America's National Game (MLB 2015)

[Flynnie]

Cool book, eh?

Johnson, Pedro, Biggio and Smoltz elected to Hall

Piazza hits almost 70%; I'm sad he didn't go in this year (talk about a who's who of late 90s baseball) but he is pretty likely to go in next year.

Raines hits 55%; I'd say that's the minimum needed for him to have any chance of induction. The ballot opens up hugely next year and in 2017, so it's going to be really close.

Unsurprisingly, the Joe Morgan Superfriends of Justice didn't elect anyone, although Dick Allen and Tony Oliva fell short by a vote apiece, and Jim Kaat by two. I predict they won't elect anybody until the number of Hall of Famers on the committee (given that HOFers don't have an especially good record of judging other HOFers) is diluted.

Tiant getting 3 votes while Maury Wills got 9 is a joke.

[ursus arctos]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

I am over the moon for Pedro, who is as dominant a pitcher as I've ever seen, an absolutely first rate analyst and a cool dude in general.

Unit obviously deserves to go in.

I'm surprised that Smoltz made it on the first ballot, but it is clear that the Barves Mojo is strong with this current crop of voters.

Also agree with you on Rock and Piazza. The idea that rumours of "backne" is keeping the best offensive catcher of all time out of the Hall tells you just how broken the process is right now.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Surely this thread needs to be called "The Cubs v Miami", as BTTF2 has already tipped the NL pennant race.

[Cesar Rodriguez]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Alas, I see the A's have lost their AAA operation in Sacramento. The River Cats are now an affiliate of the Giants. I think its another step toward the Giants putting themselves in position to monopolise Nor Cal.

It will be a shame when the A's eventually fold or relocate because they are the easiest Nor Cal team to root for, a likeable, underdog outfit. The Hibs of the major leagues.

[ursus arctos]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

While I wouldn't bet against the A's relocation, should that not happen for some reason, I wouldn't be on NorCal domination by the Giants for the simple reason that my sense of NorCal fandom is that it is too fickle and frontrunning for any one team to dominate for an extended period.

It's also difficult for me to fault the RiverCats' ownership choice of a new affiliation, given the tremendous job they have done building that club into a model for the major leagues. And the A's have Fresno, which is still very much NorCal in my book.

On the field, Beane's complete restructuring of a successful A's club (likely completed by yesterday's acquisition of Zobrist and Escobar) is to me the most intriguing AL storyline of the upcoming season.

[Flynnie]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

The A's will be in Nashville - the Astros have Fresno.

The Giants have always been the more popular team by virtue of being associated with San Francisco and getting there first, but the A's are bleeding fans in the Bay Area because they've been run on the cheap for the past 20 years, whining for a free stadium, while the Giants have been building for the long-term. Signed Barry Bonds, built a fantastic park with their own money, kept most of their own stars, invested in radio and TV, and most importantly won.

The A's have been playing radio musical chairs for years, they're stuck on the lesser watched CSN California, they don't keep any of their own talent (and seem to actively revel in dispatching them), and they've perfected the first round playoff exit.

Billy's done a good job keeping them competitive on little money, but to the extent that is self-inflicted doesn't get talked about enough (though Wally Haas certainly funded a gravy train - even in the Bash Brothers years the A's were losing money).

[Cesar Rodriguez]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Selig pronounces St Louis America's best baseball city. Its certainly amongst the best run baseball operations and judging by the comments section there seems to be some degree of unanimity about this accolade.

[ursus arctos]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

A contrary view.



And then there was their reaction to the Ferguson protesters.

Definitely Bud's kind of people.

[Cesar Rodriguez]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

From the first blog.............

They'll move on to face the GLORY BOY Dodgers in the NLCS, and somehow the Cardinals and their fans will brand themselves lovable underdogs to LA despite boasting a top-10 payroll

Very strange comment. Of course the Cards were the underdogs, they may have had a top 10 payroll but it was probably not even close to what the Dodgers were paying.

[ursus arctos]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Magary doesn't really do trenchant analysis.

The Dodgers' payroll was about USD 100 million above the Cardinals' at the time.

[Flynnie]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

St. Louis is legitimately a small market that runs a big payroll because people love the Cardinals there. They don't have an NBA team, don't have a large college team nearby and they don't care about the Rams, and are only going to care less about them. On the whole, the average St. Louisan really does give more of a shit about baseball than the average Dallas native, the average Angeleno, the average New Yorker even. Boston's kind of like that on steroids: when you get a reasonably big market with baseball passion approximate to St. Louis's, you get a team that can run the 2nd or 3rd highest payroll in the game.

Their only competition is the Blues, and while St. Louis loves the Blues, there's no comparison.

BTW, just as an aside about Ferguson: Not only does St. Louis not have an NBA team, nobody even talks about St. Louis having an NBA team, despite it being bigger than at least a good ten markets in the league.

Well, the Sklar brothers, who have a surprisingly good comedy act given that their schtick is being identical twins, have a decent podcast on sports/comedy called Sklarboro Country. It's worth checking out now and again.

Anyway, they're from StL and just casually throw out one day that St. Louis is much too racist to have an NBA team - white people just wouldn't go to it. I thought that was a pretty strong thing to say about your hometown, and lots of towns that seem to have some racist white folks do fine (hi, Jazz fans!).

Boy, did Ferguson ever make that point clearer. Forgive me for ever doubting you, Sklarbros.

[ursus arctos]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

This is a major reason why the Spirits of St Louis were a box office nightmare, and why it was a particularly horrible place for Marvin Barnes.

The photo of the only NBA champions to call St. Louis home is instructive in this regard

[Flynnie]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

That's saying a lot given Marvin's Providence roots. RIP Marvin.

I've always had a soft spot for the Blues, but its insidious to know that St. Louis being one of America's better hockey towns (despite getting relatively little snow) is probably related to hockey having a mostly white player base.

Somebody needs to write a book (or at least a really good longform article) on how parts of Missouri got so heinously racist. Ferguson and other suburban towns in St. Louis County.... I mean, if that happened in a Confederate state, you'd have had the Justice Department taking a look at that decades ago.

[ursus arctos]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

It's rather dry (as most think tank pieces are), but here you go.

No doubt, private prejudice and suburbanites’ desire for homogenous affluent environments contributed to segregation in St. Louis and other metropolitan areas. But these explanations are too partial, and too conveniently excuse public policy from responsibility. A more powerful cause of metropolitan segregation in St. Louis and nationwide has been the explicit intents of federal, state, and local governments to create racially segregated metropolises.

Many of these explicitly segregationist governmental actions ended in the late 20th century but continue to determine today’s racial segregation patterns. In St. Louis these governmental policies included zoning rules that classified white neighborhoods as residential and black neighborhoods as commercial or industrial; segregated public housing projects that replaced integrated low-income areas; federal subsidies for suburban development conditioned on African American exclusion; federal and local requirements for, and enforcement of, property deeds and neighborhood agreements that prohibited resale of white-owned property to, or occupancy by, African Americans; tax favoritism for private institutions that practiced segregation; municipal boundary lines designed to separate black neighborhoods from white ones and to deny necessary services to the former; real estate, insurance, and banking regulators who tolerated and sometimes required racial segregation; and urban renewal plans whose purpose was to shift black populations from central cities like St. Louis to inner-ring suburbs like Ferguson.

Governmental actions in support of a segregated labor market supplemented these racial housing policies and prevented most African Americans from acquiring the economic strength to move to middle-class communities, even if they had been permitted to do so.

White flight certainly existed, and racial prejudice was certainly behind it, but not racial prejudice alone. Government policies turned black neighborhoods into overcrowded slums and white families came to associate African Americans with slum characteristics. White homeowners then fled when African Americans moved nearby, fearing their new neighbors would bring slum conditions with them.

That government, not mere private prejudice, was responsible for segregating greater St. Louis was once conventional informed opinion. A federal appeals court declared 40 years ago that “segregated housing in the St. Louis metropolitan area was … in large measure the result of deliberate racial discrimination in the housing market by the real estate industry and by agencies of the federal, state, and local governments.” Similar observations accurately describe every other large metropolitan area. This history, however, has now largely been forgotten.

[Flynnie]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Ah, redlining.

The North's answer to Southern segregation. Arguably even more insidious, since it was so patently dishonest.

Black folks need to stop arguing about reparations for slavery and talk about redlining instead. Plenty of folks still alive who LIVED through that and got opportunities taken away from them.

[ursus arctos]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Yes, the story echoes Chicago's, but the details are quite interesting (at least to the likes of us).

[Flynnie]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Yeah, I've saved that to read.

As you're alluding to, a lot of cities redlined. All of them, in fact - it was basically federal government policy. But not all cities/regions ended up like St. Louis.

[Incandenza]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Flynnie wrote: Ah, redlining.

The North's answer to Southern segregation. Arguably even more insidious, since it was so patently dishonest.

So well put by Randy Newman:

Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free
Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage in the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston

Flynnie wrote:
Anyway, they're from StL and just casually throw out one day that St. Louis is much too racist to have an NBA team - white people just wouldn't go to it. I thought that was a pretty strong thing to say about your hometown, and lots of towns that seem to have some racist white folks do fine (hi, Jazz fans!).

Where I think that SLC differs is that it's so white, that going to a Jazz game is no big deal. I think any potential owners of a St. Louis NBA team would be thinking along the lines of the Atlanta Hawks' owner in his email that he sent out. He's kind of all over the place in it and it was really regrettable, but he did identify the issue that there are some white people who won't go to games because of perceptions of it being a "black crowd."

[ursus arctos]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Karl Malone appears to have made a big difference in Salt Lake, though one wonders if having Stockton as his sidekick helped that.

The Utah Stars of the ABA used to tell some horrible stories about what it was like to be the only black guys in town.

[Cesar Rodriguez]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

St Louisans tastes in professional team sports seem more or less aligned with those of the cohort of American posters on this forum. Of the dozen or so Americans who seem to post regularly I would suggest that only one or two have anything more than a passing interest in basketball, certainly more would readily identify as baseball fans. Indeed, in the three and a bit years that I have posted here the baseball thread has always had more views/posts by orders of magnitude than its basketball equivalent*.

Moreover Boston is home to the most decorated NBA club in history and much like St Louis it's not known as a bastion of racial harmony. I don't find any compelling reason to be persuaded that interest in a given sport is indicative of racial prejudice.

* Case in point the 2013/14 basketball thread ran 4 pages long, the 2014 MLB 30.

[Vulgarian Visigoth]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Cesar Rodriguez wrote: I don't find any compelling reason to be persuaded that interest in a given sport is indicative of racial prejudice.

It can be. I'm tired of reading about how the NBA is crap because all players are thugs, unlike hockey players, who are perfect gentlemen.(All this said without a trace of irony)

[Cesar Rodriguez]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Pat McGatt wrote:

I don't find any compelling reason to be persuaded that interest in a given sport is indicative of racial prejudice.

It can be. I'm tired of reading about how the NBA is crap because all players are thugs, unlike hockey players, who are perfect gentlemen.(All this said without a trace of irony)

In this particular instance St Louis is a baseball town because it has been a baseball town since biblical times. Thats why a Super Bowl winning NFL team cannot gain traction in the city never mind an NBA franchise.

In a country where sports clubs pack up their things, put them in the back of a U-haul and bail on cities in the middle of the night an operation like the Cards are a breath of fresh air. They have played in the city continuously since 1882, they have a middle tier payroll but are always in contention and by reputation their fans are amongst the most knowledgeable in the game.

[ursus arctos]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

See also (association) football / rugby union (or even rugby union / rugby league), where the purported distinction is more one of class than race.

There seems to be some kind of a cultural need to establish these dichotomies. I was quite surprised to see the football / rugby one take off when we were living in Milan and the Italian rugby team began to enjoy some success in the midst of the Calciopoli scandal.

[Cal Alamein]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Damn. I know he's 83, but Mr. Cub's passing hit me hard.

Got his autograph at the only Wrigley Field game I ever attended. Met him in the L.A. Airport yrs ago. We talked for close to a half hour. Baseball, sports, family, a sincerely genuine good guy.

[jason voorhees]

America's National Game (MLB 2015)

Forgive me, as he was one of those "thought he was dead decades ago" guys...but hearing all of those decades about how great he was certainly had an impact on me. Like Gale Sayers or Dick Butkus in terms of Chitown legends that made their way to the east.

So to ursus...my condolences. When Hubert Birkenmeier goes, I can't imagine that feeling.