twee-est major professional sport (US)

It's clearly baseball.

apple pie, i mean come on

Baseball, especially when Constanza switched the Yankees to cotton.

the mystique around NFL is kinda hilarious and dumb regardless of how good the sport is, so that

and twee?

yeah, the tweeness is implicit to 'mystique' - it's kinda summed up in Death Of A Salesman

I find it hard to believe that macho, sports-type American males actually approve of baseball with all the guys in tight pants and little caps scampering about.

Plus, this:

http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/a-c/cl-03.jpg

Ironic that Hockey has the twee-est fans but is the hardest sport?

Monster trucks has twee-er fans than hockey. And is harder.

Voted the one that most resembles a Morrissey song.

yeah, the tweeness is implicit to 'mystique' - it's kinda summed up in Death Of A Salesman

that's some old shit and probably anachronistic to read from

if yr saying the affection and cultural esteem for football lends itself to tweeness then i suppose that's not totally unplausible, as a nonamerican i wonder if the shortness of the nfl season is one of the causes of this since most of the year is spent in febrile anticipation and hype

that's some old shit and probably anachronistic to read from

I think the sport's privileging of Moment above Process still rings very true nowadays - and the uniqueness of each moment too - it's quite a ceremonial sport

you have to be pretty twee to be an american soccer fan

I resemble that remark.

this is soccer vs baseball and anyone saying otherwise doesn't really get how sports work in the US IMO

voted soccer because it makes me think of picnics and 70s haircuts.

any sport that allows a tie is kinda twee

hockey. ice skating is twee.

you have to be pretty twee to be an american soccer fan

Maybe if you mean "twee" in the sense of "holding on to traditions that are no longer current even in the country that invented them", but I don't know anyone from the soccer world that I would call "twee" to his face...not because they would hurt me, but because none of them have ever considered being remotely twee in their lives.

which is like, the twee-est thing you can do

As an outsider, Baseball seems to be the subject of more precious writing than any of the others, so I vote for that. Plus "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", obv.

(the answer totally is baseball, there's no romantic navelgazing in American soccer)

http://www.uncoached.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/wrestling_mascots_8.jpg

Pro-Wrestlers your new boyfriend's too stupid to know about.

but I don't know anyone from the soccer world that I would call "twee" to his face

^ god, i know a ton. This is soccer by far.

no it's baseball

twee as fuck

I understand how, hypothetically, revering British culture of several decades ago is twee, but I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the alcoholism and bad tattoos.

Baseball in a walk.

Golf, Tennis and NASCAR are more major than soccer/futbol or is this only team sports?

I don't hate twee as much as many of you apparently do but I do rather think it's baseball. Soccer is pretty jocky actually and if it's not it's people who like to get drunk early on weekends.

"but I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the alcoholism and bad tattoos."

Why bring the NBA into this?

people who like to get drunk early on weekends.

Yeah, like 8am.

Soccer is all about suburban kids who have mommy drive them to games in minivans with orange slices to hand out to the rest of the team at halftime. Maybe that's not twee, but it's sure lame.

Bill, it's also about immigrants and urban kids who play on asphalt.

soccer fans wear scarves, that's pretty dang twee

Has Tiger so befouled Golf that it is out of the running?

I find it hard to believe that macho, sports-type American males actually approve of baseball with all the guys in tight pants and little caps scampering about.

― kingkongvsgodzilla, Wednesday, March 3, 2010 3:55 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I bet you have some hilarious views on football too. Here I'll get you started: "tight end."

"urban kids who play on asphalt"

that's all basketball, all the time in these parts.

baseball is def the corniest but that isn't the same as twee

I like the twee of baseball; odd shaped park, peanuts, pinstripes, hot dogs, 7th inning stretch, score cards carefully filled-out...

'Soccer mom' is pretty much an amateur porn genre now = not twee

Bill, it says 'US' not 'in Bill's parts'.

Baseball, because the managers wear uniforms, too.

Wait, how are hot dogs twee?

none of these things are partic twee even when theyre lame. twee is like 20something faggots playing capture the flag & drinking lemonaid & shit right?

Where i live (NYC metropolitan area) i've seen much more playground basketball than "asphalt soccer" by a very wide margin.

Hot dogs aren't twee but having teh obligatory hot dog at the ballpark is.

there are a lot of different definitions of "twee" "masculine" "american" "football" "soccer" "basketball" floating around here

canada is very twee so hockey

Mandatory Hot Dog sounds Orwellian and terrifying!

Bill, in NYC you've undoubtedly seen more basketball than soccer, period, no?

I dunno, Phillip. I could be far too easily led down the path to totalitarianism via hot dogs.

Soccer is all about suburban kids who have mommy drive them to games in minivans with orange slices to hand out to the rest of the team at halftime. Maybe that's not twee, but it's sure lame.

Yeah okay I don't know any of these people, but they're probably more of the total % of "soccer" "fans" than the kind of people I do know. Anyway, the answer is STILL baseball.

Why does UK poll get golf but not US? I can't name a single brit golfer. Unless, is Hoagie Carmichael British?

Because we invented it. Also, watch more golf.

:-)

we invented baseball and 'soccer' too fwiw

you didn't invent baseball, you invented some shit called "rounders"

Actually, 'rounders' in the west of England was called baseball.

As an Englishman I am obliged to stipulate three things.

1. We weren’t the first people to think of kicking a ball around.

2. We were the first to have a hissy-fit about rules and threaten to take our ball away, thus creating the modern version of the sport played worldwide.

3. We don’t understand how our own creation works and our tactics have the subtlety and sophistication of a herd of stampeding elephants with toothache. Which is pretty much how we do everything round here.

The only truly American sport amongst the majors is basketball.

Wasn't basketball invented by one guy sitting down and trying to think up a new game? I mean, it didn't grow organically at all, not even from a bunch of guys tossing a ball around one day. That's pretty weird, amazing that it caught on.

Actually it's part Canadian if you include his place of birth.

I have just googled hoagy carmichael and am super embarrassed to find out he had nothing to do with golf. Is there a famous old-timey golfer who sounds like a sandwich that I'm really thinking of?

Arthur Philly Cheesesteak won the open in 1956?

Cheesesteak doesn't sound twee enough...

Arturo Muffaletta had a good run in the 60's, I think.

haha, I never even actually really registered that you said Hoagie Carmichael. Are you thinking of Ben Hogan? Because he was one of yours.

Swedish pro Anders Smörgås?

reuben po'boy

Actually it's part Canadian if you include his place of birth.

And both parets were Scots.

Patrizio 'Pa' Nino was another classic golfer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om_yq4L3M_I

well, that settles it.

carlin otm
r.i.p.

Voted the one that most resembles a Morrissey song.

two years ago, the NFL used a cover version of "everyday is like sunday" in one of its TV promo ads over here in the USA.

can't find a video of it anywhere on the Interweb, sadly.

none of these sports seem twee... Maybe I don't even know what the term means anymore. Foosball, if it were a professional sport, would be the most twee sport. therefore, my vote is with soccer.

yeah, when you think about it a sport that involves hurling a spinning projectile with all of yer might at another human being who's carrying a big heavy stick with the intent to strike the projectile and send it hurtling towards other human beings (which is what baseball essentially is) is anything BUT twee.

pretty lightweight projectile, you wanna try cricket.

aren't you supposed to send it away from other human beings?

Yeah, plus once the ball is in the air it basically turns into a game of tag.

The literature associated with the game of baseball is extremely twee. Pete Hammill made a fool out of himself in the New York Times last week in a review of the new Willie Mays book.

Unlike soccer, there's very few compound fractures in baseball.

Moises Alou would beg to differ.

As would Jason Kendall and Cesar Cedeno.

Also in baseball, you dont get guys who act like they just got mowed down by sniper fire when they are barely touched, like soccer players who are trying to draw penalties. That kind of wimpiness totally turns me off to the sport.

That kind of shit is creeping into basketball thanks to the likes of Manu Ginobili, who probably played a lot of soccer as a kid.

Not wimpiness, deviousness

Ergo not twee

Diving isn't wimpiness, Bill, it's just cheating. The same soccer player who's rolling on the pitch in the 'throes of agony' one minute is whistling happily to himself the next minute after breaking someone's ankle.

society is lying in the gutter, with a compound fracture, inflicted by a youth

Still think it was creepy for Wenger to put Eduardo in the game after Ramsey's leg got broken.

the youth is then given a medal, as society is taken behind a wall and shot

this is ridic soccer should not be in this poll

Surely you know there's no more society worth talking about, dear boy.

this is ridic soccer should not be in this poll

― call all destroyer, Thursday, March 4, 2010 10:33 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

You're right, no one in his right mind would call this a major sport.

Not wimpiness, deviousness

― Tom D (Tom D.), Thursday, March 4, 2010 10:27 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Looks like a pussy move from where I sit. Therefore, twee.

Bill Magill, arbiter elegantiae.

He's all-man, that Bill Magill

crying after breaking someone's leg is pretty twee

^^^true

http://www.espnstar.com/servlet/file/405035_33_preview.jpg?ITEM_ENT_ID=405035&COLLSPEC_ENT_ID=10&FILE_SERVICE_CONF_ID=33

Who, Shawcross? I thought he was maybe crying about his England chances being imperilled. THAT would be pretty twee.

In fact, it had the opposite effect, Capello said "I must have that legbreaker in my team" (in Italian)

Pour encourager les autres

I find it hard to believe that macho, sports-type American males actually approve of baseball with all the guys in tight pants and little caps scampering about.
Have you actually seen baseball pants recently? More often than not they're baggy like pajamas. It's football pants that are skin tight.

American football has been the victim of ever-increasing creeping tweeness since the late '70s when they changed the rules to make it almost impossible to defend against the pass - to the point where a defender even looking like he might have brushed against the pass receiver will draw a backbreaking penalty flag. And offensive blocking got much easier to do. And they really cracked down on late hits & any move that might frighten the quarterback. Still, concussions do happen, and the persistent low level impact intrinsic to the sport still rattles players' brains, so it's not all bad. (See the recent TIME magazine cover story). I acknowledge that the concussions threaten to take the word "twee" out of consideration, but the sport is relatively dainty compared to the '50s, '60s version.

American football has been the victim of ever-increasing creeping tweeness since the late '70s when they changed the rules to make it almost impossible to defend against the pass - to the point where a defender even looking like he might have brushed against the pass receiver will draw a backbreaking penalty flag.

yup. the West Coast Offense is kinda twee, when you really think about it.

aside from how cutesy or kooky a sport is, sporting tweeness = the mystical privileging of sport as great healer and scale of justice - NFL does this more than any other imho

aside from how cutesy or kooky a sport is, sporting tweeness = the mystical privileging of sport as great healer and scale of justice - NFL does this more than any other imho

typing that and coming to the conclusion that football does this more than baseball really proves my point re: "people who aren't voting baseball do not understand American sports"

tbf i haven't seen a huge deal of either but i reckon i've got more of a handle on nfl so maybe baseball is like that but with brass knobs on

nfl is just a hilarious 5+ month soap opera imo

ha!

and really what i mean by that is it is not really romanticized in the same way baseball is. it is also still an evolving sport and baseball has more or less been the same for a long time.

The popular narrative of baseball in U.S. history, especially wrt 'simpler times' and racial integration is amongst the most saccharine things in an already cloying American context.

i think a big difference between football and baseball is, yeah, the way writers romanticize the geometry of baseball, the history, the statistics, to the point where writers/announcers of baseball games are sometimes talking about almost abstract stuff. football doesn't have any of that. (except for those slo mo NFL films)

Otoh, no sport has even come close to self-aggrandizing and romanticizing itself than the NFL with NFL films. It is a genre unto itself; sui generis.

nfl films is amazing tho--i don't even know how they get some of those shots.

Tim Burton... 3D...

The popular narrative of baseball in U.S. history, especially wrt 'simpler times' and racial integration is amongst the most saccharine things in an already cloying American context.

― La religion est une fatigante solution de paresse (Michael White), Thursday, March 4, 2010 11:26 AM (12 minutes ago)

I agree with this. I dont understand the whole romanticizing of the game's past. Again I cite Pete Hammill's embarrassing article in last Sunday's Times Book Review.

Otoh, no sport has even come close to self-aggrandizing and romanticizing itself than the NFL with NFL films. It is a genre unto itself; sui generis.

― La religion est une fatigante solution de paresse (Michael White), Thursday, March 4, 2010 11:28 AM (12 minutes ago)

But NFL Films gets a pass, becuase they are fucking awesome.

Pro football was integrated before baseball was - you never hear about that. Look up Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Marion Motley, Bill Willis.

NFL films set the standard a long time ago for technical prowess in documentary cinema.

nfl is just a hilarious 5+ month soap opera imo

and that's not even considering Brett Favre's annual "am i really gonna retire now?" spiel during the off-season.

"but the sport is relatively dainty compared to the '50s, '60s version...."

I would add the '70s as the most violent decade. You had the advent of the longer pass after the AFL-NFL merger, along with the growing sophistication of zone defenses. The combination of these two things led to complete and utter bloodshed in the defensive secondary, culminating in the tragic paralysis of Darryl Stingley.

NFL Films is indeed great, but the NFL has sort of conspired to perpetuate the idea that pro football didn't exist before NFL Films started (1963) or even before the first Super Bowl (1967). It's a weird propaganda move. And of course they never acknowledge that there were other pro leagues at various times.

And if you had 1970's rules combined with the size, speed and athleticism of today's NFL players, there would be at least one death a season.

xpost.

There are some pretty good pre-67 NFL films

^ Which you never see on TV anymore.

They can make a dull season in a sport I haven't followed since the 80's seem like the most compelling, epic and poignant thing ever. If Goebbels or Stalin had had NFL Films...

Josefa, it's kind of like the History Channel mostly making shows about stuff that occurred after the advent of film. The NFL is very carefully branded and before the 60's, football was not the dominant sport it has become.

NFL Films is indeed great, but the NFL has sort of conspired to perpetuate the idea that pro football didn't exist before NFL Films started (1963) or even before the first Super Bowl (1967). It's a weird propaganda move. And of course they never acknowledge that there were other pro leagues at various times.

― Josefa, Thursday, March 4, 2010 11:47 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

NFL films did a 5-part doc on the history of the AFL ("Full Color Football") just last year

I acknowledge that the concussions threaten to take the word "twee" out of consideration, but the sport is relatively dainty compared to the '50s, '60s version.

― Josefa, Thursday, March 4, 2010 11:05 AM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark

the 50s, 60s version was pretty lightweight compared to the turn of the century version that killed hundreds of people every year and had teddy roosevelt threatening to ban the sport if colleges didn't start regulating the game themselves

Forward Pass!!

Read this and weep. And not in a good way:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/books/review/Hamill-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=review

I love Mays as much as the next Giants fan but there's a point where hagiography just gets annoying.

holy shit

now do you see why you were talking out of your ass, LJ?

great example

holy...shit

The interestig part is that the book he is reviewing is apparently not a hagiography at all (based on what Ive heard from people who read it).But this review totally is. In fact, this review almost seems to be about him, Hammill, not about the book or Mays. The part where he refused to ever see Mays play after the Giants moved to SF. Are we supposed to give you a medal man???? Tell me if the book is any fucking good.

I can't really decide whether my hatred of Geroge Will stems more from his being a smarmy right-wing dick or being a snivelingly rank sentimentalist when it comes to baseball.

^^^^^^^^

(probably go with the right wing dick, but it's close)

baseball writers do have an annoying tendency to all but canonize their favorite ballplayers -- whether it's Willie Mays or Kirby Puckett.

DO NOT SAY SHIT ABOUT KIRBY PUCKETT THAT'S WHEN I GO OFF

ahem

See, Bill, that's really what pisses me off. Hamill has every right to be a sentimental memoirist but that's not a proper review, is it?

the NY Times Book Review is a joke--the quality over the 10+ years I've been reading has declined so much.

I agree.

This line killed me:"Above all, the story of Willie Mays reminds us of a time when the only performance-enhancing drug was joy."
Mays retired in '73 or '74. Jim Bouton's book (where he describes speed being set out in candy bowls in the clubhouse) came out in 1970. Either Hamill never read Bouton's book, or chooses not to believe anything in there because it ruins his narrative. Either way, he loses all credibility with me regarding baseball.

Golden Age bullshit is always just that.

By all means mourn your own youth but don't treat it like it was objectively better. That's the point; your subjectivity, for being yours, is no less valid - for you, not for everybody.

and don't do it in the New York fucking Times book review.

note to dan: i liked Kirby Puckett, too. it's just that he was all but declared to be a saint when he was still playing, so when all of the news about his much-less-than-saintly personal life broke a few years back it was all in very stark contrast to his previous public/media image.

it also works the other way: witness Albert Belle (who IS by many accounts an asshole and no doubt not a very pleasant man, but who was also one of the most dominant players of the 1990s).

LALALALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU

googling "Kirby Puckett saint" is v.v. depressing btw

NFL films did a 5-part doc on the history of the AFL ("Full Color Football") just last year

Yeah, I should've said they ignore all the leagues that they didn't absorb in toto. The AAFC, for example. That AFL doc was a really impressive piece of work, btw.

re Albert Belle: the media treatment of the guy back in the day was almost analogous to that afforded to ax murderers, child molesters and Bernie Madoff. again, he isn't a very nice man who did a lot of borderline-psychotic things -- but the press laid it on him a little too thick, he isn't Jeffrey Dahmer.

Albert Belle's antics are also good evidence that at least some baseball players aren't very twee at all.

Yeah, I should've said they ignore all the leagues that they didn't absorb in toto.

^hence the name "NFL Films"

wow the beginning of that book review literally could have been posted at fire joe morgan. unbelievable.

add ppl who still pine for the displaced ny baseball teams to the list of disgusting savages imo

pining for displaced teams seems to be a strictly NYC phenomenon -- magnified a zillion times by NYC being a media capital. almost no-one in Philly who isn't in a nursing home gives a shit about the Athletics or pines for the return of the Warriors, for example.

(on second thought: aren't some Baltimore fans still butthurt about the Colts?!?)

yeah i was gonna say

yeah but that was also only 25 years ago

the baltimorians i know will never forget the moving trucks

I still can't quite wrap my head around that.

lol I'm still pissed off about the North Stars so I'm not going to get on anyone's case over losing their team

Walter O'Malley is one of the most unfairly maligned people in American history. based on everything i've read about the guy, his only real "black mark" (if you can call it that) is moving the Dodgers to LA (and his reasons for doing so were entirely defensible).

cmon dan you got the "wild" now

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_iiwJQZFvT8E/SmFcHOYNU8I/AAAAAAAAANk/LcDZqJWCDwI/s400/the-glare-michelle-obama-carla-bruni-sarkozy-glare-demotivational-poster-1244466818.jpg

l-r: CAD, me

loooool

worst hockey game i ever went to was a bruins-wild game. we took my irish friend who had never seen hockey in person and we were all like "it's really fun, you're gonna love it" and it was a horrific stagnant affair that ended like 1-0.

Brooklyn Dodgers average home attendance in '57, their last year in Brooklyn: 13,354. If they really wanted them to stay, maybe more of them should have gone to the games.

13k was pretty high for '50s attendance. For all the Golden Age talk, teams routinely draw 3-4x as many fans today as any team did in the '50s.

They can make a dull season in a sport I haven't followed since the 80's seem like the most compelling, epic and poignant thing ever. If Goebbels or Stalin had had NFL Films...

looool at this

iirc the dodgers moved because of a dispute with NYC's city planner who wanted them to build their new stadium in flushing, not brooklyn (ebbets wasnt cutting the mustard anymore - too small, too inaccessible to suburban fans), dodgers threatened to move, city hall didn't believe them, then they moved

13k was pretty high for '50s attendance. For all the Golden Age talk, teams routinely draw 3-4x as many fans today as any team did in the '50s.

― FIST FIGHT! FIST FIGHT! FIST FIGHT IN THE PARKING LOT! (milo z), Thursday, March 4, 2010 1:45 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

In 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers were 10th out of 19 teams in attendance. I think I'm missing what the dewey-eyed nostalgia regarding this team is about. Im of half a mind to have Hammill produce ticket stubs to prove he ever went to Ebbets Field.

'57 was soon after a few teams changed cities and saw a bump in attendance (the Dodgers are well within the top half of teams in their old cities). They were also hurt because it was obvious early in the season that they'd be moving.

Before 1957, the Dodgers had been first or second in NL attendance for most of the decade (though average attendance was basically the same).

I can understand pining for the Brooklyn Dodgers in two ways - a lot of people are still alive for whom the Dodgers were the team they grew up with (the move worked out for my dad, though - he grew up a Dodgers fan in California, they moved to LA when he was 10), and because losing them was (as I understand it) a big knock against Brooklyn having an identity of its own.

Ok, fair. I dont agree, but you make fair points.

Wow this thread. It's totally baseball.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Twee-est, eh? Hmm, now which one of the sports listened in the OP did Ken Burns make an 18 and 1/2 hour documentary about...

baseball probably is the right answer here, but within my group of friends hockey fans are the most precious

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wau

not surprised by the result, but i thought that w/ all us Yanks here that there'd be more votes for soccer-twee.