The Baseball thread...

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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jul 02, 2012 10:54 pm

JackRiddler wrote:
Joe Hillshoist wrote:Thats actually a fascinating observation Jack. Kind of like a map and territory thing, tho perhaps the only thing missing is the feeling of tension, or lack of it.


Well, you're not into it.

There is enormous tension once you know the game. Every situation in every inning can mean the win, though this only becomes obvious in the late innings. To succeed players have to be fanatical on every play. The other famous aspect I didn't mention is the game's measure of time, not continuously on a clock, but discretely in outs and innings. It really never is over until the final play. The comebacks in baseball are impossible in any other sport that I know of, certainly in any with a clock. This is also true of the season, since there are 162 games in the major leagues. So a 10-game deficit can still be overcome even with a month or two (out of six) to go. One man on a sudden hot streak can turn around a whole team. This allows a lot of space for hope and delusion in the fan. Despite the unusual number of spectacular comebacks, for every comeback story there are a great many more close calls. The elimination and championship structure is still such that hope is crushed 29 times out of 30, statistically speaking. If a 10-game deficit can be overcome, then that also means a dominant team can collapse just as spectacularly. There is a legend of long-term suffering attached to pretty much every team except the Yankees, Cardinals and Marlins. (Maybe the Dodgers, since they've been in LA.) The devotee of any of the other 27 teams can tell you a highly particular story of memorable failure, outrageous moments of fate and how each of them acquired a fatalist worldview; although fans of the Cubs, Red Sox, Phillies, Indians, old Brooklyn Dodgers and Mets are in a special league of pain. There was a funny movie about this called Game Six, written by Don DeLillo with Robert Downey and Michael Keaton.


The tension, well lack of it, I meant to attribuite to this quote but somehow got confused...

Every situation can be described precisely in a set of numbers, every pitch produces meaningfully quantifiable results, and most everything that happens can be attributed to individuals' play. Every run and every inning has a story that you can reconstruct from the recorded numbers 100 years later. It's kind of nuts, actually.


Another thing I like generally is this:

It really never is over until the final play. The comebacks in baseball are impossible in any other sport that I know of, certainly in any with a clock.


I've been involved in some pretty spectacular comebacks over the years when I played various sports. There's a mentality that goes with them - a refusal to lose that can come out even in games that are timed. I'd say that tennis and squash are a bit like baseball - or a bit like ... anyone can come back if they want. I've seen some spectacular comebacks in tennis in games that have ended up lasting hours and hours. It makes for great spectacles.
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby Bruce Dazzling » Fri Jul 06, 2012 4:00 pm

beeline wrote:
JackRiddler wrote:So are the Phillies out of it this year?


There's quite a bit of baseball left to play!


Utley's back, Cliff Lee got his first win of the year on Wed night, and Ryan Howard was just activated from the DL.

Now all they have to do is go 56 and 22 the rest of the season in order to finish with 93 wins, and they just might have a shot.
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Jul 06, 2012 4:07 pm

Bruce Dazzling wrote:
beeline wrote:
JackRiddler wrote:So are the Phillies out of it this year?


There's quite a bit of baseball left to play!


Utley's back, Cliff Lee got his first win of the year on Wed night, and Ryan Howard was just activated from the DL.

Now all they have to do is go 56 and 22 the rest of the season in order to finish with 93 wins, and they just might have a shot.


Yeah, but who came back like winners in a stirring 9th last night, which was all I saw of the game? Not the Phillies!
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby Bruce Dazzling » Fri Jul 06, 2012 5:48 pm

JackRiddler wrote:
Bruce Dazzling wrote:
beeline wrote:
JackRiddler wrote:So are the Phillies out of it this year?


There's quite a bit of baseball left to play!


Utley's back, Cliff Lee got his first win of the year on Wed night, and Ryan Howard was just activated from the DL.

Now all they have to do is go 56 and 22 the rest of the season in order to finish with 93 wins, and they just might have a shot.


Yeah, but who came back like winners in a stirring 9th last night, which was all I saw of the game? Not the Phillies!


Papelbon snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. I was completely against that signing. They had a better, cheaper closer in Ryan Madson, but they decided to go with brand recognition.
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Jul 06, 2012 6:20 pm

Bruce Dazzling wrote:Now all they have to do is go 56 and 22 the rest of the season in order to finish with 93 wins, and they just might have a shot.


By the way, if I told you all the times I've had an equivalent thought about the Mets... well see above where I wrote about baseball's special power to generate self-delusion on the way to the near-inevitable crushing of hope.
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Jul 06, 2012 8:37 pm

Robin Bates wrote:
http://www.betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/?p=5223

SNIP

I learned to appreciate triples when I read Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel the summer after I graduated from college. The situation is as follows:

Angela Whittling Trust, the owner of a baseball team in the 1940’s, has had five baseball lovers over the years, two of them being Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. But the one she loves the most is one Luke “the Loner” Gofannon, who is better than either Ruth or Cobb (or so we are told by the extremely unreliable narrator). Luke, in return, loves her better than anything in the world—with one exception.

When Angela asks Luke about his greatest love, it takes him all night to come up with an answer (he’s a bit slow) but he finally tells her:

“Triples.”
“Triples?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t understand, darling. What about home runs?”
“Nope. Triples. Hittin’ triples. Don’t get me wrong, Angela, I ain’t bad-mouthin’ the home run and them what hits ’em, me included. But smack a home run and that’s it, it’s all over.”
“And a triple?” she asked. “Luke, you must tell me. I have to know. What is it about the triple that makes you love it so much? Tell me, Luke, tell me!” There were tears in her eyes, the tears of jealous rage.
“You sure you up to it?” asked Luke, as astonished as it was in his nature to be. “Looks like you might be getting’ a little cold.”
“You love the triple more than Horace Whittling’s daughter, more than Spenser Trust’s wife—tell me why!”
“Well,” he said in his slow way, “smackin’ it, first off. Off the wall, up the alley, down the line, however it goes, it goes with that there crack. Then runnin’ like blazes. ’Round first and into second, and the coach down there cryin’ out to ya’, ‘Keep comin’.’ So ya’ make the turn at second, and ya’ know it is right on your tail. So ya’ slide. Two hunerd and seventy feel of runnin’ behind ya’, and with all that there momentum, ya’ hit it—whack, into the bag. Over he goes. Legs. Arms. Dust. Hell, ya’ might be in a tornado, Angela. Then ya’ hear the ump—‘Safe!’ And y’re in there . . . Only that ain’t all.”
“What then? Tell me everything, Luke! What then?”
“Well, the best part, in a way. Standin’ up. Dustin’ off y’r breeches and standin’ up, there on that bag. See, Angela, a home run, it’s great and all, they’re screamin’ and all, but then you come around those bases and you disappear down into the dugout and that’s it. But not with a triple . . . Ya’ get it, at all?”
“Yes, yes, I get it.”
“Yep,” he said, running the whole wonderful adventure through in his mind, his eyes closed, and his arms crossed behind him on the pillow beneath his head, “big crowd . . . sock a triple . . . nothin’ like it.”
“We’ll see about that, Mr. Loner,” whispered Angela Trust.


Poor little rich girl! How she tried! Did an inning go by during the two seasons of their affair, that she did not know his batting average to the fourth digit? You’re batting this much, you’re fielding that much, nobody goes back for them like you, my darling. Nobody swings like you, nobody runs like you, nobody is so beautiful just fielding an easy fly ball!
Was ever a man so admired and adored? Was ever a man so worshipped? Did ever an aging woman struggle so to capture and keep her lover’s heart?
But each time she asked, no matter how circuitously (and prayerfully) she went about it, the disappointment was the same.
“Lukey,” she whispered in his ear, as he lay with his fingers interlaced beneath his head, “which do you love more now, my darling, a stolen base, or me?”
“You.”
“Oh, darkling,” and she kissed him feverishly, “Which do you love more, a shoestring catch, or me?”
“Oh, you.”
“Oh, my all-star Adonis! Which do you love more, dearest Luke, a fastball letter-high and a little tight, or me?”
“Well . . .”
“Well what?”
“Well, if I’m battin’ left-handed, and we’re at home—“
“Luke!”
“But then a’ course, if I’m battin’ rightie, you, Angel.”
“Oh, my precious, Luke, what about—what about a home run!”
“You or a home run, you mean?”
“Yes!”
“Well, now I really got to think . . . Why . . . why . . . why, I’ll be damned, I got to be honest. Geez. I guess—you. Well, isn’t that somethin’.”
He who had topped Ruth’s record, loved her more than all his home runs put together! “My darling,” and in her joy, the fading beauty offered to Gofannon what she had withheld even from Cobb [anal sex].
“And Luke,” she asked, when the act had left the two of them weak and dazed with pleasure, “Luke,” she asked, when she had him just where she wanted him, “what about . . . your triples? Whom do you love more now, your triples, or your Angela Whittling Trust!”
While he thought that one through, she prayed. It has to be me. I am flesh. I am blood. I need. I want. I age. Someday I will even die. Oh Luke, a triple isn’t even a person—it’s a thing!
But the thing it was. “I can’t tell a lie, Angela,” said the Loner. “There just ain’t nothin’ like it.”


So there you have it. Nothing beats a triple. Absolutely nothing.
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby barracuda » Tue Jul 10, 2012 12:38 pm

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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Sun Jul 15, 2012 10:12 pm

JackRiddler wrote:"knowledge" tends to infinity and thus what I know tends to zero.


Again with the statistics! :mad2

JackRiddler wrote: Don't you remember, you've been trying to get me to read Moby Dick, and I still haven't.


Yeah, I remember. What's up with that? My books not good enough for you smart guy? :lol:


Sorry, just trying to fit in with the baseball thing. I know nothing about the sport itself, at all. We played a kind of rubbish UK version of it in high school, but it never really caught on here. i enjoyed it at the time though.
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby bks » Sun Jul 15, 2012 10:24 pm

JackRiddler wrote:
Joe Hillshoist wrote:Thats actually a fascinating observation Jack. Kind of like a map and territory thing, tho perhaps the only thing missing is the feeling of tension, or lack of it.


Well, you're not into it.

There is enormous tension once you know the game. Every situation in every inning can mean the win, though this only becomes obvious in the late innings. To succeed players have to be fanatical on every play. The other famous aspect I didn't mention is the game's measure of time, not continuously on a clock, but discretely in outs and innings. It really never is over until the final play. The comebacks in baseball are impossible in any other sport that I know of, certainly in any with a clock. This is also true of the season, since there are 162 games in the major leagues. So a 10-game deficit can still be overcome even with a month or two (out of six) to go. One man on a sudden hot streak can turn around a whole team. This allows a lot of space for hope and delusion in the fan. Despite the unusual number of spectacular comebacks, for every comeback story there are a great many more close calls. The elimination and championship structure is still such that hope is crushed 29 times out of 30, statistically speaking. If a 10-game deficit can be overcome, then that also means a dominant team can collapse just as spectacularly. There is a legend of long-term suffering attached to pretty much every team except the Yankees, Cardinals and Marlins. (Maybe the Dodgers, since they've been in LA.) The devotee of any of the other 27 teams can tell you a highly particular story of memorable failure, outrageous moments of fate and how each of them acquired a fatalist worldview; although fans of the Cubs, Red Sox, Phillies, Indians, old Brooklyn Dodgers and Mets are in a special league of pain. There was a funny movie about this called Game Six, written by Don DeLillo with Robert Downey and Michael Keaton.


This won't convert you, Joe, but here's an argument for the aesthetic superiority of games like baseball, based on their untimed character.
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby bks » Sun Jul 15, 2012 10:42 pm

Bruce Dazzling wrote:
beeline wrote:
JackRiddler wrote:So are the Phillies out of it this year?


There's quite a bit of baseball left to play!


Utley's back, Cliff Lee got his first win of the year on Wed night, and Ryan Howard was just activated from the DL.

Now all they have to do is go 56 and 22 the rest of the season in order to finish with 93 wins, and they just might have a shot.


They're dead in the water unfortunately. The last remaining suspense in this gut-punch of a season is that it might contain at least one brief moment where the virtual certainty that they'll miss the playoffs will be put into suspension - if even for a single game. Given baseball's unmatched propensity to goad and tease, I wouldn't doubt that we'll get such a moment, maybe in mid-September.
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby JackRiddler » Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:35 pm

Baseball is timed, just not in minutes and seconds, but in outs and innings. I usually love the interminable length of games, it really is like they never end and it's a disappointment and surprise somehow every time they actually do end.
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby MinM » Wed Jul 25, 2012 8:33 am

Image
Home Run Derby @ Wrigley Field in Los Angeles © 1960

The TV series ran in syndication from January to July 1960 and was only canceled when the host announcer Mark Scott died of a heart attack on July 13, 1960 at age 45.

The twenty-six half hour episodes featured sluggers Hank Aaron, Bob Allison, Ernie Banks, Ken Boyer, Bob Cerv, Rocky Colavito, Gil Hodges, Jackie Jensen, Al Kaline, Jim Lemon, Harmon Killebrew, Mickey Mantle, Eddie Mathews, Willie Mays, Wally Post, Frank Robinson, Duke Snider, Dick Stuart, and Gus Triandos.

It is a thrill to see once again, these great players take their cuts at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, a minor league ballpark that was later demolished in 1966. When one batter was at the plate, Mark Scott would interview the other batter, which was usually just small talk. Yet the whole thing is priceless.

Batters were given three outs per inning and the player with the most home runs after nine innings won. Any ball not hit for a home run was an out and if a batter did not swing at a pitch that was in the strike zone it was an out. The winner of the contest received on the spot a check made out for $2,000 while the loser received $1,000. Considering that back then the players were so underpaid, these winnings were relatively significant.

As you would expect, the home run champion in the series was Hank Aaron who appeared in the most episodes (7) where he had a 6-1 record and earned $13, 500.

Al Kaline appeared once, and that was a showdown against Aaron who defeated number 6 in episode 10 with a 5-1 victory.

In years past ESPN and ESPN Classic have shown the episodes, and thanks to MGM Home Entertainment, in 2007 the episodes were released on three DVDS.

I hope you enjoy this video of the match between Henry Aaron and our own Al Kaline.

http://blog.detroitathletic.com/2010/08 ... irca-1960/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mighty_Casey
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby Dr. Stupid » Thu Jul 26, 2012 11:14 am

die hard mets fan (my first bb game was when my dad took me to the world series in '73 when i was 9-bled orange & blue ever since) and roto baseball geek checking in...
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Yoenis Céspedes Milanés

Postby MinM » Sun Jul 29, 2012 12:11 am

Image
Yoenis Céspedes Milanés may ultimately be the difference between Mr Moneybags in Detroit...
Jeff Moss wrote:Image
I have been saying for months that Dombrowski should trade Turner for the best package he can get. Fuck, I still think he should be on the phone with Kevin Towers offering Nick Castellanos and Brennan Boesch for Justin Upton.

I would just like to trade prospects away for a better return than an average second baseman who we once discarded for a lousy Jacque Jones and three months of a guy who hasn’t been very good in June and July. In the NATIONAL LEAGUE.

And the taste in my mouth isn’t any better considering Dombrowski refused to deal Turner at the apex of his value for Gio Gonzalez or Matt Garza over the winter or the fact that the Marlins just sent Hanley Ramirez to Los Angeles for two nondescript pitchers, a couple of Dodger Dogs and the prostitute Larry David took to Chavez Ravine so he could legally drive in the Carpool Lane...

Of course, this all could have been averted if Dombrowski stuck to his oriignal offseason plan of making an offer to Yoenis Cespedes instead of granting Delmon Young arbitration in the first place.

http://www.detroitsportsrag.com/

staying home, and Mr Moneyball in Oakland making the playoffs...
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Re: The Baseball thread...

Postby JackRiddler » Sun Jul 29, 2012 1:13 am

wtf? The Bankees got Ichiro?

That annual Met delusion sure blew out fast this year!
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

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I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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