What's up with baseball?

[Ineti]

First off, I'm not a fan; never have been, never will.

I heard on the news this morning that baseball's all-star game was stopped, tied 7-7, in the 11th inning. Was there a good reason for ending the game without a resolution? This makes no sense to me, though like I said, I'm not all that familiar with the sport.

I mean, if I was a fan and paid $$ to see that game, I'd be p.o.ed.

[Dan Stack]

Well, the All-Star game is something of a joke anyways - no one really wants to play in it for fear of getting injured in a "meaningless" game. So pitchers only pitched for about one inning max, and both sides ran out of pitchers by the 11th inning and had no one to replace the pitchers with, as they ran out of non-pitchers too. Lame in my opinion.

Sadly, baseball is on its way out. When I was a kid, which wasn't too long ago, I used to get home from school and I could usually catch the last half of a Mets afternoon game on TV. Nowadays there's barely any day games and the World Series is almost always at night.

[Kaiddin]

So does that mean we are all hoping for a strike?
After all the strike is only going to be because the big bad owners want to deprive the poorly paid, $6 million a year workers of some much needed jobs. Pay caps and league contraction is unconstitutional. Isn't it?

Yawn.............

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

Sounds like spooky echoes of TNG's prediction of the death of professional baseball in the 21st century.

[Dan Stack]

I hate to say it, but TNG probably has it right. The games are now absurdly long, it costs a fortune for a family to go for a game, they charge unbelievable prices for a small cup of coke, and "in the aftermath of September 11" don't allow people to bring backpacks or large bags to games. As a new parent, let me attest to you it is impossible to go anywhere without lugging a big bag around! "Aftermath of September 11!" Ha! They're not worried about bombs, they're worried about smuggling in a bottle of water to avoid paying $5.00 for 12oz of water.

As a child, I loved baseball. But now, in the words of Captain Kirk... "Let them die!" Or reform.

[First of Two]

Baseball is dying?

[Koshspeak:] Good.

[Perrryyy]

Are pitchers in the All-Star game only allowed a certain number of pitches? According to the box scores, one of the AL (Guardado) pitchers only pitched to 2 hitters?

What's the reasoning behind that?

EDIT: I rescind the question. The player in question probably pitched on Sunday.

[Perrryyy]

Somebody explain something to me.

If you're a fan & you went to the game, you got to see 11 innings for the price of 9. Regardless of what team you root for, you got a chance to see your favorite player play (albeit probably for a short time). With 14 runs scored, you probably didn't see the world's greatest pitching, but you got to see some hitting & fielding...

You saw (presumably) baseball's finest (or at least favorites) play for 11 innings & work each other to a stalemate.

So what constitutes throwing debris on the field??

[Lord Kjeran]

Chello!

I prefer to watch minor league games anyway.

Tony

[Perrryyy]

Originally posted by Lord Kjeran
Chello!

I prefer to watch minor league games anyway.

Tony

There's always NCAA hoops too.

[Sea Tyger]

I am a baseball fan, from a town that used to call itself a baseball town: Kansas City. I've watched with agony how my Royals have floundered in the last 8 seasons, unable to recover from the economic changes to the sport following the '94 strike.

The All-Star game was just simply odd, I've never seen that in the 23+ years I've followed the majors, and I was disappointed at how they handled it. Personally, I have to agree that you can't just take a player and pitch him into the ground, especially if he belongs to another club. But they knew this would happen after the 9th inning ended. All they needed to do was make the decision then, and make he announcement then that the game would end after the 11th inning if the score remained tied. That would have been much more palatable.

However, the underlying problem is that everyone in baseball, from the owners, to the commissioner (who is an onwer), to the players, have completely lost touch with their fan base. Drastic measures need to be taken, or else Star Trek's "prediction" will come true.

Professional baseball in America is dying, period. The game itself may survive, but not in the same way (it'll be like rugby or lacrosse in the US). To save it, they need to institute a hard salary cap, massive revenue sharing, and a salary floor to ensure teams are competitive.

In 1994, Detroit had the major's largest payroll at $50 million. Kansas City wasn't far behind at $40 million. There was only a $20 million dollar difference from top to bottom. Today, the Yankees ("Bankees") have a payroll of $130 million. Kansas City only has a $45 million payroll. How can teams compete when the field is so far askew?

Since the strike, four teams in the AL made 13 of 14 ALCS appearances; that means only 5 teams out of 14 have participated in the league championship. The NL fares only a little better; three teams account for 10 of 14 NLCS appearances, with a total of 7 teams reaching the league championship since 95.

In contrast, 19 of 31 NFL teams from 95-01 have made their respective conference championship games, and no team has reached the conference championship more than 3 times in that span.

It's no wonder that football has supplanted baseball as America's favorite sport. At least with my beloved Chiefs, I have the illusion that we have a shot at winning the division (okay, so we may need a little help this year -- a lot of help, but... ). Even the NBA has installed a salary cap.

I will remain a baseball fan until the day I die. I can only hope that baseball will survive that long...

[Cybrludite]

Originally posted by Sea Tyger
It's no wonder that football has supplanted baseball as America's favorite sport. At least with my beloved Chiefs, I have the illusion that we have a shot at winning the division (okay, so we may need a little help this year -- a lot of help, but... ). Even the NBA has installed a salary cap.

Better the Chiefs than the Ain'ts...

[Silverthorne]

Why does this thread remind me of the movie "the Replacements" good movie, by the way. I always find it odd that people complain about being paid to play a game. not a little mind you, they are paid enough money for any of us to retire in a years time, and these people have the gaul to say that they deserve more money for the stress they are under. Hmm.. I think I could handle the stress of the game to make enough money to retire in a year.

[spyone]

Originally posted by Ineti
First off, I'm not a fan; never have been, never will.

I heard on the news this morning that baseball's all-star game was stopped, tied 7-7, in the 11th inning. Was there a good reason for ending the game without a resolution?

I, too, am not a fan, but I can shed some light on this (or perhaps just raise more questions). The news byte I saw on this said that they ran out of elegible players. Apparently, each player is only given a limited participation, and so many players decided not to go this year that they ran out of players.

Which reminds me of the computer game Mutant League Football: If your team was on offense, but you had used up all your quarterbacks, you would forfeit. Any other used-up players would just leave gaps in your plays, but the Quarterback was essential. Against the worst rated team in the league, I never managed to finish a game because, try as I might to avoid it, I'd kill all their quarterbacks.

[ComaBoy]

I'm not a big baseball fan but I would miss the sport if the owners and players were foolish enough to argue themselves into oblivion. The whole family went to an O's game a few weeks back and we had a great time.

In my opinion, football, baseball and basketball all suffer from the employment of prima donnas for outrageous salaries.