Posted on 08/16/2018 8:46:22 AM PDT by DFG
One thing you learn from studying baseball history is that people have always predicted the sport’s demise. Over and over, the game weathers every perceived crisis and continues to thrive. More than 70 million fans will attend major league games this season; another 40 million or so will go to minor league games. Countless more watch the sport on television and online.
And yet attendance is down, and more and more balls are being kept out of play. Some longtime observers consider the shifting landscape — hitters swinging for the fences, pitchers throwing everything with maximum effort, fielders standing in unusual spots — and wonder what has happened to their game.
“Keith and I were talking, and I said, ‘You know, our window is probably three years until we can’t work anymore,’ because the game is going to be so different,” said Ron Darling, the former Mets pitcher and broadcast partner of Keith Hernandez, the former Mets first baseman. “I mean, what was fair is foul, and what’s foul is fair.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
no, they hire guys from where it’s warm all year ...
Obviously you didn’t care enough to post something factually true in your last post about “a bunch of mostly Black criminals and their White team owners.”
If you dumb it down trying to attract fans, you will drive away those who love the game.
I love watching the umpire call strikes, when my pitcher is on the mound. I love watching my team's batters trying to solve the puzzle when their pitcher is on a roll.
A no-hitter is the most exciting thing in baseball.
My brother would agree.
He was ten times the ballplayer anyone else in our family was. Captain of the baseball team at our high-school. After graduation he played two seasons of semi-pro ball.
After that experience he told me “there were two guys on that team who washed out of organized baseball at the Class A level. And they were SOOOOOO much better than any of the rest of us, I knew my thoughts of making the majors were just a pipe dream.”
And why not? If batters don't put the ball in play very much anymore, then who cares how well the players in the field can actually play their positions?
Limit the number of relief pitchers per game. And eliminate the designated hitter.
They are stripping sports of all the humanity. I’d rather risk the occasional missed call by a referee/umpire.
With the Union, those ideas are DOA.
As a Rangers fan, I've been rooting for Joey to "figure it out." Sadly, I think he's reached his upper limit, because he keeps swinging for the fences with two strikes. He also has as many home runs as he has singles.
Nothing new...
True. I seem to see more balls called as strikes than the other way around. Umpires calling strikes barely on the corners. I say have the umpire calling them from the booth watching the image until you have a robot doing it. IOWs the umpires are making it harder for hitters.
When bats were thick, long and heavy, choking up made sense. It’s less useful now because the bats are slim and light, and usually made of maple instead of ash, with some even made of birch.
My criticism is how we now see 9th inning closers, relief pitchers whose only role is to pitch one inning.
The best of them are successful over 90% of the time.
Back the old days, relievers came in with men on base, in tough situations.
These 9th inning closers are so efficient that it can make the game an 8 inning game, in effect.
It takes away potential for the losing team to rally and come back, which is a bad trend, in my opinion.
That damn spit ball! /s
LMAO.
A well pitched 2-1 ballgame with 20+ strikeouts is the very height of drama in professional sports.
If you don’t like it, you don’t like baseball.
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