I Hate Baseball

[livius drusus]

I wouldn't watch a regular ball game if you paid me and no amount would make me sit still for the televised version, but for some totally inexplicable reason, I love baseball documentaries and movies. Love them. All of them. From Ken Burns' Baseball to The Natural to Bull Durham to League of Their Own to the Joltin' Joe specials on that weird Yankee channel my parents get on basic cable in Connecticut: I don't give a shit how cheesy it is, I just plain love every minute of it.

The last killer baseball documentary I saw was a delightful little HBO romp about The Curse of the Bambino (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381115/). It was basically Boston fans and former players going off on the Sox's legendary failures to close, and it was hilarious. I highly recommend it to anyone nomatter what their baseball persuasion.

That's why I'm watching the Sox spank the Yankees right now. One out away in the bottom of ninth. This is some good shit, y'all. Really good.

P.S. - They did it! I can hardly fucking believe it. Hot damn. :banana: :carrot: :pepper: :caramba: :cucumber: :hotmoves:

[wade-w]

I don't care one whit about other sports, but I love baseball for some reason. I think it probably goes back to my father. There was no draft in those days, but he got a letter of intent from the Dodgers. They were going to sign him as a pitcher after he graduated from High School. (For those of you who don't know anything about baseball, the Dodgers have a tradition of having great pitchers) Unfortunately, his school team over pitched him that year and he blew out his arm.

This has been a great year for the playoffs, even if my team did get knocked out in the first round.

It's amazing, actually. Even if you ignore all of the "Curse of the Bambino" hype, and the intense rivalry between the Sox and the Yankees, and the recent history, including last year when Boston blew a 4 run lead in game 7. By winning tonight, the Red Sox became the first team in baseball history to be down three games to none in a best of seven series and come back to win it. For them to do it against the hated Yankees of all teams must make it all the sweeter for baseball fans in New England.

[Megatron]

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! The evil empire has fallen!! :woohoo:

[livius drusus]

I don't care one whit about other sports, but I love baseball for some reason. I think it probably goes back to my father.

That sucks about your dad's arm. I can't believe his high school coach would piss on his arm like that. Was he bitter about it? Your story reminds me in a very tangential way of the scene in City Slickers where the Daniel Stern's character explains to the cute chick that even when he and his dad couldn't communicate about anything, they could talk about baseball. Good baseball references in that film.

It's amazing, actually. Even if you ignore all of the "Curse of the Bambino" hype, and the intense rivalry between the Sox and the Yankees, and the recent history, including last year when Boston blew a 4 run lead in game 7. By winning tonight, the Red Sox became the first team in baseball history to be down three games to none in a best of seven series and come back to win it. For them to do it against the hated Yankees of all teams must make it all the sweeter for baseball fans in New England.

:yup: That really is a mind-boggling victory. It's a great thing to see. Even greater is going to be the phone call to my Yankee fan dad tonight. :woohoo:

[wei yau]

I don't really care for baseball either. But having grown up in the shadow of Shea Stadium, I'm a Mets fan by default. Therefore, I have an innate hatred for the Yankee$.

I'm glad that the Red Sox pulled off such a historic win. I'm glad that Yankee$ fans are crying in their beers.

I didn't watch a single game of this series, but that makes no difference to me. I'm willing to jump on the Red Sox bandwagon.

[wade-w]

That sucks about your dad's arm. I can't believe his high school coach would piss on his arm like that. Was he bitter about it?


That kind of thing was not uncommon back then. And no, he wasn't bitter about it. At least, if he was, he had gotten over it well before I came along. Instead, he became the sports editor for a local newspaper at the tender age of 18.

He did start playing baseball again later in life. In his 50's. He played in a Men's Senior Baseball League (players must be age 40 and up) for a while. Once, he was the starting pitcher for his team in the league championship game on the night before he was scheduled for thyroid surgery. He pitched a three hitter, and lost! The opposing pitcher was a former pro with major league experience, and threw a perfect game.


:yup: That really is a mind-boggling victory. It's a great thing to see. Even greater is going to be the phone call to my Yankee fan dad tonight. :woohoo:

ESPN can't seem to decide if this was the "Greatest Comeback in the History of Sports" or the "Greatest Collapse in the History of Sports." Given Steinbrenner's (the Yankee's owner) nature, you can bet that heads will be rolling in abundance. Even though he is to blame for the Yankee's relatively weak starting rotation this year.

[Megatron]

And now the BoSox can yammer some more about their stupid "curse" after they get spanked by the Cards. :whup:

[D. Scarlatti]

If the World Series goes the distance and there are two rain-outs, the seventh game will be played on Tuesday, Nov. 2.

[wade-w]

The whole "Curse of the Bambino" thing is actually a recent phenomenon. There was no mention of it anywhere before they lost they '86 World Series to the Mets on Bill Buckner's error.

The Sox and the Cards are pretty evenly matched; it ought to be a very close series. Both teams led their leagues in runs scored, and have very high octane offenses. St. Louis' lineup has better balance, but Boston can slug it out with anyone. The Cards are better defensively, but the Sox are vastly improved in that respect over the last few years. These things usually come down to pitching, and there the Sox have the advantage with Pedro and Schilling; St Loius just doesn't have anyone who can compare. Also, Boston's bullpen has been much better than the Cardinal's this October. So I'll have to give the nod to Boston in seven.

[wade-w]

Amazing. Absofuckinglutely amazing. I never in my wildest dreams thought the Sox would SWEEP!!!!

:eek: :eek: :eek:

[wade-w]

And now the BoSox can yammer some more about their stupid "curse" after they get spanked by the Cards. :whup:

Bwahahahaha. The Cards never had a single lead in any game. They looked totally and completely outclassed. Spanked indeed!

[livius drusus]

Amazing. I can hardly believe this. It just kicks total ass. :bmini:

[wei yau]

The last killer baseball documentary I saw was a delightful little HBO romp about The Curse of the Bambino (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381115/). It was basically Boston fans and former players going off on the Sox's legendary failures to close, and it was hilarious. I highly recommend it to anyone nomatter what their baseball persuasion.

And with my necromantic powers, I resurrect this thread.... :wizard:

Have you seen the follow-up documentary..."Reverse of the Curse of the Bambino" (http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet?ACTION_DETAIL=DETAIL&FOCUS_ID=619635) ?

I just watched it last night. Basically an update to the original documentary, covering the 2004 World Series. Actually, covering the playoff victory over the Yankees more than anything else.

Definitely a good companion to the original documentary, it covers some of the same territory with the same footage, but is still entertaining.

I especially loved the Red Sox fans comments on the Yankees fans. :giggle:

[livius drusus]

I did see it, eldar! I just happened upon it one weekend. I was disappointed by the Yankee focus, though. I wanted more abject sobbery over the total victory. :sobbing:

[wei yau]

Also, it was a bit of a shame how the Cards were practically footnoted in the documentary. But, after the playoff victory, the Series was pretty much anti-climatic.

I found myself wondering about the sequence in which the Red Sox commentators were stunned and emotional just after discussing the Series victory. Part of me wondered if we weren't seeing reaction shots taken out of context.

I thought that the scenes of fans showing appreciation to the team and sharing the victory with their dearly departed loved ones were pretty emotional, though...not quite the abject sobbery you were looking for.

And I still giggled over the caption "BF" Dent.

[lisarea]

Oh, man.

How did I let this thread fester here for so long without quoting MegaHAL?

"BASEBALL IS FOR PEOPLE WHO SHOULD ALREADY BE FUCKING DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD"

There: God's in his heaven, all's right with the world.

Carry on.

[wade-w]

"BASEBALL IS FOR PEOPLE WHO SHOULD ALREADY BE FUCKING DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD"


I'm seriously considering it. Is that close enough?

[livius drusus]

Not for me (http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?p=29251#post29251).

[lisarea]

Wade, I didn't mean anything by that. MegaHAL is an old conversation simulator that used to come up with some weird stuff sometimes, that included. I do not think people who like baseball should be dead. My son likes baseball. My boyfriend likes baseball. I'm not a huge fan, but I've watched a few games myself.

Check your PMs, and please, if you don't want to talk to me, talk to someone. Please?

[lady cop]

christ, i should not do this, but i can't help it...i hope it resonates with Wade in that he is not alone. my son at 16 was/is 6'5" , a lefty throwing in the 90's. he was tried out by every major league team on earth.i have pics of him with phillies and mayor ed rendell, with wade boggs, with so many others.(OH YES RED SOX RULE!) recruited by miami hurricanes, i am still good buddies with the hurricanes pitching coach, lazar collazo. he, my kid, was also top running back football player and basketball center in north florida( only kid who could guard vince carter), there was never a more beautiful natural athlete. i had to carry his birth cert. with me wherever we went for games. three days after high school graduation baseball commish called me and said to watch the draft...tampa drafted him.so, all our dreams are about to come true. all the sacrifices, i did not even work those years. i just traveled with my son. he has a unique first name, and was known by it all over the state. here is where it gets painful as hell...his elbow was fucked. we did surgery. we did rehab, it was over. years and years of work, gone. i am still not over it. he is ok, but i am hurt as hell. he is trying out for a football league soon. this crushed me for a long time, and maybe still does. even talking about this is something i never do, it hurts too badly.

[Socratoad]

Tis not my intention to pee on the parade of any baseball lovers, however I do have a little beezbal story of my own I wish to share:

Away back when the world series always was between New York and one of its suburbs a friend and myself were spending our first leave from the canadian air force in NYC. It was during the world series and the whole city was just about stark raving mad with the competitive frenzy between Yankee fans and Dodger fans. Professional sports have always left me feeling totally uninterested to say the least and so that sets up the scenario for this little demi-drama. Oh I forgot to mention that it was during the paranoid McCarthy era.

We, my friend and I had made a small bar on 34th avenue our headquarters where we hung out before chasing women and/or visiting museums etc.

TV was rather new (yes I am that old). During game time the offices would literally empty as people poured into the bars to watch the games and heckle each other. Actually for the most part people were in a festive mood and would actually pass drinks from one person to another overhead so that those in the back could get a drink. I was quite impressed as New Yawkers had a reputation of not being very friendly.

Move forward to one evening as my friend and I were in our favourite bar getting a little liquid backbone so that we might be able to talk to women without seeming to be stumblebum hicks ( I was eighteen).

A guy at the bar asked me what I thought of a pitch some guy made during "the " game that afternoon. I replied that not only did I not watch the game but that I also was not interested . The guy went back to his friends sitting at a nearby table and began talking quietly to them. I felt rather uncomfortable about this as they all stared at me and became rather agitated. I suggested to my friend that perhaps we had better get out of there because the natives definitely looked restless, and unfriendly. My friend who was older than me and considered himself to be rather worldly (which he definitely was not) told me to forget about it because the bar was crowded and so they would not dare try anything.

Within approximately fifteen minutes two burly rather sinister characters entered the bar, flashed some badges at us and asked us to accompany them to an office nearby. Turned out that the office was not nearby and so the trip was rather uncomfortable is an understatement, even though I knew that we had done nothing wrong.

Once we got to this office and identified ourselves as members of the RCAF and explained why we were in the big apple they let us go, even though the bastards refused to take us back to were they found us.

Why did this happen I here you ask! Turned out that the guy in the bar thought that I and perhaps my friend must be communists or fellow travellers, because by his simple powers of deduction anybody who did not like baseball must certainly be very suspect.

I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but ya had to realize just how paranoid McCarthy and his merry little band of witch hunters had made many americans.

Needless to say that little episode kinda threw a wet blanket over our otherwise enjoyable visit to a city that I love.

[livius drusus]

lady cop, Socratoad, both your stories are delightful and disturbing and sad, kind of like my favorite baseball movies. :)

[wade-w]

That really sucks, lady cop. A lefty who throws in the 90's can usually do very well.

Mass hysteria is never pretty, Socratoad. But in regard to baseball, things seem to have changed quite a bit. These days, I rarely mention to anyone that I like baseball, since I am more often than not then made to feel like I must be some sort of knuckle dragging idiot.

[viscousmemories]

Sorry lady cop, that's really sad. :(

Wade if it's any consolation I think fans of any sport are knuckle dragging idiots. :D

Nah, not really. I just never got into sports mostly 'cause I sucked and was marginalized at them and my next oldest brother, with whom I was constantly fighting, was a super jock. There wasn't a sport he did that he didn't do really well in, from discus to football.

People whose lives revolve around sports still freak me out as do fanatics of any variety, but I really don't think less of anyone for a fascination with any particular sport or sports in general. Different strokes and all that.

[wade-w]

People whose lives revolve around sports still freak me out as do fanatics of any variety, but I really don't think less of anyone for a fascination with any particular sport or sports in general. Different strokes and all that.

Who said my life revolves around baseball? I don't understand many people's fascination with movies or television, but I don't criticise them for it.

[livius drusus]

Um... I'm pretty sure nobody said your life revolves around baseball. Vm was just saying psycho fans freak him out, is all, not that you are one. :shrug:

[Socratoad]

I feel the need to clarify a tiny bit here. Firstly I do not hate baseball. I mean hate is such an over-the top term. How can one actually hate a mere game.

It is professional sports in general that and their way over the top perceived importance in cultures of most western societies that both bothers and worries me. Example: up here on the frozen tundra hockey has for the great unwashed masses become a sort of national religion, the opiate of the people so to speak. And whats wrong with that I hear you ask? Well from my observation when a mere game or escapism becomes so all encompassing that most men, and I do mean men, can regurgitate endless statistics about hockey teams and/or players ad nauseum, and yet know sweet F.A. about the environment, world hunger, simple justice, where their children are, the value of useless over consumption or even whom is their political representative then tis away over the top.

If I was a conspiracy theorist or nutcase I would tend to think that all this preoccupation with sports is even more clever than anything Orwell could have dreamt up as it keeps the masses from reflection upon those things that are actually important.

Perhaps I may add more later as the spirit is strong, but dammit the flesh is weak at present.

[wade-w]

Sports are hardly unique to Western Civilization. Also, I think a case can be made that sports fanaticism is not as bad in the US and Canada as it is in other places. When was the last time there was a riot resulting in deaths after a sporting event in either place?

I know people who can recite endless details of actor's lives, and who played in what movie with whom, and who directed or produced what movie etc ad nauseum; how is that any different?

Bread and Circuses, Socratoad. Using spectacles to distract the populace goes back to at least Rome.

[Socratoad]

You are right of course Wade, but in my defense the bread and circuses of my time were mainly professional sports. I guess if I had my druthers I would wish that humans (in general) were just not so damned gullible and a little more empathetic.

I apologize if I am dragging the OP far afield. Alas I'm quite famous for this.

Just an added thought: just because bread & cicuses go back to roman times or even before lends me no comfort as it is my theses that we (society) can no longer remain as ignorant or if you like in an escapist mode because the stakes are so much higher now.

I can see why in a world that is becoming ever more stressful that one may feel the need to escape even more than in earlier times. hence the proliferation of new age religions, etc ..... but

I release that I am rambling on here and better stop while it is still possible to extract my foot .from my mouth.

[viscousmemories]

Livius is right, I was saying fanatics freak me out, not that you are one wade.

I've always thought along the same lines as Socratoad that pro sports are the opiate of the masses. Not just sports, though. The entire sports, entertainment and gambling industries. I've never cared a lick about sports but I'm one of those people who has spent an obscene number of hours glued to the TV and I think I could probably name more actors than people I know.

Anyway that's what I used to think, but I'm not so sure anymore. I mean what would life be like without sports, entertainment and gambling? Leave it to Beaver? :shrug:

[lisarea]

I used to be kind of befuzzled by the sports thing, too. Still am, in a way, but you know those dastardly gods who sit up in the sky, looking down at us through that big glass-bottomed cloud, trying to think of funny tricks to play on us? Those wisenheimers decided to litter my life with intelligent, articulate sports fans. I've dated a sportswriter, had a couple of thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating discussions with former NFL guys, got completely wrapped up in the world of a fairly active amateur athlete who also ran all kinds of sports betting, uh, things, and then, to top it all off, they turned the fruit of my loins into a sports fan, and moved some football nerd into my house, too.

I still don't understand sports one bit. I am surrounded by sports all the time, but it all just goes in one ear and out the other. But I can tell that these guys are smart, and that they're just fascinated with the drama and the strategy of it all. I guess it just strikes me as no more a waste of their time and energies than something like music or literature or movies or anything else that gives us something interesting and fun to do with our heads. Notably, I've never known any of those face-painting car-flippers you see on the teevee, and all the sports rivalries I've witnessed are just a bunch of good-natured teasing. (Both of the young gentlemen here wear clothing with rival teams' logos pretty much everywhere, so I do see the 'rivalries.')

I still don't follow it, and I still don't actually care much what happens, but I do know it's not the silly, brainless pasttime I used to think it was. (Or at least, it's no sillier and more brainless than some of the dumbassed shit I waste my time on.)

[lady cop]

the story about my son is very difficult for me to even discuss. i had bet everything on his amazing ability. he was not only a beautiful athlete but has 150 IQ, most popular, class clown, gorgeous, homecoming king...you get the picture...but he was and is absolutely humble. i brag, he does not. this kid had the high school years everyone wished for. and i enjoyed it vicariously. a surgeon here did his elbow gratis because he was our pride. let me tell you parents out there with super-talented kids...watch those pitching coaches, count pitches. my kid's life was ruined because high school coaches and american legion coaches burned his arm to win games.

[Dingfod]

...my kid's life was ruined because high school coaches and american legion coaches burned his arm to win games.The real irony in that is that if they don't win games, the kid with all the talent in the world doesn't get noticed by the universities. Nobody looks for talent at losing teams.