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    Originally posted by Incandenza View Post



    No, it was an organized travelling fan group, Pantone 294. They do organized away trips, most often to San Francisco, but they'll do a few big east coast trips each year. Playing the Red Sox was obviously a big draw, so more interest than usual, but I'd say that at least 50% of people there made the trip from LA. Helps that the next stop on the Dodgers' road trip was in Philadelphia, so a lot of people making a week out of it. They had a huge section in the outfield in Philly last night.
    We saw the Dodgers at Oakland last summer and there was a huge Dodgers following there - whether they had travelled, were diaspora or were locals who had grown up following the Dodgers I don't know.

    Any game I've been to on my travels has turned up a surprising amount of "away fans" - Red Sox at Cincinnati seemed like a majority for the Red Sox, and even Tampa at Wrigley Field had a lot of tourists. In each case certainly more than we have been led to believe in Europe, that American sports fans don't travel (and think we've covered previously about the numbers that will travel for certain games in college football).

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      Oakland has had large number of opposing fans for as long as I remember, with them regularly being a majority for Yankees and Red Sox games if the A's weren't doing well.

      Part of that is diaspora, part of it is "let's go to a game while on business/vacation for other reasons". I don't recall organised travel being a thing, largely because the Coliseum is not on anyone's bucket list for baseball. Interleague play has definitely driven that kind of travel for "destination" ballparks like Fenway or Wrigley.

      It is still the case that the majority of "away fans" at MLB games will not have travelled for the particular match in question in the way British football fans do. Even the Cub fan "takeovers" of Milwaukee in recent years have been driven by supporters who live in Wisconsin or Northern Illinois, rather than Wrigley diehards.

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        My (data-free) feeling on this is - and it may be that San Diego is a particular outlier because of the miltiary presence here - that in most US cities of a decent size, there are probably going to be 10,000 plus people from, say, Cleveland or Tampa or Kansas City, let alone the Bay Area or New England or Chicago. And these people only get a few chances a year to see their team, so they go along. Local fans get 80-100 chances, so their support is always diluted.

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          Availability of tickets is also an important factor.

          It is why away fans have always been more visible in Oakland than San Francisco and in Queens than in the Bronx.

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            Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
            It is still the case that the majority of "away fans" at MLB games will not have travelled for the particular match in question in the way British football fans do. Even the Cub fan "takeovers" of Milwaukee in recent years have been driven by supporters who live in Wisconsin or Northern Illinois, rather than Wrigley diehards.
            Yeah the other factor that I didn't suggest is that the Dodgers are one of those regional teams who were getting syndicated to a lot of TV and radio stations when terrestrial broadcasting still ruled - it became a sport within itself on one road trip with my brother, trying to find Dodgers commentary on the car radio, for which I think Crater Lake took the prize for the furthest away from LA. Therefore I'd expect their support to go deep into travelling distance to the Bay Area.

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              Yes, especially up the spine of the Central Valley, helped in part by their long association with minor league baseball in Bakersfield. Not to mention the very significant Mexican heritage fanbase that goes back to Fernando Valenzuela.

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                The first time the Red Sox went to San Francisco, the park was crammed with Red Sox fans. It was the first time I’d ever seen Mays Field taken over by opposing fans, and the atmosphere was somewhat rowdy as a result. The fistfight in the Club section was a particular highlight.

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                  Farhan Zaidi must be terrified. The Giants will not stop winning, but it seems utterly delusional to see them as a playoff team.

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                    Originally posted by Flynnie View Post
                    I notice Cal mentioned it above, but we probably should talk about Ball Four a bit more. Maybe in the Books section.

                    It's the greatest sports book ever, IMHO, and probably sport's single greatest -- and possibly singular -- contribution to the American literary canon. I don't know what influence it had outside North America*, although I strongly suspect Eamon Dunphy's Only A Game? was influenced by it on some level (perhaps an editor suggesting the format to Dunphy or something like that). Probably every remotely honest player's diary is rooted in Ball Four, although Ball Four has its own debt to Jim Brosnan's The Long Season.

                    Among all the plaudits it gets for being funny as hell, for pulling back the veil on how baseball players really act, for the pathos generated by Bouton's decline and fall from Yankee World Series hero to struggling knuckleballer, it has two qualities that have gone underdiscussed. One not so surprising, one very surprising.

                    1) The Seattle Pilots were the most disastrous franchise in North American major league sports history. Not for reasons entirely of their own doing (Stuart Symington seems to deserve a fair bit of the blame), but a Major League Baseball team going bankrupt in a totally inadequate stadium with no alternatives after just one season is a remarkable example of ineptitude. Bouton chronicles this season.

                    2) Ball Four strikes me as being as good as anything else in illustrating the yawning chasm in values between the wartime generation and the Baby Boomers. OK, Bouton was a little old to be a Baby Boomer, he was born in 1939, but he was clearly leaning that way culturally. In some ways echoing the disparity in values between Boomers and Millennials today, the War Generation just didn't get people like Bouton. Seemed almost to go out of their way not to get why they were scrawling peace signs on their helmets in Vietnam, why they listened to rock music, why they were smoking dope, why they seemed contemptuous of authority, a good secure job, and 2.5 kids in their suburban detached bungalow. The reason the book was successful wasn't just that it was funny and described Mickey Mantle shooting beaver, it's that it resonated with a generation in a way few things could: even famous baseball players feel like us.


                    * There's no doubt it influenced Dryden's The Game, the greatest book ever on hockey and a far more important work than it's given credit for on 1970s Québec.

                    I guess I should read that. Or both. I don't think I finished The Game. Can't recall why.

                    I suspect that generation gaps come in different sizes and the difference between the "Greatest Generation" and "Baby Boomers" is the biggest in the last century. I think the Baby Boomers were keenly aware of that gap when they raised Gen X (us) and so were more understanding of differences.* I have a lot of anxiety about being left-behind and not understanding what the young people are into and being like those old people I know who can't communicate with their grandchildren or much of the outside world because they refuse to get a computer. I got very anxious when I listened to Kendrick Lamar's last album and didn't enjoy it.

                    But that might be me. I know some people in their 40s who seem perfectly fine turning into their parents.

                    *The world is always changing and humans are pretty much hardwired to want to be independent from their parents and accepted by their peers, so there must have always been generation gaps, but I'm not sure the idea of a "generation gap" was even in the culture before the 1950s.


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                      Yikes. Well-known baseball writer Jonah Keri out on bail after being arrested for assaulting his wife and making death threats against her. Three documented alleged attacks starting last year.

                      https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/sportswr...medium=twitter

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                        Jeez. He has always had a somewhat manic air, but this is a shock.

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                          I know his wife’s brother, who lived in London for a while and is well known in Montréal. Never mentioned Jonah other than as a friend until he posted a picture holding his nephew not long after he returned to La Belle Province.

                          something always seemed weird, lots of mention of his first wife and kids and then all of a sudden he’s back in Montréal and married to someone else.
                          Last edited by Flynnie; 19-07-2019, 16:53.

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                            Some suicidal fielding from the Padres here, but we will take it.

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                              I wasn't watching, but the last couple of games I've watched Tatis's fielding in particular has been chaotic. He was rock solid in the first part of the season, but has been flapping around and throwing wild. I don't really know what's happened

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                                This is a very sloppy game of baseball.

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                                  Eh, I'll take it.

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                                    They should give Javi MVP just for tagging

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                                      And sliding

                                      That was absolutely ridiculous

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                                        Cubs win!

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                                          Yankees are getting bombed by the Red Sox in this series. Although the Yankees are level with the 1998 team in terms of record (if I remember hearing that correctly last week), this side lacks the pitching consistency that featured in 1998. I haven't gone back to my predictions for this year. I think I picked the Yankees to win the division because Boston would deal with a hangover, which they have certainly experienced. But I also noted that I didn't trust the starting pitching and that has proven to be the case against the Twins and in this series. I expect that the Yanks will win the division but Boston will continue to get better and will probably go deeper into the playoffs.

                                          In other news, I think the Giants' current run of form has really messed up Farhan's plans. He should have been set to trade Madbum and the quality arms in the bullpen and now a barely 500 team that has no business earning a wild card spot is going to be hard to dismantle. These trades could have led to a dramatic shift in the Giants' future. Now they will have free agents that are older and will either suck up more money that shouldn't be paid out or they will get nothing. I saw on MLB Network last week that rental players really brought back very little last year (e.g., the Dodgers got Machado for a prospect that is much more suspect than guaranteed), so in that sense the Giants might be better off seeing what happens with the Wild Card. But I would think Madbum will require legit prospects and so the Giants will miss the kind of trades that worked out for the Yankees (Miller trade with Cleveland and the Chapman trade with the Cubs), especially given Bumgarner's playoff prowess.
                                          Last edited by danielmak; 28-07-2019, 04:41.

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                                            That was my boy Keston Hiura breaking Cubs hearts with an extra-innings walk-off HR off Kimbrel last night.

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                                              Impressive demonstration of arson from the bullpen last night

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                                                MLB Network and MLB's free game are both Baltimore-San Diego. The Padres are blowing out the O's so I channel surfed and landed on Cape Cod league on NESN. This is obviously one of the more important leagues to spot talent. But I never thought much about construction of the teams. Does anyone know how that happens? I assume players are invited and then spread among the teams in the league by the league office, but maybe that's not correct.

                                                As an interesting side note, the announcers on NESN look about 18 years old, which is amusing. But they're doing a good job.

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                                                  The Cape League itself does not recruit players. Player recruitment is left solely to each individual franchise, facilitated through each team's manager. To find out the name and contact information for each franchise manager, please refer to our online Teams Directory. To ensure a manager/head coach is aware of your playing abilities, have your current college coach or a Major League Baseball Scout recommend you to a particular Cape League manager/head coach or franchise general manager.

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                                                    Interesting. It would seem that team managers with reputations for quality player development would end up receiving more recommendations. I know the entire league is volunteer run and players stay with host families during their time on the Cape. The broadcast featured an interview with a thoughtful host mother, who talked about what is involved with hosting players.

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