Indeed
Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
2017 baseball thread
Collapse
X
-
Originally posted by Gerontophile View PostAnd Bonds hit 73*.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Gerontophile View PostWell, you had a lead going into the ninth...
Comment
-
Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View PostI wouldn't rate that as important under the circumstances.
It has to be said, pretty much every slugger at the time was juiced, but no one came close to what Bonds was able to do, and a lot of equally dirty players with about 1/2 of the talent of him still have careers in the game and weren't told to go away like Bonds was.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Incandenza View PostThe impression I had of Giants fans at the time was that the team became less important than promoting the achievements of Barry Bonds and defending his reputation against anything written or said about him in the media, a lot of which was based on "he's not a nice guy and he doesn't want to market the game, so we don't like him." There seemed to be a combination from Giants fans of "nobody likes us and we don't care" and also "how can you not see that Bonds is one of the greatest hitters of all time?"
It has to be said, pretty much every slugger at the time was juiced, but no one came close to what Bonds was able to do, and a lot of equally dirty players with about 1/2 of the talent of him still have careers in the game and weren't told to go away like Bonds was.
The novelty of the big home run numbers, especially once the steroids was no longer deniable, wore off pretty fast.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View PostRight. I shouldn't say that nobody cared, but it felt anticlimactic and inevitable and not really worthy of celebration outside of San Francisco, and even there I couldnt' see why they were so enthusiastic given that he was just eating up a lot of salary that could have been going to rebuilding the team.
Originally posted by Incandenza View PostThe impression I had of Giants fans at the time was that the team became less important than promoting the achievements of Barry Bonds and defending his reputation against anything written or said about him in the media, a lot of which was based on "he's not a nice guy and he doesn't want to market the game, so we don't like him." There seemed to be a combination from Giants fans of "nobody likes us and we don't care" and also "how can you not see that Bonds is one of the greatest hitters of all time?"
It has to be said, pretty much every slugger at the time was juiced, but no one came close to what Bonds was able to do, and a lot of equally dirty players with about 1/2 of the talent of him still have careers in the game and weren't told to go away like Bonds was.
It was exhausting and infuriating seeing Bonds get treated like a pariah when Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte became elder statesmen. I think even Mark McGwire got a hitting coach job before Bonds retired. Bonds isn't a good guy, I think even he has admitted to being overly surly with the media and he's cheated on his wife (and was accused by his first wife of slapping her), but some of the standards set for him have been way different than other ballplayers. Bonds got vilified for signing with the Giants and leaving Pittsburgh, a team with tepid support and a marked preference for Andy van Slyke, when the Giants were his hometown team that his dad and godfather starred for. Any other player and that's a fairy tale, for Bonds it's proof he's an asshole. What the fuck?
Comment
-
And without Bonds its quite likely that the team would have moved to Tampa Bay, right?
In 2004 they lost the division on the 2nd to last day of the season
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5NdnmQ_XSA
Comment
-
Technically no. The National League blocked the sale to Vince Piazza (MIKE'S DAD, WHY DOES NOBODY TALK ABOUT THIS) and his group, and the Magowan group had already come with an offer to save the team. Supposedly the National League didn't want to give up on San Francisco, with the Bay Area already one of the five or six largest markets and very well off. So while they were certainly "saved", they were probably less likely to move than we thought back in 1992.
HOWEVER, the Magowan group were the ones negotiating with Bonds, not Bob Lurie (the previous Giants owner, who was selling/giving up). Dramatically, the Magowan group had to sign a contract with Lurie promising they would pay Bonds's contract in the event Lurie was unable to sell the team to them or anyone else in order to insulate him from any further financial losses*.
So while he didn't literally save the team, his virtually simultaneous signing with the Magowan group buying the Giants placed him at the center of the narrative. It's certainly the best welcome present the Magowan group could have ever given the fans.
I also think his popularity and the Giants' popularity greased the skids to make the Proposition B referendum on the ballpark a fait accompli. It was mostly privately financed, so very probably would have passed anyway, but I think it would have been much closer.
* I flip back and forth between whether Lurie was "losing" money or actually losing money. I tend to think the latter - the Giants did have pretty bad attendance, and the Giants were running one of the highest payrolls in the NL for a brief time in the early 90s. With TV money being far less then (I think gate receipts were about 55-60% of revenue then), I can certainly see the idea that Lurie was losing a few million bucks a year.
Comment
-
Also, just as an aside:
This is fascinating: The National Federation of State High School's annual census on how many kids play sports
1) Find the document from 1971 and see how few girls were playing sports before Title IX.
2) Surprisingly, before Title IX (and after), girls' basketball was played far more widely than softball. This is probably an underrated reason why the NBA has caught up on popularity versus other sports, particularly baseball.
3) The top four played sports for boys have been the same since 1971: football, track, basketball and baseball. Football has always been top, while the other three have exchanged positions, although I don't see where baseball has been higher than 3rd.
The difference? The fifth most popular sport back then was wrestling, and it was way behind baseball. Now it's soccer, and soccer is only a little bit behind baseball and will probably overtake it by the end of the decade. Soccer overtook wrestling in 1992, by the way.
4) Having said that, baseball has actually held up pretty well versus football (the most popular sport, by some distance) in terms of participants. It's actually closed the gap from about 43% in 1971 to 47% of football's participants in 2015. So it's not necessarily that nobody cares about baseball.
5) There's only about a million more high school aged children now than in 1971 (Baby Boomers), yet way more kids playing sports. Even accounting for the Title IX issue - there's a million more boys playing sports now than then.
Really interesting stuff, and perhaps destroys a few myths about specialization and the declining popularity of XYZ.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Flynnie View PostTechnically no. The National League blocked the sale to Vince Piazza (MIKE'S DAD, WHY DOES NOBODY TALK ABOUT THIS) and his group, and the Magowan group had already come with an offer to save the team. Supposedly the National League didn't want to give up on San Francisco, with the Bay Area already one of the five or six largest markets and very well off. So while they were certainly "saved", they were probably less likely to move than we thought back in 1992.
HOWEVER, the Magowan group were the ones negotiating with Bonds, not Bob Lurie (the previous Giants owner, who was selling/giving up). Dramatically, the Magowan group had to sign a contract with Lurie promising they would pay Bonds's contract in the event Lurie was unable to sell the team to them or anyone else in order to insulate him from any further financial losses*.
So while he didn't literally save the team, his virtually simultaneous signing with the Magowan group buying the Giants placed him at the center of the narrative. It's certainly the best welcome present the Magowan group could have ever given the fans.
I also think his popularity and the Giants' popularity greased the skids to make the Proposition B referendum on the ballpark a fait accompli. It was mostly privately financed, so very probably would have passed anyway, but I think it would have been much closer.
* I flip back and forth between whether Lurie was "losing" money or actually losing money. I tend to think the latter - the Giants did have pretty bad attendance, and the Giants were running one of the highest payrolls in the NL for a brief time in the early 90s. With TV money being far less then (I think gate receipts were about 55-60% of revenue then), I can certainly see the idea that Lurie was losing a few million bucks a year.
Vince Naimoli and/or his group or some other people - I forget who, exactly - were going to sue MLB over blocking the Giants move. MLB and the other owners did not want to go to court where it would have to open its books. So to stop that from happening, they agreed to give one of the American League expansion team to St Petersburg, even though Naimoli was a bad owner and the Trop is a bad park.
Before that, the White Sox came very close to moving to the Tampa Bay, but last second politics gave them public money for the "new" Comiskey.
Comment
-
"Bonds got vilified for signing with the Giants and leaving Pittsburgh, a team with tepid support and a marked preference for Andy van Slyke, when the Giants were his hometown team that his dad and godfather starred for. Any other player and that's a fairy tale, for Bonds it's proof he's an asshole. What the fuck?"
The Pirates' support only turned tepid after he left and they went into 20 years of suckitude. But his leaving was only one of many reasons why their fortunes fell off a cliff in the 90s.
There was a perception in Pittsburgh that he was a jerk that didn't always give his best effort. Whereas guys like Van Slyke "play the game the right way." Needless to say, perhaps, there's more than a little racial prejudice in that view.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Flynnie View PostAlso, just as an aside:
This is fascinating: The National Federation of State High School's annual census on how many kids play sports
1) Find the document from 1971 and see how few girls were playing sports before Title IX.
2) Surprisingly, before Title IX (and after), girls' basketball was played far more widely than softball. This is probably an underrated reason why the NBA has caught up on popularity versus other sports, particularly baseball.
3) The top four played sports for boys have been the same since 1971: football, track, basketball and baseball. Football has always been top, while the other three have exchanged positions, although I don't see where baseball has been higher than 3rd.
The difference? The fifth most popular sport back then was wrestling, and it was way behind baseball. Now it's soccer, and soccer is only a little bit behind baseball and will probably overtake it by the end of the decade. Soccer overtook wrestling in 1992, by the way.
4) Having said that, baseball has actually held up pretty well versus football (the most popular sport, by some distance) in terms of participants. It's actually closed the gap from about 43% in 1971 to 47% of football's participants in 2015. So it's not necessarily that nobody cares about baseball.
5) There's only about a million more high school aged children now than in 1971 (Baby Boomers), yet way more kids playing sports. Even accounting for the Title IX issue - there's a million more boys playing sports now than then.
Really interesting stuff, and perhaps destroys a few myths about specialization and the declining popularity of XYZ.
Wrestling has been cut at many schools. Sad, really. It's a misunderstood sport, including by many of its proponents.
Football gets a lot of participants because school football teams rarely if ever cut anyone. They need as many bodies as they can to run practices. Track is often an all-comers affair too.
Baseball and basketball teams usually have try outs.
I believe that the NCAA/sports-industrial-complex made a mistake by pushing women's basketball as the marquee women's sport (not that anyone actually decided that) because for most fans, it doesn't compare favorably to the men's version.
Whereas women's volleyball is very exciting - too exciting for me sometimes - and is actually *more* interesting to watch than men's volleyball. Likewise, softball and field hockey are underrated and women's soccer at the NCAA level is more interesting than men's NCAA soccer. And women's rugby could be a thing.
(Women's hockey is still too non-competitive and women's lacrosse is meh.)
Comment
Comment