Baseball and me!

Reachy

Reachy

New Member
I need a baseball team to follow to make my experience of the game more "real" and I want you guys to tell me who that should be!

These are the criteria:

I want them to be similar to the football team that I follow over here, Derby County. Very short bio of "The Rams" - Had some success in the early 70's winning a league cup but nothing since. Moved up and down the leagues and never really had a claim to the top table of football in the UK. Last season got promoted to the Premier League in the play-offs from the league below. Are very much favourites to get relegated next season and have yet to win a game this season. Got thrashed 6-0 by Liverpool last Saturday (but Liverpool are one of the best and are looking damn fine so far this season!)

As a massive fan of "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "The Wire" I'm thinking of Baltimore Orioles, do they match up to my requirements?

Cheers

Reachy

PS. Watched a couple of MLB shows that are shown over here (with an English and American announcer) and am getting the hang of it although I must admit I'm not yet gripped. There sometimes doesn't appear to be a lot going on!!!
 
Well, if he's looking for a team that likes to get thrashed... :D

(Seriously, the O's actually lost a game about a week ago by the score of 30 to 3. It was the first time a team had scored that many runs in a game since before 1900.)

Also, the whole concept of changing leagues and moving up and down like that is completely foreign to Americans like us. The same teams are in every league every year.

To answer your question, coming from somewhere in the vicinity of Chicago, I'd say the Cubs are always hard to root against (unless you're a White Sox fan, of course). They haven't won a World Series since 1906, but people love them anyways. And with them currently in first place in the Central division, there's actually a chance of something happening this year!

(Towards your PS: Welcome to how 99.457% of all Americans see your football.)
 
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The Os may have it

Football is easy to understand. Other than the offside rule (which for some reason seems to mystify a lot of people) the rules are fairly easy to follow and the objective is easy to see. I can't say the same for Baseball. Try following rugby or cricket if you want to be truly confused as to what's going on!

Actually I think you Americans may quite like some of the shorter games of cricket that are being played at the moment. I'm no expert on the game but here is a summary (Colin or Andy may correct me if they know more than I).

The traditional game is a 5 days long but can end sooner than that if either one or both of the teams don't get many runs in their innings of which they have 2 each. As you can imagine the game is often played at a leisurely pace with batters picking and choosing their shots. There is another variant called the "one day" game where each team plays only one inning each and has to face a limited number of "overs" usually 50 each. (An "over" comprises 6 balls bowled at the batter. After each "over" the bowler is changed and they also change which direction which they bowl). The 5 day game does not limit the number of overs bowled.

A newer and much faster (and some would say more exciting) variant of the limited overs game is called "Twenty20" where each team has only 20 overs to bat and bowl so they really go for it, lots of slugging (as you may say) and lots of wickets (usually). In fact there is the 1st Twenty20 World Cup coming up soon so if you fancy trying a new sport see whether you can find it on ESPN or BBC World or some other minority channel. Follow this link for a taster http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqFFvW6eaHU

Back to baseball. Freeloader has the right idea, I don't want to follow a team that might actually win anything. Being a Derby County fan means that I have to suffer long periods of disappointment with brief episodes of belief and excitement followed very quickly by despair and mediocrity. Incidentally, Derby's home stadium used to be called the "Baseball Ground" as it was built when there was an effort to introduce baseball to the UK sometime in the 50's I think.

Cheers

Reachy
 
Reachy,

I gotta agree with Freeloader. If you want a team that's long-suffering, you ought to go with the Chicago Cubs. In the US in the 1980's, two of the popular cable "SuperStations" were local stations out of Atlanta and Chicago that carried baseball in the summer. As a result, both the Chicago Cubs and the Atlanta Braves kind of became "America's Team". Atlanta has had a lot of middling success over the years, winning something like 12 straight division championships, but sputtering in the playoffs. However the Cubs kind of oscillate between playoff contenders and really bad, and they haven't won a World Series since 1906.

The Orioles are not an awful choice, if you like long-suffering teams. They were good in the 80's, but are pretty bad now. They play in the same division as the Yankees and Red Sox, so they'll have a pretty tough time making the playoffs.

The other team to consider is the Oakland A's, especially if you read and liked Moneyball. Beane is still the GM, and he does an amazing job of competing every year on a shoestring budget, while there are teams like Tampa Bay and Kansas City who have the same shoestring budget, but are pathetic.

As for Futbol, the issue isn't it being difficult to understand. It's that the game is very antithetical to U.S. sporting values:

1. The game has very little scoring. In addition, there aren't intermediate goals to celebrate, like a 1st down or interception in football or a base hit or strikeout in baseball.

2. There are very few statistics. the US is very stats oriented, and when one of the biggest stats in soccer is international "games played" (as in Caps), it's not going to appeal to the U.S.

3. There is little chance for a "last minute comeback". U.S. sports always need a way for the team that's behind to take chances to catch up. In football, it's the 2-minute drill. In basketball, there is fouling and the 3-point play (in fact, the know on Basketball is often that it doesn't get interesting until the last 5 minutes). In hockey, you pull the goalie for a 6th attacker. In baseball, there is no clock, so any comeback is possible. However in futbol, a 1-goal lead with 3 minutes to go is extremely unlikely to change, and a 2-goal lead with 10 mins to go is almost impossible. I went to a US-Germany game in Chicago about 10 years ago. It was very high scoring for soccer (4-3), and the US crowd was on it's feet hoping to see something happen in the last few minutes to tie it. Instead, the German player just dribbled to himself in the corner of the field killing time, and there was very little the U.S. could do about it.

I make these observations as a big fan of international soccer, but I can see why it never became a big hit in the US.
 
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Baseball and Cricket

After a little Googling I've discovered there is such a thing as the Baseball World Cup. What's more, Great Britain won the inaugural event in 1938! Until 1996 it was an entirely amateur event, and Major League players are still not allowed to compete. The USA has only won it twice, in 1973 and 1974. As you might imagine, Cuba has been pretty dominant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_World_Cup

There are a few 'cricket for people who understand baseball' articles to be found on the web. This one seems pretty good - http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/its-not-baseball - although, since I only partially understand baseball, I'm not the best judge of how helpful it is.

From what I've seen, I think Twenty20 cricket may actually be a rather more fast-paced game than baseball. The overall duration is similar, at about three hours. It would be ironic if this form of the game were too frenetic for American tastes.

P.S. Reachy, I like your randomly chosen example - England thrashing the Aussies. :D
 
Curious

Yeah, I think you're right Colin. That's what I find strange about baseball, it does seem a little slow for what I understand of the US sporting mentality, or maybe that's just the games I've watched. I suppose the plethora of stats and analysis fills the gaps between the action.

We could be onto something here though. Instead of trying to sell football (soccer) to the US why not cricket? Twenty20 has plenty of action, there are stats to be had all over the place, big scores, excitement, the lot, I think our US cousins would like that. Can you imagine the big stars of cricket going over to the States in the twighlight of their careers like Pele did in the 70's? Fantastic!

Incidentally did any non-English forum users view the youtube link to get a flavour of Twenty20 cricket? What did you think? You liked it didn't you? go on, admit it ;) !

Cheers

Reachy
 
Here's an idea

The similarities between Gaelic Football and Australian Rules Football seem quite scant (the ball's not even the same shape), and yet someone came up with the idea of a hybrid game - International Rules Football - allowing Australia and Ireland to contest an annual series. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Rules_Football

I'm sure we could do the same thing with cricket and baseball. I propose the name International Rules Stickball. :D
 
Decline

Reachy said:
That's what I find strange about baseball, it does seem a little slow for what I understand of the US sporting mentality, or maybe that's just the games I've watched. I suppose the plethora of stats and analysis fills the gaps between the action.
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The game had been in a long decline as far as attendance and following here in USA. Still when you mention baseball you will often hear how boring it is and "when the hell is football starting" But the last few years have seen some resurgence of baseball with the home runs up along with fantastic new stadiums. Im not sure but think the game isnt in decline as far as viewers now. Baseball is played during summer for the most part which in USA, and anywhere else Im sure, isnt a time to kick back and relax like it was during the hay day of baseball, the warm months are a time to play and party. Baseball was known as the great American past time back in the 1970s and before, now we are always on the run 7 days a week. Football, American, is played during winter which is a much better time to grab viewers for TV broadcasts during cold weather.
 
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Reachy said:
Yeah, I think you're right Colin. That's what I find strange about baseball, it does seem a little slow for what I understand of the US sporting mentality, or maybe that's just the games I've watched. I suppose the plethora of stats and analysis fills the gaps between the action.
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Yes, baseball is pretty much the bottom end of what Americans are willing to tolerate, and pretty much that is only because of it's long tradition. Basically, you introduce anything slower than baseball, and you have exactly zero chance of succeeding.

However, since the NFL season starts tomorrow, no one will care about baseball, unless their favorite/local team makes their playoffs, at which point their dedication is divided for another month.
 
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