USA and sports

Originally posted by Melanerpes
A major strength for soccer is that it is probably one of the easiest sports for a bunch of kids (or middle-aged adults for that matter) to play - all you need is an area of flat ground and a ball. Put a couple of sweatshirts on the ground to mark out the goal area, and play. Most other sports require a certain amount of equipment and-or specialized courts or fields.

For touch (American) football, all you need is a football and a plot of land. The land doesn't even have to be flat. We used to play on hills, city streets ("that end zone is the end of the Buick and the other end zone is past the elm tree" ), you name it. To equalize, you simply have the offense always heading in the same direction. When I was a kid, we played more touch football than all other sports combined.

Originally posted by sh76
...I understand that soccer is the most popular sport in the World. To me it's an absolute mystery.......

Not too mysterious, really... it's the only sport that most of the world can AFFORD to play
🙂

Time-outs in american sports s*** me being an aussie who enjoys cricket, rugby league and soccer.
Also some sports are more suited to tv than others.
For example our AFL (or aussie rules) is a very energetic, fast-paced game but does not come across well on tv. With 18 players a side and the biggest field in any of the football codes there is too much happening off the ball to be seen on tv.

American football and baseball seem way too restricted compared to say rugby league and cricket.
Firstly there is the time-outs in american football which make for such a disjointed game. And the specialized positions(kickers come to take a kick and then go off-what is that?).American football is indeed an acquired taste.
In baseball your hitting zone is limited to 90degrees in front of the hitter. If you hit the ball out of the park you should get another go like in cricket. The bat is round,the players wear gloves,only one guy gets to pitch,there seem to be more officials than players on the field, and hitting 3 out of 10 is considered good.There is a much greater variety of shots in cricket whereas in baseball you either swing hard or bunt.

Football (soccer) fans make fun of the fact that, in baseball, a guy who hits .300 is considered to be successful... yet, we're also told that it's not the number of goals that are scored which makes soccer exciting, it's all those opportunities to score that makes it so great!!!

Well, if that's the case, I've seen some great at-bats in baseball that resulted in outs.

Baseball IS more boring to watch than it used to be 25 or 30 years ago, because typical games used to last 2:15 to 2:30 at the most, unless they went into extra innings. It's basically impossible to play a major league game in less than 3 hours these days.


For example, the Yankees, 2008 and 1976:

1976 Yankees - 159 games
19 games were 3:00 or more. Of those 19, twelve were extra inning games.
38 games were 2:45 or more. thirteen were extra innings.
55 games were 2:15 or less - including an 11 inning game.
20 games were 2:00 or less - one of those was a 6 inning game, the rest were 9 inn



2008 Yankees - 162 games
89 games were 3:00 or more, including 9 extra inning games
21 games were 3:30 or more, including 6 extra inning games
137 game were 2:45 or more.

Shortest game in 2008 was 2:14 minutes - the 1976 team had 51 games that took less time than that one, about a third of the entire season.

Reasons for the lengthening of games include batters stepping out of the box after every pitch, pitchers dawdling on the mound, at least a half dozen pitching changes every game (both sides combined), etc. I don't know if they are more or fewer commercials between innings, maybe one more than there used to be. And yet, with all that, the combined W/L percentage of each league is still .500.

The only thing wrong with baseball today is that the same amount of action is being packed into longer and longer games.... well, that and steroids.

Has a war ever been fought over a baseball game? Yeah I know the 100 hour war wasn't all about futball, but that game sure didn't help matters any!

Plus, in the USA, people only kill each other and destroy their own cities after their team wins a championship... around the world, soccer riots have been more frequent, even when their teams don't win a title. In fact, if they don't win a title, you're practically guaranteed a riot or two.

Originally posted by TheBloop
Football (soccer) fans make fun of the fact that, in baseball, a guy who hits .300 is considered to be successful... yet, we're also told that it's not the number of goals that are scored which makes soccer exciting, it's all those opportunities to score that makes it so great!!!

Well, if that's the case, I've seen some great at-bats in baseball that r ...[text shortened]... e. In fact, if they don't win a title, you're practically guaranteed a riot or two.

everytime Brazil doesn't win the world cup your practically guaranteed a suicide or 6 in that country
🙂

Originally posted by TheBloop
Football (soccer) fans make fun of the fact that, in baseball, a guy who hits .300 is considered to be successful... yet, we're also told that it's not the number of goals that are scored which makes soccer exciting, it's all those opportunities to score that makes it so great!!!

Well, if that's the case, I've seen some great at-bats in baseball that r e. In fact, if they don't win a title, you're practically guaranteed a riot or two.

2008 Yankees - 9.36 total runs per game (both teams)
1976 Yankees - 8.21 rpg

The increased offenses are part of the reason for the longer games -- and seemed like the strike zone was bigger back in the 70's -- the top of the zone used to be the armpit, now you rarely see a strike above the belt. You used to see a lot of players in the 70's with a deep crouch batting stance (to make their armpit level lower) -- you never see this kind of stance now.

But I agree that time spent in the batter's box is a major part of it. If you watch "classic" games from the 70s, batters often stay in the box for the entire at-bat. If batters went back to doing this, pitchers would probably dawdle less as well. I wonder why this changed? Maybe it was Tim Hargrove - he was known as the "Human Rain Delay" - he had a whole routine that he would go through between every pitch. But many hitters today do the sort of stuff that earned Hargrove one of the great nick-names of all time.

Also, nowadays teams place a lot of value on players than can "work the count" and "grind out an at-bat" (to wear down the starter) and the ability to draw walks is now an important statistic. Back in the 70's, there was a greater stigma against striking out, so players were usually more apt to swing at the first hittable pitch they saw. Now players are willing to take a couple of strikes while looking for a ball they can really drive (as well as hoping to work out a walk) - and strikeout is no worse than any other out (unless there's a runner on third with less than 2 outs)

Originally posted by Melanerpes
and strikeout is no worse than any other out (unless there's a runner on third with less than 2 outs)

True, of course, but slightly misleading. If you strikeout, you cannot get a lucky hit. If you hit the ball poorly, you can still beat it out or have it dunk in somewhere. Studies show that BABIP (batting average for balls in play) has a lot of luck involved. Therefore, if a player strikes out a lot, that is likely to adversely affect his production.

Originally posted by Melanerpes
2008 Yankees - 9.36 total runs per game (both teams)
1976 Yankees - 8.21 rpg

The increased offenses are part of the reason for the longer games -- and seemed like the strike zone was bigger back in the 70's -- the top of the zone used to be the armpit, now you rarely see a strike above the belt. You used to see a lot of players in the 70's with a dee ...[text shortened]... o worse than any other out (unless there's a runner on third with less than 2 outs)

Definitely! The strike zone was way bigger in the 70s... basically, armpit to the bottom of the knees... I had a book as a kid ("Play Ball" supposedly written by Carl Yastrzemski) that defined the strike zone as being from the knees to the shoulders. That book would have come out around 70 or 71 probably.

Well, heck, I found Yaz's book...that's exactly the book I had as a kid, looks like it came out in '71... don't know how long the ebay link will be good...

http://cgi.ebay.com/RARE-CARL-YASTRZEMSKI-YAZ-1971-PLAY-BALL-BOOK-RED-SOX_W0QQitemZ370225380369QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090706?IMSfp=TL090706196007r37567


But yeah, now it seems like the strike zone never extends above the belt. I jokingly define the current strike zone as the area defined by the middle 2 and 1/2 inches of of the plate in width, and the area from the top of the belt buckle to the bottom of the belt buckle in height.

I just recorded the 1971 All Star game, recently rebroadcast on the MLB network. Very big strike zones!

Yes, it was (actually) Mike Hargrove who was known as the "Human Rain Delay". Oh man, we all hated that guy lol. We all thought he deserved to be stuck playing for the Texas Rangers and the Cleveland Indians (career was 1974-85). That guy was annoying.

One player of more recent vintage that really bugged me in that same way was Chuck Knoblauch...after every pitch, this guy would step out of the box, adjust his sweat bands, adjust his helmet, basically adjust his entire uniform. I know that he did it to annoy the pitcher, but I don't know too many fans that liked him for that reason. He was a worthy successor to Hargrove. But they all do it now... and I blame the umpires for not moving the games along.

And you're also correct about walks and strikeouts (by hitters) and how they are viewed, then and now. We never knew about pitch counts in the 1970s...in fact, we used to wonder how many pitches a pitcher actually threw in a game, but that was never something that we heard very much about during broadcasts.

I remember reading about Don Larsen's perfect game in a baseball book in the early 70s... the story said that in his perfect game, he threw "only" 97 pitches. I remember thinking, well, that's nice, but is that a lot? How many does a pitcher usually throw? lol

After I'd made my initial post, I meant to check on runs/game to see what the difference was, and never got around to it, so I'm glad you pointed that out.

It would be interesting to find out what the pitch counts were in some of those games during the 70s....Ace starters were expected to go at least 8 innings most of the time, and were expected to complete 20 to 30 games every year during the 70s. It might be that maybe the good pitchers didn't make as many pitches because there were fewer batters that tried to use the base on balls as an offensive weapon.

I know that back in the 1940s, a few players who might walk 100 times a year were sometimes referred to as "lazy" (e.g. Roy Cullenbine in 1947 batted .224 but had an OBP of .401 because he drew 137 walks...but a couple of his managers thought he was a lazy player because he was known for trying to get on base with a walk rather than hitting the ball like a man lol).

Originally posted by sh76
True, of course, but slightly misleading. If you strikeout, you cannot get a lucky hit. If you hit the ball poorly, you can still beat it out or have it dunk in somewhere. Studies show that BABIP (batting average for balls in play) has a lot of luck involved. Therefore, if a player strikes out a lot, that is likely to adversely affect his production.

But when you strikeout, you can't hit into a double play. Especially important when the hitter is a total leadfoot who usually hits a lot of groundballs.

And you're much likelier to get a hit (especially extra base hits) if you can find a pitch you can really drive. It's usually worth taking a couple of strikes on well-pitched offerings in hopes of later getting a meatball (or an eventual walk) - even if you risk striking out.

Originally posted by TheBloop
Definitely! The strike zone was way bigger in the 70s... basically, armpit to the bottom of the knees... I had a book as a kid ("Play Ball" supposedly written by Carl Yastrzemski) that defined the strike zone as being from the knees to the shoulders. That book would have come out around 70 or 71 probably.

Well, heck, I found Yaz's book...that's exactl ...[text shortened]... ying to get on base with a walk rather than hitting the ball like a man lol).

One relatively recent player was Joe McEwing - the announcers never seemed to pick up on it, but there was at least 15 or 20 different things he had to do between each pitch - and each thing had to be done exactly the same way in the same order. It was hilarious. Clearly a case where superstition was getting out of control.

Someone needs to go back over the broadcasts of old games and get pitch counts for them. Did pitchers back then actually pitch that much more than they do now?

It's funny that batters that drew a lot of walks were once seen as "lazy" -- managers evidently didn't appreciate how working out a walk means taking lots of pitches and usually fouling off a few as well -- a lot more work than the guy who just hacks at the first thing he sees. As for Roy Cullenbine and his .224 batting average, if I was his manager, I would not be particularly eager to have him swing the bat.