Baseball: explain...

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I could not sleep last night. I ended up watching Channel 5. Baseball was on, Houston vs. Cincinatti (I think!)...Houston was winning, the Cincinatti pitcher was having a very bad game, he looked really dejected after a while. I don't understand baseball terminology...bottom of the fifth, top of the eigth...Just how many matches does a team play in a season? And why do they get paid so much? Why so many referees?

Baseball: classic or dud?

― jel, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

How else are you going to sleep soundly in the sun on a lazy summer afternoon?

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dude, it's total classic, it's the best thing ever besides football and margaritas and cigarettes. Bottom of the fifth, top of the eight - parts of innings, bottom and top refer to which team is up to bat, home or away. They play something like 8 trillion games per season, sometimes more than one per day. They get paid so much because they are so darn cute, especially Derek Jeter. I have no clue about the umpires though, they shouldn't have any, that's why I hit the one with the bat.

― Ally, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What Ally said, adding that they play 162 games in a season, and there's one umpire for every base in major league baseball.

― Kris, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

In corporate softball, there's just the homeplate umpire. Maybe that's why he's such an asshole, he needs 3 friends out there.

― Ally, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I wanna see baseball in nyc. I saw baseball when I was nine, Yankees-Redsox in the bronx, it was cool.

― Ed, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This would be nearly as complicated as trying to explain "emo." Should have been a great insomnia cure, though. American athletes get paid so much thanks to outrageous television contracts. That 162-game schedule doesn't hurt, either. With 81 home games each, your yearly cumulative attendance for a baseball team would be double, triple that of a Premiership club. Lots more $$ to go around.

(But, ooh, cursed Houston, leaving Saint Sammy and the Cubs to rot. Again.)

― scott p., Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

classic cause you don't have to pay attention or know how it works to enjoy the game.

on the flip side: keeping a scorecard, classic or dud?

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I've never kept score in my life. I think I'd know how to do it, but there's just something so weirdly obsessive about it. If I needed a motivation to pay attention, I'd rather put money on the game. But the best thing about baseball is you don't have to pay attention all the time.

― Kris, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Keeping a scorecard = classic. I kept them on the occasional rest days in high school and summer leagues. It is an artform -- I had it down to a detailed yet cryptic science. I would stare at a finished scorecard much in the same manner that someone would analyze Pollock. Sharp angles, dots, columns, single digit figures, percentages, Ks, BBs, RBIs... ahhhh, bliss.

― Andy, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Learning how to keep score, as a rite of passage = classic.
― scott p., Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

dude are you from france or somthing? Ne voulez-vous pas apprendre les secrets erotiques du curveball et du pennis malle giante de joueur de base-ball?
― Pennysong Hanle y, Thursday, 6 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes, I am from France.

― scott p., Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Aw, crap. I meant to say, "Oui." Got the italics off at any rate.

― scott p., Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Be gentle...let your image in my mine be young and free. Not nude, yet simple. Like a galaxy of fakers.

― Pennysong Hanle y, Friday, 7 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

thirteen years pass...

there are 162 fucking games in a team's season (not including post-season or spring training), what the fuck, that's ridiculous, sort your sport out

― PORC EPIC SAVVAGE (imago), Friday, 10 April 2015 18:30 (ten years ago)

every team should play every other team twice and that's it

― PORC EPIC SAVVAGE (imago), Friday, 10 April 2015 18:30 (ten years ago)

then a playoff or w/e

― PORC EPIC SAVVAGE (imago), Friday, 10 April 2015 18:30 (ten years ago)

baseball is such a high variance sport on a game-to-game level that a short season wouldn't adequately separate the good teams from the bad. the best teams only win about 60% of their games, this isn't chess. you need a lot of data before picking a winner.

― ciderpress, Friday, 10 April 2015 18:47 (ten years ago)

hence Moneyball I guess

― PORC EPIC SAVVAGE (imago), Friday, 10 April 2015 18:50 (ten years ago)

i'm sure other sports would add more games to their season if they could, more games = more money; baseball is uniquely suited to it because it's not too physically demanding to play every day (other than pitching).

― ciderpress, Friday, 10 April 2015 18:55 (ten years ago)

other games would suffer from ridiculous supporter fatigue if they played every day, but baseball fans don't seem to mind, idgi

― PORC EPIC SAVVAGE (imago), Friday, 10 April 2015 19:01 (ten years ago)

I kinda like that they play nearly every day, it's nice to have something to follow every night and I like how the game is set up so any random player can be a hero

Basketball is the one where they play too many games IMO

― frogbs, Friday, 10 April 2015 19:22 (ten years ago)

Baseball fans generally don't watch every game and very few even attend all 81 local games. I'd say the above-average fan in dedication sees 4-5 games per year in person.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Friday, 10 April 2015 19:30 (ten years ago)

yeah baseball is not something where you watch every game as an Event, its just something that happens and you tune in when you feel like watching baseball. NBA baskteball and NHL hockey are more or less the same way despite having half as many games. the NFL is the only of the major american sports to shoot for the model of having every game be an event.

― ciderpress, Friday, 10 April 2015 19:37 (ten years ago)

please tell me more about how to fix baseball, person from the bizarro universe where cricket is A Thing

― GGGOAT: greatest goat game of all time (Will M.), Friday, 10 April 2015 19:57 (ten years ago)

my understanding is that cricket handles the baseball problem by just having the matches be extremely long instead of the seasons

― ciderpress, Friday, 10 April 2015 20:00 (ten years ago)

the most bewildering part to me watching a bit of the cricket world cup was one team doing all of their batting and then the other team doing theirs. it's like, why watch the first half?

― GGGOAT: greatest goat game of all time (Will M.), Friday, 10 April 2015 20:04 (ten years ago)

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