010. It wasn’t boring at all. Some
People just like to shit on everything. Most Americans feel that soccer has no action and much less scoring. Again subjective. I think soccer is great but I do like it more when there is
More scoring. Ask the Red Sox fans how boring it was to see them beat the shit out if the Yankees 16-1 a few nights back.It really depends on how big of a fan you are. Baseball Is my favorite sport. I played organized ball until I was 40 and I mourn the loss of it. I actually prefer to watch games at home as opposed to going to the stadium now. years of late nights at amazing games has left me tired of beer prices and sitting in traffic.
If I could play ANY sport professionally it would be baseball. You sit around with your buddies Telling jokes and talking shit and you get PAID to PLAY baseball. That to me sounds like paradise
A-Fucking-men @mclaincausey …if you don’t know then you just don’t understand.
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Absolutely not true. I grew up playing baseball for 11 years (first baseman and pitcher) and I lived and breathed it. I joined hitting clinics….Duffy Dyer clinics every year.....summer and winter little league ball....multiple leagues...loved playing the sport. I completely understand the strategy and everything that "the casual observer would never realize". Watching baseball bores me to tears. The season is ridiculously long and so are the games.
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Sub jec tive. Sounds like you don’t like it. That’s fine. But throwing personal
Opinions at it and mking it gospel and fact, you weren’t the only one, is silly. -
baseball seems even more sedate.
It is very sedate. Perhaps George Carlin can help with assessing the game.
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It was not at all boring @Matty123
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Y'all seem pretty invested for folks who hate the game.
Live and let live.
Or go tell the soccer thread their game sucks if that's your thing.
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Y'all seem pretty invested for folks who hate the game.
Live and let live.
Or go tell the soccer thread their game sucks if that's your thing.
Right.
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Though with the Sox shambles of a bullpen they'd need a miracle to get by Houston
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Honest question from a Euro-idiot, how does baseball do as a TV sport?
Youtube has a game summary the day after games if you want to stick your foot in the water @neph93
Japanese seem passionate about baseball and the players that come to the States have a disciplined approach to hitting that is formidable.
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Y'all seem pretty invested for folks who hate the game.
Live and let live.
Or go tell the soccer thread their game sucks if that's your thing.
I was very invested in baseball as a player. Loved playing it just cant watch it. Just our opinions guys, we can state them here. Neph asked a question and we chimed in…and trust me, as an american who loves soccer I constantly hear from fellow Americans how they hate it. No big thing.
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Oops…
Thanks for the answers guys. In all seriousness baseball is the one major American sport that I have very little knowledge about, or experience with. I can get coverage of the MLB at home for free now and fancy doing as @steelworker suggests and dipping my toes.
There are obvious parallels with cricket in terms of form, but it sounds like there are parallels as a spectator sport also, both when it comes to live and TV viewing. Cricket must be incomprehensible and tedious for people who don't understand whats going on in terms of the intense battle between batsman and bowler, the tactics of the fielding team, and the skills involves on all parts. Baseball has all of that too I'd imagine and requires the same amount of knowledge.
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I think it would probably be a challenge to become a fan of baseball as an adult, but when you're steeped in it as part of your cultural background it's a great game with more magic to it than any of the other sports. Lots of strange things happen, there is great history, and every time you watch you're likely to see something that has never happened or only happened a few times over hundreds of thousands of games (unassisted triple plays, perfect games, and so forth).
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I think it would probably be a challenge to become a fan of baseball as an adult, but when you're steeped in it as part of your cultural background it's a great game with more magic to it than any of the other sports. Lots of strange things happen, there is great history, and every time you watch you're likely to see something that has never happened or only happened a few times over hundreds of thousands of games (unassisted triple plays, perfect games, and so forth).
It's those elements of history and culture that I find appealing as well as it being similar to cricket in as far as the statistics are interesting. I agree that it would be a little forced/artificial to develop an interest for it on a whim, but I find it a fascinating part of your sporting culture.
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You should check out a game live for sure. But there is so much to know, so many rules, traditions, historical context, and so forth, that it is a lot to get your head around in terms of the context that enriches the game for baseball lovers.
And yes, for those of us who love numbers, statistics are king in baseball, but they always battle instinct in terms of strategy. Sabermetrics was born there to temper the effects of instinct, and those analytical methods have since spread to American football and other sports as well. However, risk aversion still wins, especially in football strategy, where teams go against the numbers routinely (e.g., punting on fourth down excessively).
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However, risk aversion still wins, especially in football strategy, where teams go against the numbers routinely (e.g., punting on fourth down excessively).
I was actually reading something in The Guardian about how that has changed in the NFL this season. How the new generation of young QB's are going for more passes and less rushing yards and how anything goes on 4th downs now.
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However, risk aversion still wins, especially in football strategy, where teams go against the numbers routinely (e.g., punting on fourth down excessively).
I was actually reading something in The Guardian about how that has changed in the NFL this season. How the new generation of young QB's are going for more passes and less rushing yards and how anything goes on 4th downs now.
There's a great book called "Scorecasting" (IIRC) that takes an economic view (e., Applying regression analysis) of sports and finds that much of the conventional wisdom in various sports (punt on 4th down, freeze the kicker, "defense wins championships") doesn't make sense. But we are more fearful of loss and getting harangued for it than we are focused on winning, so this destructive, "safe" tendency (also covered in 'Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow") hampers how effective strategies are. If things were done by the numbers in football, punts would occur only in limited circumstances. But risk aversion plagues the fans as much as the strategists, and the teams suffer as a result. I believe baseball is less plagued by this, but even so it is still quite common–Billy Beane helped managers get away from some of this stuff and go by the numbers to a greater degree than some other sports. The "gut" is comfortable, but unreliable.
Beyond sports, risk aversion plagues us as a species in many more ways.
