I've only watched two Braves games this year so far.
Last night was a bottom-of-the-ninth squeaker against the hated Mets.
Tonight, after a Billy Wagner blown save, rookie phenom Heyward doubled in the runner from first with two outs and a full count.
Nothing like having to watch the whole game to see how it's going to turn out.
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Hmmm... When I was a little kid, the Brooklyn Dodgers finally won their first World Series. Against the Yankees to make it sweeter. People were driving off the Belt Parkway bridge into the bay. The whole city went crazy.
Brooklyn was stolen from it's citizens by a corrupt state legislature in 1895 and forced to join New York City very much against it's will. There's never been any love lost.
Next year they were sold to L.A.
We needed a serious National League team. We got the Mets.
The worst team in baseball history, made up of every loser in either league. Tug McGraw was brilliant on the mound, when he was sober. The same Tug McGraw (Tim's dad) who said "85% of all the money I made I spent on women, booze, and a good time. The rest I wasted".
I believe they had the longest unbroken streak of losses in the history of the game.
When they were on the road, they had to put then on the top floor of the hotel. Management found out that the players were hiring window cleaning companies to lower the booze and broads down from the roof.
One guy came into the locker room and found his wife hard at it with another player and shot them both in the leg with a .22.
They destroyed Yogi Berra and Casey Stengle as managers.
7 years later they were World Champions.
The picking have mostly been lean since them, but you don't jump ship while there's still someone below on the bilge pump.
And, I had the amazing pleasure of living in East Springfield Massachusetts the year the Mets beat the BoSox, and always wore my blue and orange cap, despite many threats.
The best season in baseball, ever. You didn't know until the last swing of the last game who was going to win either pennant, or the series. Four teams all within a hit or two of the big mazamba, right down to the end.
I can hear Queen belting out "We Are The Champions" at Shea Stadium as I remember all this.
They're usually clowns, but they're my clowns.
That's why we watch.
How to fix baseball: 30 seconds between pitches, or he gets his base. Sure, the game would only last maybe 45 minutes, but it would interesting.
Ahem.
Jim
reflectoscope, they DO have rule allowing only so much time between pitches (12seconds), the problem is that batters step out of the damn box between every pitch. I think if you step out of the batter's box (except to avoid getting hit, you're out.
And Tam, Heyward is a badass. Henry County, baby.
The head game between pitchers and batters is one of the most interesting aspects of it, to me. The pitch is the single most difficult moment in all of sports, and it happens thousands of times a day, in season. What some people see as boring, I understand as intensity of focus in an essentially mental battle set within definite physical constraints.
I think it's the unique nature of the game (for instance: it's the only team sport in which the defense holds the ball) that blinds some to how rich it really is. Nobody writes legal briefs about football or basketball, but the Infield Fly Rule has been taken up in at least one thesis at a law school. (U Penn, IIRC.) It ain't a square with goals at either end (the baseball field is theoretically boundless), and it don't stop when the clock takes a shit (the game itself can be theoretically endless), and as a closed-circuit metaphysics (the four corners of the rules) there is nothing else like it.
It is what it is, and it won't be what it should be if people keep fucking with it. I actually don't even watch Major League Baseball much anymore because of its corruptions, but at least I understand the game and keep it in my heart.
That's good enough for me.
Billy,
Exactly that.
I like a game that contains great lessons in stoicism in its very nature.
Old joke:
Guy goes to pick up his girlfriend to go to the 7th game of the World Series.
Gets there, she's not ready, not ready, finally after an hour she's ready.
By the time they hit the road, traffic is horrible, and it takes hours to get into the stadium, park, and get to the stands.
It's the bottom of the 9th. No runs. No hits. No errors on either side.
"See!" she says "You got all worked up over nothing - we didn't miss a damn thing!"
so Tam, did you see last night's walk-off grand slam....
Who are these guys anyway?? Don't look like the same team as last week...
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