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02-21-2020, 05:20 AM   #1
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It's Time and we need to discuss our hopes [ and dismay ]

[ for baseball fans ]

Spring training games will be starting soon

squads have reported

hope springs eternal ( I've been a Chicago Cub fan since 1969 )

so " experts " and/or other type of fans

what say you ?

anyone planning on going to ball games this year ? [ 3 Cub games in San Francisco ]

what are your hopes

are you a fair weather fan

a " johnny come lately "

or hopelessly expecting the unexpected [ my second team is the Royals ]

any thoughts on the cheating scandal and the " punishment " of those responsible ?

time to opine

02-21-2020, 05:38 AM - 7 Likes   #2
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It just isn't cricket....
02-21-2020, 05:48 AM - 1 Like   #3
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QuoteOriginally posted by Sandy Hancock Quote
It just isn't cricket....
if you think a professional baseball game takes a long time ----
QuoteQuote:
length of cricket match
three to five days
Typically, Test and first-class cricket matches are played over three to five days with, at least, six hours of cricket being played each day.
nor is it rounders:
QuoteQuote:
Rounders
ENGLISH GAME
WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
See Article History
Rounders, old English game that never became a seriously competitive sport, although it is probably an ancestor of baseball.
02-21-2020, 09:16 AM - 2 Likes   #4
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This thread brought back memories, of me and my dad watching baseball games on the TV every Saturday. He was a Yankee's fan. He passed away when I was 16 and I still miss him. But watching those games was the best years of my young life, I was 12 year old.

02-21-2020, 09:32 AM - 3 Likes   #5
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I can't hear anything over the sound of banging trashcans...
02-21-2020, 09:39 AM - 3 Likes   #6
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From A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti
by A. Bartlett Giamatti, et al


"The Green Fields of the Mind "

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game beginsin the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in thesummer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chillrains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count onit, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshineand high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, whenyou need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and brokenbranches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summerwas gone.

Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster this time. Maybe it wasn'tthis summer, but all the summers that, in this my fortieth summer, slippedby so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something ofautumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investingmore and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keepstime fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game's deep patterns,three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse,to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of theday and to organize the daylight. I wrote a few things this last summer,this summer that did not last, nothing grand but some things, and yet thatwork was just camouflage. The real activity was done with the radio--notthe all-seeing, all-falsifying television--and was the playing of the gamein the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind. There,in that warm, bright place, what the old poet called Mutability does notso quickly come.

But out here, on Sunday, October 2, where it rains all day, Dame Mutabilitynever loses. She was in the crowd at Fenway yesterday, a gray day fullof bluster and contradiction, when the Red Sox came up in the last of theninth trailing Baltimore 8-5, while the Yankees, rain-delayed against Detroit,only needing to win one or have Boston lose one to win it all, sat in NewYork washing down cold cuts with beer and watching the Boston game. Bostonhad won two, the Yankees had lost two, and suddenly it seemed as if thewhole season might go to the last day, or beyond, except here was Bostonlosing 8-5, while New York sat in its family room and put its feet up.Lynn, both ankles hurting now as they had in July, hits a single down theright-field line. The crowd stirs. It is on its feet. Hobson, third baseman,former Bear Bryant quarterback, strong, quiet, over 100 RBIs, goes forthree breaking balls and is out. The goddess smiles and encourages heragent, a canny journeyman named Nelson Briles.

Now comes a pinch hitter, Bernie Carbo, onetime Rookie of the Year,erratic, quick, a shade too handsome, so laid-back he is always, in hissoul, stretched out in the tall grass, one arm under his head, watchingthe clouds and laughing; now he looks over some low stuff unworthy of himand then, uncoiling, sends one out, straight on a rising line, over thecenter-field wall, no cheap Fenway shot, but all of it, the physics aselegant as the arc the ball describes.

New England is on its feet, roaring. The summer will not pass. Roaring,they recall the evening, late and cold, in 1975, the sixth game of theWorld Series, perhaps the greatest baseball game played in the last fiftyyears, when Carbo, loose and easy, had uncoiled to tie the game that Fiskwould win. It is 8-7, one out, and school will never start, rain will nevercome, sun will warm the back of your neck forever. Now Bailey, picked upfrom the National League recently, big arms, heavy gut, experienced, newto the league and the club; he fouls off two and then, checking, tentative,a big man off balance, he pops a soft liner to the first baseman. It issuddenly darker and later, and the announcer doing the game coast to coast,a New Yorker who works for a New York television station, sounds relieved.His little world, well-lit, hot-combed, split-second-timed, had no capacityto absorb this much gritty, grainy, contrary reality.

Cox swings a bat, stretches his long arms, bends his back, the rookiefrom Pawtucket who broke in two weeks earlier with a record six straighthits, the kid drafted ahead of Fred Lynn, rangy, smooth, cool. The countruns two and two, Briles is cagey, nothing too good, and Cox swings, theball beginning toward the mound and then, in a jaunty, wayward dance, skippingpast Briles, feinting to the right, skimming the last of the grass, findingthe dirt, moving now like some small, purposeful marine creature negotiatingthe green deep, easily avoiding the jagged rock of second base, travelingsteady and straight now out into the dark, silent recesses of center field.

The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs,the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties,the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday,the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bitesand takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out withthe tide. Rice is up. Rice whom Aaron had said was the only one he'd seenwith the ability to break his records. Rice the best clutch hitter on theclub, with the best slugging percentage in the league. Rice, so quick andstrong he once checked his swing halfway through and snapped the bat intwo. Rice the Hammer of God sent to scourge the Yankees, the sound wasoverwhelming, fathers pounded their sons on the back, cars pulled off theroad, households froze, New England exulted in its blessedness, and roaredits thanks for all good things, for Rice and for a summer stretching halfwaythrough October. Briles threw, Rice swung, and it was over. One pitch,a fly to center, and it stopped. Summer died in New England and like rainsliding off a roof, the crowd slipped out of Fenway, quickly, with onlya steady murmur of concern for the drive ahead remaining of the roar. Mutabilityhad turned the seasons and translated hope to memory once again. And, onceagain, she had used baseball, our best invention to stay change, to bring change on.

That is why it breaks my heart, that game--not because in New York theycould win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and areminder to the Yankees of how slight and fragile are the circumstancesthat exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart becauseit was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusionthat there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that couldcome together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because,after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game wasmeant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. Theygrow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdomto know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the oneswho can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. Iam not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to moreprimitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever,and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might aswell be that, in a green field, in the sun.

From A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett
Giamatti, © 1998 by A. Bartlett Giamatti
02-23-2020, 02:51 AM   #7
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Yes l'm looking forward to baseball season. We may try to go to an Astros game this year. My wife and l haven't been to a game in 4 years. l want the Astros to return to the WS....and win it this year! However, they gave us the most odd bit of history last year. They participated in the only MLB best of 7 series where the road team won every game. l don't think l'll live to see that happen again.

02-23-2020, 06:31 AM - 1 Like   #8
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Birds on the Bat.
02-23-2020, 06:40 AM   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by camera_nut Quote
Yes l'm looking forward to baseball season. We may try to go to an Astros game this year. My wife and l haven't been to a game in 4 years. l. . . .
just in case:

QuoteQuote:
CAMERAS/VIDEO EQUIPMENT
Visitors are welcome to bring video and still cameras into the ballpark. Lenses must be no larger than 8". Tripods and monopods are not allowed in the ballpark.
Minute Maid Park Information Guide | Houston Astros

______________________________

QuoteOriginally posted by monochrome Quote
Birds on the Bat.
I always thanks those friendly Cardinal fans for wearing " Cubby Red "

QuoteQuote:
Cameras/Video Equipment
Both still and video cameras for personal use are allowed in Busch Stadium provided that they do not interfere with the game or obstruct another guest's view. Camera lenses longer than the length of the camera body are prohibited in Busch Stadium. Tripods and monopods are prohibited to non-credentialed guests. Backpack camera bags are prohibited.
https://www.mlb.com/cardinals/ballpark/information/guide/#c-content

Last edited by aslyfox; 02-23-2020 at 06:45 AM.
02-23-2020, 07:24 AM - 2 Likes   #10
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Take me out to the ballgame

I attended many Mets games in my lifetime, mostly at Shea Stadium.
Citi Field is a newer style ballpark, designed to be cute and quirky.
I preferred Shea Stadium. Big and loud, it would just rock!

With ticket prices nowadays MLB games are beyond my budget.
At Citi Field Mets ticket prices vary depending on opponent.
IMO that policy is a real put-off. Do other stadiums do that?

Last year The Brooklyn Cyclones were NY-Penn League champions.
Every year I try to attend at least one Brooklyn Cyclones game.
Ticket prices, parking and concessions are far more affordable.

MCU Park is located right at the beach and boardwalk at Coney Island.
It's a nice setting for a ballgame, especially on a warm summer evening.

Chris
02-23-2020, 07:57 AM - 1 Like   #11
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QuoteOriginally posted by ChrisPlatt Quote
I attended many Mets games in my lifetime, mostly at Shea Stadium.
Citi Field is a newer style ballpark, designed to be cute and quirky.
I preferred Shea Stadium. Big and loud, it would just rock!

With ticket prices nowadays MLB games are beyond my budget.
At Citi Field Mets ticket prices vary depending on opponent.
IMO that policy is a real put-off. Do other stadiums do that?

Last year The Brooklyn Cyclones were NY-Penn League champions.
Every year I try to attend at least one Brooklyn Cyclones game.
Ticket prices, parking and concessions are far more affordable.

MCU Park is located right at the beach and boardwalk at Coney Island.
It's a nice setting for a ballgame, especially on a warm summer evening.

Chris
To answer your question - yes, other teams vary ticket prices based on opponent. "Dynamic pricing"

I've been to Shea a couple of times, but never Citi. I'm the only baseball fan in my family and going to a game at Citi is too darn expensive.

While watching games on TV, I do miss the camera-shaking loudness of the Shea crowd during a big game.

And, of course, Shea was home to what might be the biggest non-playoff implication HR in MLB history...

02-23-2020, 08:01 AM   #12
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keeping with the theme of Spring bringing hopes and expectaions

may I present:

QuoteQuote:

World Series favorites, ranked from 1 to 30
By Will Leitch & Mike Petriello @williamfleitch and @mike_petriello

We've finally heard the sweetest words of the spring -- pitchers and catchers report -- and that brings with it the end of what's been something of a wild and crazy offseason. (To say the least.) That means the 30 teams have their rosters more or less set, barring a non-roster invite here or a Kris Bryant trade there, and so we can look ahead at who's best positioned to do the only thing that matters: win the World Series.

So, as we've done in the past for World Series rosters and 2019-20 free agents, MLB.com's Will Leitch and Mike Petriello got together to draft the 30 teams based on one simple question: Who would you pick to win the World Series in 2020? Will gets the first pick, because Mike is so magnanimous. No snake drafts this time, just a straight one-through-30. This starts out pretty fun. Then it gets through all 30 teams. . . .
Drafting 2020 World Series teams from 1 to 30 | Chicago Cubs

some may be happy, some may be sad

but I advise all not to pay too much attention quite yet

no games being played at all ( games that count that is )

Last edited by aslyfox; 02-24-2020 at 11:27 AM.
02-23-2020, 08:56 AM - 4 Likes   #13
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Spring is time to bring all your radio tubes up to the neighborhood Rexall drug store and test them.
Baseball season is long - 154 games - so gotta make sure the old set is working properly!

Chris

Last edited by ChrisPlatt; 02-23-2020 at 09:01 AM.
02-23-2020, 08:59 AM   #14
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These are the Days for the Rays....
Had it not been for a bit of sign-stealing (trashcan-bangin') from the Astros in their series last year who knows? It's not always about which club spends the most. Go Rays!
02-23-2020, 09:34 AM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by aslyfox Quote
[ for baseball fans ]

Spring training games will be starting soon

squads have reported

hope springs eternal ( I've been a Chicago Cub fan since 1969 )

so " experts " and/or other type of fans

what say you ?

anyone planning on going to ball games this year ? [ 3 Cub games in San Francisco ]

what are your hopes

are you a fair weather fan

a " johnny come lately "

or hopelessly expecting the unexpected [ my second team is the Royals ]

any thoughts on the cheating scandal and the " punishment " of those responsible ?

time to opine
Life long Yankees fan. Moved to St Louis 10 years ago for work (also great baseball city). Yanks visit STL this season, so I will attend a game. Astounding tv he ticket prices these days. The greatest game.
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