April baseball, where hope springs eternal and a Royals/Nationals World Series is still plausible. Reds open against the Miami Sound Machine at 4 this afternoon. For once, it’s not 45 and rainy for Opening Day here in Cincy, but expected 60-ish by first pitch with the sun breaking through. Thanks global climate change!
Allons-y, people. Make with the chatter.
[UPDATE] Miami Pound Machine seems to be the actual preferred nickname for the slightly relocated Miami Marlins these days. Also, Royals/Nats is merely mathematically plausible at this point, where each team hasn’t, you know, lost 100 games yet.
elmo
I’ve always been more a football fan than a baseball fan, and despite my move to Northern Virginia I still live and die with my beloved Chargers from August to
FebruaryDecember, but maybe I can try to be interested in the Nationals.Are they any good?
danimal
Sorry to say, but Royals-Nationals isn’t remotely plausible. But go ahead, dream away!
I know I’m trying to imagine a scenario in which the Padres power their way into the playoffs. I’m not succeeding.
Roger Moore
FTFY. Possible yes. Plausible, fuck no.
Punchy
Will my Cubs win 65 games this year?
Karen
Go Mets!
Satanicpanic
Sadly my team (Padres) is most likely going to suck again this year, but I like going to the ballpark, so I will go. And watch them suck. One of the games I caught last year was against the Royals, and the Royals were kind enough to make my team look decent by comparison.
kindness
Atrios has given todays Wanker of the Decade award to Diane Sawyer.
I wouldn’t have even put her on my top 10 list but it’s his blog.
Soprano2
Hahahahahahahahahahaha, that was a good for a laugh. Enjoy your week or two.
I’m interested to see how the Pujols-less Cardinals will do. So far, so good.
Trinity
Unpleasant day at the office.
Need cute pet pics. Help me people!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Can the Rangers finally win the last game of the season?
dedc79
Baseball is dead to me (i.e. I’m a mets fan)
Bubblegum Tate
I posted this in the previous thread, but I may as well put it here in an open thread where it belongs:
Newt Gingrich’s think tank, The Gingrich Group, has filed for bankruptcy.
geg6
Who gives a shit about baseball? If you don’t live in New York or LA or Boston, why would you?
I live in Pittsburgh. It’s hockey season and then a short break before football season starts. I call that gardening season.
Satanicpanic
@danimal:
Are you forgetting the Padres storied history? It was only a few years ago that we made the playoffs by being 2 games over .500. We might just win by default!
geg6
@Satanicpanic:
I used to say this. PNC Park here in the ‘Burgh is a simply fantastic ballpark. One of the best in the country, with simply excellent food. But I decided two year ago that, until the Nuttings decide to spend a little cash on putting together a ball team that can actually have a .500 season once in a while, I am not spending any more money on the Nuttings.
opie jeanne
The Royals first game is tomorrow at Angels Stadium in Anaheim, and my dream is a bit different from yours, Zandar: I want to see the Angels win the World Series again.
It was such a long time getting there. Heck, it was a long time seeing them just make it to their first playoff game, and we were there in 1979. They lost the next two, yes, but a game like that is quite an experience. Reserved, laid-back, quiet Angels fans who rarely yelled at regular season games were on their feet shouting themselves hoarse,
We’ve been to other playoff games and we were at the first playoff against Boston in 2009 and the noise from the fans was like a physical blow, but in 2002 we felt we could not afford tickets to either the playoffs or the WS games. I have several friends who were at game 6. I now feel like I should have moved heaven and earth to get at least one ticket for my husband because he was an Angels fan long before I was and he is the greater fan.
opie jeanne
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):I sincerely hope not.
Bob2
It feels good to be a Yankees fan some days. This is one of them.
Here are the Accuscore predictions for 2012
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ys-accuscore_mlb_playoff_projections_040312
@Punchy – Has the Cubs at 73 wins, so I would take the over on 65, except it’s still the Cubs.
Mind you, these are just projections, and there are some obvious flaws inherent in them, like assuming Josh Hamilton will play a full year etc.
Amir Khalid
@Bubblegum Tate:
I didn’t know a think tank could formally declare itself bankrupt of ideas such that people won’t pay to listen to them anymore. But hey, it’s Noot’s think tank; I shouldn’t be too surprised, right?
MikeJ
It’s not opening day. After opening day the Mariners were the best team in baseball for almost 24 hours.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
You might live in San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago, or Miami, all of which have won the Series within the past decade despite not being one of the cities you listed. Or you could be from Dallas/Ft. Worth, Tampa/St. Petersburg, Denver, Detroit, or Houston, all of which at least managed to make it to the Series without winning in the same period. Or you could be from Milwaukee, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Cleveland, Phoenix, San Diego, or Oakland, all of which have made the playoffs in the past decade. IOW, your problem is mostly a Pittsburgh problem, not a baseball problem.
Satanicpanic
@geg6: I’m not switching allegiance, but I’m going to go see the Angels this year for the first time in forever because those guys are spending some money.
Roger Moore
@Bubblegum Tate:
Unfortunately, their bankruptcy filing applies only to their financial condition. If there were one for the intellectual state, they would have had to file the day they opened, if not before.
geg6
@Bob2:
And exactly why no one I know watches baseball any more. The overwhelming dominance of the Yankees and the Red Sox and the economic structure of baseball which causes it is why it is a sport that is dying a slow death everywhere but in the giant media centers and, most especially, among the young. We can’t give away Pirates tickets to students.
geg6
@Roger Moore:
Um no, it is not really just a Pittsburgh problem (although the Nuttings are a particularly shitty bunch of owners). I hate to break it to you, but baseball is NOT America’s past time any more. And will be even less so in the years ahead.
burnspbesq
Opening Day is truly a wonderful thing, but it doesn’t have my undivided attention this year, because my alma mater is in the Frozen Four for the first time in history.
I love this guy.
http://mymetsjournal.blogspot.com/
burnspbesq
@opie jeanne:
We went to one of the ALCS games in 2002, and it’s right up there with my first visits to Cameron Indoor Stadium and Old Trafford as favorite sports memories.
joeyess
Hey hey hey! Royals fan, here. And that will be enough of that bullshit, mister.
burnspbesq
@geg6:
Pittsburgh is an outlier. No, actually, Pittsburgh is THE outlier.
JenJen
By the way, baseball fans, if you’ve never experienced an Opening Day in Cincinnati, the birthplace of professional baseball, you really need to put it on your bucket list.
It’s our Mardi Gras. Nobody shows up at work. The bars open at 6:00 am and the lines start forming around 4:30 am. We have a parade. It’s just really, really special, and one of those handful of days a year that I look around and say, “Ya know, Cincinnati ain’t that bad.”
GO REDS!!
@burnspbesq: The Frozen Four!! BC or Minnie? Good luck to you!
Satanicpanic
@geg6: The Yankees and Red Sox try to buy the WS every year and almost every year they fail miserably. No one out here on the west coast even pays attention to them because only the Angels (OK MAYBE the A’s) have a decent chance of ever meeting them in the playoffs. One of the best (or worst, depending on your perspective) things about baseball is that in a short series anything can happen. The 2010 Giants had no business winning the WS but they did. And baseball isn’t dying- all but 3 teams posted a profit last year. I have to agree with Roger- the Pirates are the Detroit Lions of baseball and that’s got to be skewing your opinion the sport.
tulip
The smell the grass blah blah blah… all I can say is:
GO Oak-Town A’s baby.
How long they are in Oakland or a viable franchise only god knows, and she aint sayin shit on the matter.
oh and FUCK the Gyros.
geg6
@burnspbesq:
Hmmm. Really?
According to Wiki, ratings for the premier event of baseball have fallen from a 40% share in 1984 to a 16% share in 2011. Even the 2009 Yankees/Phillies series, which should have had huge ratings since it involved two large media centers, had only a 19% share. Looks like a national phenomenon to me.
burnspbesq
Woo! Santana gets out of a bases-loaded jam in the fifth. Still 0-0.
geg6
@Satanicpanic:
Then please explain the phenomenon I posted about in #33.
You guys keep throwing who won World Series when at me and telling which clubs turned a profit. All of that is irrelevant. It’s becoming a marginal sport, on the path to becoming the NHL.
Believe it or not, despite my contempt for the sport, I am actually interested in and have been paying attention to its slow demise.
danimal
@Satanicpanic:
Sad to say, our storied history is a bit, ummmm, thin. I mean, Steve fracking Garvey is one of our retired numbers, and he’ll never be remembered as s Padre for anyone who doesn’t remember the 84 NLCS.
Woodrowfan
Alright! Go Reds! Go Nats!
Bob2
Oh please, a wider variety of teams have won the World Series in recent years than NBA titles or Super Bowls. Management and ownership is a far bigger deal than money, or the Baltimore Orioles would have had a title in the 90’s.
Baseball got less relevant in part because it’s not immediately as entertaining. It’s a slow game and not given to constant big hits. And except the NFL, there’s been a general drain in TV sports ratings across the board.
Satanicpanic
@geg6: So what? Attendance at games hasn’t gone down. TV ratings for invididual shows will never be what they were when there were 4 channels, except maybe the super bowl, which is conveniently on a sunday and has tons of people watching for the commercials. Player salaries have been going up because TV money has been going up, so somebody is watching.
JenJen
@geg6:
Actually, NHL is on the rise and with the addition of The Winter Classic and NBC’s monster new NHL contract which includes showing every single Stanley Cup Playoff game on the NBC Networks for the very first time this year, I’d say things have never looked better for hockey in the US.
If there’s a Big Four sport that’s on a serious and notable decline, it would be the NBA.
Satanicpanic
@danimal: That comment was tongue-in-cheek, i.e. we might make the playoffs by default. But we did have Tony Gwynn!
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
“Miami Pound Machine” is taken. That was the nickname for the early ’90s Miami Dolphins, featuring Jeff Cross and Louis Oliver among others.
geg6
@JenJen:
Oh, agreed. But it took a lot of building of the fan base through things like the Winter Classic and the HBO reality series covering it to get hockey where it is, on the rise.
Baseball, OTOH, is declining. Anyone looking at the trends will tell you that. Youth participation is way down and that is what will eventually be the death knell if they don’t find a way to stop that trend. Basketball does not have the same problem. The NBA may not be pulling them in, but the NCAA does. I used to be a huge pro-basketball fan. That ended in the mid-90s for me. The NBA game is terrible. But college ball is still awesome.
ETA: I have an old friend who is a baseball writer who is a HoF voter. He’s been covering baseball for at least 25 years. He agrees with me.
Schlemizel
The actual NCAA championship game will be played tonight when Boston Collage play Minnesota. The winner of that game will have to humiliate either Union or Farris State for the trophy while the loser wonders why the NCAA set up the brackets to prevent them from at least having the second place trophy they deserve. Should be a hellofa game tonight.
Baseball is a warm weather sport so I suppose thanks to global warming it could be played in the first week of April but by the time it gets cold again it will be 3 of the same 4 teams it always is playing when anyone actually cares.
inventor
@dedc79:
I’m an Astro fan. Last year and the off-season have been unmitigated nightmares. Next year real baseball ends completely.
The only thing I will have left of baseball will be my unrelenting hatred of Bud Selig.
burnspbesq
@Schlemizel:
I’m saving some crow for you to eat when Union hoists the trophy.
Thomas Beck
It’s very cool sitting here at work checking ESPN’s MLB Baseball Scores page and seeing games that ACTUALLY COUNT! Even if the real season (aka my beloved New York Yankees’ season) doesn’t start until tomorrow.
Play ball!
DLew On Roids
The Nationals are pretty good.
Thomas Beck
@geg6: First of all, citing some unnamed writer is argument by authority. Cite yourself, do your own research, don’t rely on someone else to back you up. (Two of my former college professors agree with me. )
Second, even if some level of participation in the US is declining, that doesn’t mean it can’t be reversed. Plus, the US population is growing (and in a demographic that has a lot of baseball interest), and the sport is also growing around the world. Trends can be reversed. Who would have guessed after the 1994 World Series was canceled that the game would ever make the kind of astonishing comeback is has in the past decade and a half? Don’t count baseball out just yet (even if ST: DS9 unaccountably did).
burnspbesq
There aren’t likely to be many of them for the next few years, so I plan to enjoy this Mets win.
geg6
@Thomas Beck:
Fine. The man’s name is John Perotto. Look him up, but you won’t find this in any of his writing since he can’t write about it. He likes his job. It’s what he says when he’s among friends and family.
I’m not saying that they can’t reverse the trend. But one thing I’m sure would help, at least in markets like mine, would be to make sure that there is a competitive team. If it means telling shitty owners to not be so completely and utterly shitty or if it means more revenue sharing or if it means realistic salary caps with no exceptions, they should do it. If it means changing the completely and utterly boring spectacle of a baseball game to make it more interesting to a generation with iPhones and Facebook, they should do it. Whatever, I’m not the one that has to come up with the solution. But I am quite that they need one.
Tonal Crow
We can haz again the “recent comments” list?
JenJen
@geg6: Agreed. And I really should’ve mentioned that I’m something of a hockey fangirl. :-)
Redleg
Zandar,
I’m just across the river in N. KY. I would love to be watching the Reds beat Miami but have a class to teach. Uggh.
asiangrrlMN
Go, Twins. Rah rah sis-boom bah. As you can probably tell, I don’t have much hope for my team.
SiubhanDuinne
@Thomas Beck:
Okay, that was funny.
opie jeanne
@burnspbesq: The two I mentioned were just magical. We went to a playoff game against Boston in… 2008? 2007? Can’t remember, but we did not win and it was still pretty magical. The Santa Anas were blowing that day, it was hot and too way too bright even for Southern California, and even though the sky was brown with dust, and Garrett Anderson had pink-eye and they had to pull him after a couple of innings.
Red Sox fans in Anaheim can be very obnoxious and there were some at both that game we lost and the one we won in 2009, and yet we sat beside some who were great people, really fans of the game in general.
The Angels have spent some big bucks this year and we think wisely this time, now we wish the city of Anaheim would return the favor and put some money into the stadium, but Curt Pringle (the mayor who was one of they guys in the California Lege who was known as a bomb-thrower) got his feelings hurt when they wanted to change the team name for marketing purposes. He wasted about 80 grand suing them and lost and was thinking about doing it again just before we moved in 2010. We’re in Seattle now, still rabid Angels fans, but we love going to the games here because of the stadium.
tulip
The only thing I will have left of baseball will be my unrelenting hatred of Bud Selig.
The Uniter… worst.commissioner.evah!
Love baseball, hate that guy.
opie jeanne
@tulip: I wish they’d get an owner who would spend some money on the team, and I REALLY wish the A’s could find a city willing to build them a decent ballpark.
We lived in the area for 9 years and went to lots of games at the coliseum. Even when they were winning the place was like a morgue, which is really disgraceful when you can get to the games so easily by BART. Even though we’re Angels fans I have a soft spot for the A’s, and Kurt Suzuki especially after what he did when our Nick Adenhart was killed by a drunk driver.
opie jeanne
@burnspbesq: Which Santana? Johann?
opie jeanne
@asiangrrlMN: I got to go to a Twins game last summer and had a great time. I can’t remember who they were playing (CRS syndrome) maybe Toronto, but it was great and your new stadium is beautiful.
Darkrose
@geg6:
Because I live in Northern California, of course. I’m really curious about whether the Giants can do better than they did last year, and maybe score a few runs to back up their incredible (-1) starting pitching rotation. It would be great to give the city’s best-known stoner a reason to stay here.
Plus, even when they lose, an afternoon at AT&T park is fun.
Roxie
@burnspbesq: Thanks for the link . It’s going to be a long year for us Madoff Mets fans. Johan and Wright might be gone before the All-Star break
Anonymous At Work
Cubs-Royals. Watch it happen and then Las Vegas imploded under the weight of paying out prop-bets.
tulip
@opie jeanne:
The Haas family were the best owners in the Bay Area and we’ve had some doozies (Al, Eddie, Finley). Back in the day the A’s were actually setting attendance records, hard to believe I know. What with Ricky and the Bash Bros… but that was a long time ago and a different era.
But the Gyros were here first, so the A’s no matter how much they win, or what pretty ballpark they may play in, will always be second fiddle. There were a few golden years under the Haas family and a few under the stewardship of Beane though. But it’s all gone to shit after they sold the team. Ownership can only bash the stadium and fan-base so much before folks decide to take those entertainment dollars elsewhere.
Personally I don’t think any city should pay for a ballpark. Any sports facility for that matter. But that’s just me.
Darkrose
@tulip:
I may be a Giants fan, but if the A’s were to come to Sacramento and expand Raley Field, I’d totally go because it’s baseball. And I do like keeping track of what Coco Crisp is doing with his hair.
tulip
@Darkrose:
Pretty sure all those feasibility studies have shown Sacramento can’t support a major league team. At least in the numbers they want.
Sacramento, Portland, Las Vegas have all been ruled out I believe. San Jose is where they want to go, but inland through the tunnel (Contra Costa County) is probably where they would have to go if they wanted to stay in Cali. Not sure what is going to happen with the A’s. I would think the other owners will have to get sick of writing them a check year in and year out. A salary cap may help, but it would HAVE to be coupled with a salary floor.
Oh and Coco? Pfft… it’s all about Cespedes, baby.
Schlemizel
@burnspbesq:
That crow is going to be really old by then
Schlemizel
@asiangrrlMN:
AS someone above pointed out the Twinkies have been to the play-offs several times recently. Of course what they failed to mention is that they went without a hope of winning a series and have only one one game.
I love baseball but between getting screwed by a billionaire to enrich him with a stadium and the talent disparity its tough to enjoy MLB. Gopher men are doing OK & the softball team is starting 7 frosh but winning!
opie jeanne
@tulip: I moved there in 1992 when the Bash Brothers were still there, and I lived there when the Haas family sold the team. I was also there when the Raiders returned and I still get angry every time I see Mt Davis. We moved back to SoCal in 2001 because we had 4 elderly parents down there whose health was failing.
I agree about cities building stadiums, but it’s the reality of the thing. Anaheim owns Angels Stadium and the parking lot, and they make a lot of money on the place. Lots of money. They were finally shamed into giving it a paint job when it was announced that the All Star Game would be played there in 2010, and the place was looking pretty shabby until then.
Crza
Feel free to laugh your asses off at me if you want, but I’ll say it: the Royals may actually, this year, for realz, be able to go over .500. I’m actually looking forward to seeing what they can do, as opposed to looking forward to just pointing and laughing.
The rotation isn’t all that hot and the offense seems streaky, but when that lineup gets going, watch out. It’s no longer the eternal fail-train of epic loss-itude that KC has been for the past few forevers.
Darkrose
@tulip:
Yeah, I figured. It’s too bad, because if going to a major league game didn’t mean driving 1.5 hours each way, I’d go to games regardless of team allegiance. I hate that we’re considered part of the Bay Area market and can’t get MLB.tv.
My understanding was that the San Jose deal wasn’t going to go through because the Giants were being dicks.
I just have a soft spot in my heart for a brother who actually calls himself Coco Crisp.