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Posted on 02/19/2019 10:16:38 AM PST by DFG
I remember when people actually used to keep score.
How many baseball players are doing product endorsements these days?
That’s always a good barometer of the popularity of the sport. Most players these days are interchangeable, all teams kind of look the same, with the same mix of Dominican players.
Baseball is not accessible to kids who aren't head over heels passionate about it. Neighborhood games are a thing of the past, you never see kids playing a pickup game on a park diamond. Televised games take a lifetime nowdays so they don't end until well past kids bedtimes. Going to a game is expensive enough that it's an occasional treat at best for most families. And joining a league is an absurd commitment now. Kids I know who do join end up playing in tournaments every weekend from 8am to 6 or 7pm Saturday and Sunday all summer, plus night games and practices all week. It's like you have to love baseball more than anything in the world because that's all you get to do for months on end. Most kids don't love it that much, unfortunately for the sport.
That they do. To me it seemed obvious that the previous owners didn’t care if they won and always had a roster with a lot of random one year players. The new owners are trying a bit harder but still didnt do much until this. Now they put it all on one player. MM is a great player but I dont like these mega contracts. I would rather build a team with many average to above average talent.
The Nats moved on after Harper rejected their offer. They dont have the money after signing all those other guys.
They do, for sports drinks and cleats mostly. If you watch baseball, you’ll see more. Some do car commercials.
In the NL champ series he dragged his leg so it would go over the back of the first baseman’s lower leg on a routine force play at first. The first baseman was not over the bag. He was touching the edge and leaning into the field, so normal play on his part.
Manny could have injured the first baseman’s achilles heal; often a career ending injury. This type of player is dangerous and i wouldn’t sign him, if I had a billion to waste.
You know, we're so used to hearing price tags of billions and trillions of dollars so when I saw that $300 million figure, I said why the heck would this guy agree to that lousy figure.........Duh!
The highest salary my all time favorite ball player and now Hall of Famer Al Kaline ever reached was $100,000 per year back in 1972 and that was a year after he turned down the same salary saying he didn't deserve it, citing a poor season. According to the article I'm quoting from 2015, that $100K figure equates to $564,000.......
Last summer a friend gave me 4 tickets to a Tiger game that were given to him by a friend who has season tickets. Since I had long ago given up watching baseball and hadn't been to a Tiger game in several decades, I invited my sister, her daughter and her daughter's son to join me. We were 11 rows up behind the first base dugout and the tickets came with premier parking in the parking structure connected to the stadium and it was just a short walk from there to the entrance where we were met with attendants with metal detectors.
Cost of each ticket: $85..........And the original owner of the tickets was a season ticket holder!
There is no way in hell I could have afforded those tickets myself......I remember my summers in Detroit in the early 60's when myself and my buddies would spend every summer day on the playground playing ball with just a few of us. Once in a while we would get some change from our parents and they would let us SAFELY take the bus downtown to watch the tigers. Ultimately we would make our way to the vacant seats along the foul lines and occasionally behind the dugouts. One of those years I actually got a broken bat given to me by Rocky Colavito and the first thing I did with it when I got home was to get a couple of screws and screw the handle together so we could use it on the playground.........LOL!
Baseball has been destroyed by money and I don't know where the blame lies. I suspect it's a combination of the players, their agents and the owners. Each of whom don't realize what their rising costs are doing to the sport and the fans who no longer can afford to go to the games........
As for myself, last summer was my last Tiger game. Two years ago a stadium was built in Utica, MI, called Jimmy John's Field and is hosting the United Shore Professional Baseball League, an independent baseball league.
They only have four teams but the players are made up of ex college players who were never scouted by the pros but yet a few of them have signed with minor league teams.
The complete baseball venue is family friendly and prices conducive to taking your wife and kids out to the game on a hot summer evening.........
I love the names of the teams:
Birmingham Bloomfield Beavers
Eastside Diamond Hoppers
Utica Unicorns
Westside Woolly Mammoths......
That's the kind of baseball I can enjoy..........
That’s not the word coming out of Nat’s Park. Boras and Harper met with Ted Lerner the Saturday before Christmas. For six hours. The word is that the team ‘significantly’ improved their 10 year 300 million dollar offer and secured a promise that they would get the last look before any signing.
We shall see soon enough.
The Padres might be proving to be baseball's version of the winner's curse. Winning the bidding wars with the big boys only to get underperforming assets.
Please ping me with any Southern California related articles. Thank you!
If you want on or off this ping list, please FReepmail me.
Padres are stupid. I’ll wager they don’t make the playoffs once in the next decade.
Tiger Stadium..bus ride down Fort St.. Older Drivers would say Trumbull/Briggs Stadium... Went to every Opening Day from 4th grade thru H.S... Mom said if I got good enough grades , I could skip school that day.. Seen that ballpark off of 59...
Yes.
Yes.
I've been a baseball fan since I was a kid. All these "rule changes" have pissed me off to the point that I no longer care about the game or consider myself a fan. They took a great national pastime and completely ruined it.
the commercials have increased and lengthened the game. The playoffs were unbelievably commercial.
Now they want to speed up on the field instead of reduce the commercial time.
There used to be a rule 1 minute between half innings. In the world series there were 3 minutes.
They now run ads in-between pitches.
Good. Get him as far away as possible from my Red Sox.
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