MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

[Incandenza]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Vernons Pools wrote:

So yes, Red Sox all the way. The best ballpark, which is sold out EVERY home game, win or lose.

How far in advance to they announce the result of the upcoming game?

[ursus arctos]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Was just trying to smoke you out, Vernons.

And I wasn't sure if jefe still carried a torch for the O's. SocScrim doesn't really do baseball, does he?

[matt j]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

I just want to clarify my position here. Even if I attend Nats games and boo them (which, I tend to do, since they usually stink) I'm still damned for eternity?

What if I do it wearing a Expos jersey?

[XXXXXX]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Inca wrote:
[quote
How far in advance to they announce the result of the upcoming game?[/quote]
yes, my typing betrays my lack of college education.

What I mean to say, in the unedited version was;

Every Red Sox home game is sold out, whether or not the team had previously a winning or losing season and whether or not the team is not having a winning season. Basically, since the mid 90's you cannot walk up to Fenway Park and buy a ticket for the game about to happen.

But you already figured that out.

[ursus arctos]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Which makes it all the more remarkable that I was always able to get tickets on the day in '78 and got my tickets for the "Bucky Dent Game" by simply walking over to the box office after the last out of the regular season.

The experience of attending a game (including that of getting a ticket) at both Fenway and Wrigley has changed dramatically in the last 25 years, much more so than at Yankee Stadium or Shea.

[Incandenza]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

I was just joshing, Vernons.

Have they given up plans for a new Fenway?

These numbers for 2007 show that somehow the Red Sox managed to average beyond Fenway's capacity. Is that because of the Green Monster seats?

I'd also like to point out that despite the slurs against LA fans, the Dodgers and Angels were both in the top 10 in terms of capacity average, and the Dodgers are consistently at the top of National League attendance records.

(and one more thing--Pittsburgh averaged only 57.7% capacity at home, but over 75% for their road games. Odd)

[Reed John]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

JtS, It's actually very predictable as sports go. Because there are so many games, there's almost always "regression to the mean," i.e. the teams with talent may slump early, but they'll almost always recover (2007 Yankees). Likewise, a scrappy talent-light team may win a lot of games by the skin of their teeth early on, but then their luck will run out (2005 Nationals).

During the regular season, the teams with the most money will almost always be in first or second in their division, except there's usually one big money team every few years that is simply disfunctional and often this isn't clear until around mid-season (the Murdoch-era Dodgers come to mind). The lesser well-off teams will do poorly, in general, unless its the Twins or the A's in which case they'll make a good run of it put end up just out of the money in the end.

However, once the playoffs start, all bets are off. Anybody can get hot in the playoffs and win, although the team with the best three starting pitchers who aren't injured generally wins the world series.

My allegiances are torn. I was born and raised to be a Cincinnati Reds fan, but since my grandparents have passed on, we don't go to Cincinnati any more. My connection to the current team is very remote and I really only pay attention to them out of loyalty and nostalgia.

I've taken up rooting for the Nationals since I live in the DC area. I don't want to live in DC, but I'm stuck, so I figure "when in Rome..." Also, the Nats are in the same division as the Braves and the Mets, whom I hate.

I also keep an eye on the Twins since my best friend is a Twins fan in Minnesota.

I also follow the Pirates a little because their A-short season affiliate is my favorite minor league team, the mighty State College Spikes of the New York-Penn League.

[Anton Gramscescu]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

I just want to clarify my position here. Even if I attend Nats games and boo them (which, I tend to do, since they usually stink) I'm still damned for eternity?

What if I do it wearing a Expos jersey?

This is acceptable. Even a cap would do, if it were the pre-92 old-skool ABA-style cap.

[Guest]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

I know naff all about baseball but nail my colours to the Dodgers mast on account of them being the only team I've seen play (at their Spring training place, Vero Beach, Florida).

As a further bonus...a notable Spurs club official (Charlie Roberts - from 190something till 1943) apparantly pitched for the Brooklyn Dodgers and also tried to introduce baseball to White Hart Lane.

I like baseball because it seems to me to be the closest thing to English football in terms of history, stadiums, family traditions etc etc.

[ursus arctos]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Hmmm.

I think the Charlie Roberts story is apocryphal. He doesn't appear on baseball-reference.com's list of major leaguers or the all-time Dodger roster on Wikipedia. All kinds of marginal players managed to make it to the major leagues during the latter years of WWII (most notably, Pete Gray, a one-armed outfielder), but Roberts doesn't seem to be among.

Sadly, this is the Dodgers' last year in Dodgertown/Vero Beach; they are moving their spring training home west next year. From a tradition/history point of view, it is a real loss, which Inca and I bemoaned on the old board.

And I compeltely agree with you about the similarities with football in this respect; they go a long way to explaining why they are my two favourite sports.

[Anton Gramscescu]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

OK, who's read National Pastime?

Not a super page turner, but I found the chapter on the origin of the concept of a "league" fascinating; the fact that the English League was explicitly patterned on the National League was new to me.

(It's hard to imagine, now, that sports could be organized into anything other than leagues, so completely has this meme colonized team sports).

Exploding Vole, of course, did a great job of showing how baseball was responsible for incubating (proper) football in the US.

[ursus arctos]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

I haven't read (or even heard of) National Pastime, but the revelation about the English (Football) League was one of my favourite bits of Harold Seymour's series of academic histories of the sport (Baseball: The Early Years, Baseball: The Golden Age, etc.)

[Anton Gramscescu]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

National Pastime

[ursus arctos]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

That's a bum link, but I'm guessing you mean the Szymanski and Zimbalist book?

Is it any good? Zimbalist is generally pretty good on baseball economics.

[Anton Gramscescu]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Link fixed. Man, I need sleep.

It's an OK book. It's mostly history - the early bits good, the later stuff not so much. The explanation of why relegation and promotion is the alternative to anti-trust is not bad, either.

The final chapter (which I think is mostly Zimbalist) is interesting because it's a fresh eye on the problems of revenue sharing and salary caps in European leagues. If I remember correctly, he comes to the conclusion that a Euro super league is more or less inevitable, but that provided it is coupled with relegations and promotions into multiple national leagues in the same way that C2A and C2B both feed into C1, it wouldn't be such a bad thing.

[ursus arctos]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

You aren't driving today, are you?

[Guest]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Ursus - thanks, that's a shame about Dodgertown. It was a great facility for 'just' a training camp although I recall the local 'Vero Beach Dodgers' play there. I enjoyed watching baseball there, similar in atmosphere to pre-season friendlies. Some very friendly (and patient!) american folk also helped explain what was going on.

I think Mr Roberts' claim to baseball fame would have been very early in last century when he would have been of sport playing age. I think it was only 'rumoured' that he played but then again that's part of the appeal to me.

[ursus arctos]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

There's significant hope that another team (perhaps the Orioles) will take over the facility, so all is not lost.

There is an evocative slide show and related article from the New York Timeshere and an ESPN extravaganza here.

Spring training is one of the truly great things about baseball, though even it has become significantly more corporate in the last 20 years.

[Anton Gramscescu]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Urs - no, tomorrow. Tonight is Toronto Eagles U-11s. I'm hoping to get 8 solid hours tonight.

[Incandenza]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

I've only skimmed National Pastime--I hoped it would be useful for my research, but it was only tangential. Thankfully I got it for free.

The Dodgers leaving Vero Beach is even more sad because a lot of the facilities--like the movie theater, golf course, and pool--were built so the black players could relax along with their white teammates, as Jim Crow was very much alive down there in the 1940s and 1950s. The Dodgers were pioneers, and their leaving that history of Dodgertown behind.

[XXXXXX]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

I thought that all the Yankee haters might get a chuckle out of this.....

---------------------------

This evolution of the game is to its detriment, says deadspin.com editor Will Leitch in his book God Save the Fan: How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback Have Taken the Fun Out of Sports (And How We Can Get It Back) (Harper). The baseball-watching experience, on TV and at the ballpark, has been degraded, he writes, be it by beer advertisers who “not only think [men are] morons, but also that we’re monsters,” or by brainless fans in the stands. (“If you have a sign that spells out the name of the network showing the game, you are a douchebag.”)
Singled out for contempt: Yankee Stadium. “There’s not a stadium in sports that’s a less enjoyable place to watch a sporting event,” Leitch writes, likening it to a “wealthy uncle’s house, the one who never talks to you, [and] works for some evil law firm somewhere.” (The “ASS-HOLLLLE!” chants are charming, too.)

Soon, Stade Fasciste will be demolished. But rejoice not — it will only be replaced by a gargantuan, gleaming edifice that’s just like its old self, but more so. More boorish fans. More nauseating symbols of arrogance and entitlement. Louder loudspeakers for “Cotton-Eye Joe” and “God Bless America.” God help us all.

[Anton Gramscescu]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Inca - what research are you referring to? You got a book on the go or something?

[Incandenza]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Antonio Gramsci wrote:

Inca - what research are you referring to? You got a book on the go or something?

My dissertation back when I was in grad school. A very ill-defined history of American attitudes towards soccer, hopefully bringing the West Coast more into soccer's early history in America. I did some research in Oneonta, and in the archives of SIU-Edwardsville. I never found many sources for soccer on the West Coast in the early 20th Century, and my grad school career came crashing down in a roughly two-week span last June. I was getting tired of it anyway, but I still hope to write something (if not that, then at least one somewhat related paper that I have an idea for, and I think would be good if I can find the sources).

[ursus arctos]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Jeez, Vernons is really into it. Stade Fasciste?

I have been thankfully gone for the entire "God Bless America" era, but there is real cognitive dissonance between that kind of image and my memories of the Jerry Kenney/Horace Clarke Yankees.

[XXXXXX]

MLB 2008: The Year of Anti-Boston

Ursus - that wasn't me - that was part of an article in this week's Phoenix, that starts like this..

Hope springs eternal with each opening day. But even as the sun rises on the new Major League Baseball season, skies are cloudy for the game we love. Echoes of the Mitchell Report’s j’accuse still reverberate. One assumes more names are forthcoming — if not in official documents, then at least in Jose Canseco’s juicy new tell-all. But it’s worth remembering that, in one way or another, the sport has always had a split personality.

Baseball is a game of verdant fields, of balletic athleticism, of beery sunny Sunday afternoons. It’s also one of cheating and meanness and corruption and greed. “Some ballplayers were alcoholics, others gamblers,” writes Northeastern professor Roger I. Abrams in his new book, The Dark Side of the Diamond: Gambling, Violence, Drugs and Alcoholism in the National Pastime (Rounder). “Some were violent sociopaths. Although appealing as an escape from day-to-day life, baseball reflected what we are as a society, warts and all.”

It still does. Just look at Elijah Dukes, who this past year texted a photo of a gun to his estranged wife. (“You dead, dawg,” he intoned on the attendant voicemail.) Or Scott Spiezio, who was recently charged with drunk driving and assault and battery (and four other counts, including hit and run and aggravated assault). Or Jim Leyritz, who kicked off 2008 by pleading not guilty to DUI manslaughter. Guys like that make jerks like A-Rod (opting out, then in, for mega millions) or Nomar (snubbing kids on Dodgers autograph day) seem saintly.

This spring, the usual annual crop of baseball books is being tossed onto shelves. But not all offer heartwarming tales of father-son catches and scrappy bench-player heroics. Rather — perhaps feeling that ill wind blowing in from right field — many are zeroing in on the darker aspects of America’s game: baseball’s seven deadly sins.


You can find the whole article here.

http://thephoenix.com/Article.aspx?id=58303&page=1