I've heard baseball announcers say that every time you go to the ballpark you see something you never saw before. Has anyone tested this axiom? I've seen some unexpected plays in baseball, but I can't say every game has unique, memorable moments.
Now the 2022 Pirates sweeping the 2022 Dodgers in LA. That is very unexpected!
This night is exactly what today’s post is exclaiming! You never know what you may see any given day in MLB! It’s also Exactly why I had to subscribe to this Blog! Because Baseball ⚾️!!!
Joe: love your blog and almost always agree with what you say. But the post about the season becoming meaningless seems off to me. In 1954 or 1962, just as many teams would already have a less than 1% chance of winning the pennant by Memorial Day as teams in 2022 are out of the playoff picture. It's nothing new for folks in Kansas City (except for the miraculous 2014 and 2015 seasons and that brief spell in the 1980s) to have a home town team that is always playing for next year--and the year after that. Any way you slice it up, there is much more churn at the top in MLB than the NBA. The Royals win a World Series; who thinks the Charlotte Hornets will ever win a NBA title?
I think one difference is that in the pre-division days or even the division-title only days, the exciting competition generally occurred at the top. In other words, a "pennant race," when there was one, was a high stakes fight between two or three or four (see: AL 1967) teams, and the ones who were in that race were the best teams in baseball. Last year, the Giants and Dodgers both had spectacular records, and even though they were fighting for the right not to face the Cardinals in a winner-take-all one-game playoff, neither team was going home on the last day of the regular season no matter what. This playoff format makes that even less risky for the team that doesn't win the division. Meanwhile, the really exciting finish was among the Red Sox, Yankees, Mariners and Blue Jays, fighting for two spots, but the teams were eight, eight, nine and five games behind their respective division winners. Good for their particular fans, but not the best teams in baseball. And the eventual World's Champions finished 19 games worse than the Giants (and 18 worse than the Dodgers, and two worse than the second NL wild card, as well as four behind the two AL wild cards, and also behind the aforementioned Blue Jays and Mariners). That's cool, in that the playoffs are meaningless if a lower-seeded team cannot win, and in baseball we know the best team doesn't always win in a short series. But it gives a very different vibe from the 1951 Dodgers and Giants, or even the 1995 Angels and Mariners.
The fact that anything can happen is a great reason to watch a random game in the middle of the season, or to follow a team in a year when you know they won’t contend.
For me, it’s exactly the reason why I want fewer teams in the playoffs. The best few regular season teams shouldn’t have to deal with the 12th best team on a hot streak. The playoffs should be about who’s the best of the best, and among the teams that proved to be best in the regular season let whatever craziness happen.
That last line..."maybe a kid will catch a foul ball."
If I'm the TV producer on a baseball game, I will make sure that EVERY foul ball is followed until we see who ended up with it (including if it is given away). With a replay if necessary. It's in the top five things in any game.
What else is there for those seconds? Watching the batter adjust his gloves?
I’m a committed and long time Dodger fan. As such, I would love to see them win 110+ games and win the World Series this year. But last night kinda fell in love with the name Rodolfo - and just can’t be all that upset about losing to the Pirates. Rodolfo!
A few years ago, the Nationals won the World Series. I thought, great, I need to follow this team and there was a good chance I was going to go to Washington DC in August of 2021 (I ended up not going) and I thought, I could possibly catch a game. I probably would have tried to catch the game but where are the Nationals now? This is baseball. Last year the Dodgers and the Giants had over 100 games each yet, were they in the World Series? Well, this is baseball and that is why we love it.
I'm aware of 2 Joe D. bios. One by Richard Ben Cramer, which is excellent, like all his stuff. Then there's one by Maury Allen from the 1970s, which is a sickly sweet sepia-toned nostalgic journey of days gone by, and best left unread.
I’ve been a Cubs fan for more than 40 years, and during most of those years the team has sucked. Sure, there’s been plenty of stars, but not much around them. So if the whole point of the baseball season for me as a fan was to see my team win it all, well, at least I saw it once.
The joy of baseball then comes down to moments. A great throw. An exciting rookie (eyes on you, Christopher Morel). A monstrous homer. A dominating game by a pitcher. A come-from-behind win. And a midseason series win that they had no business winning.
It’s not that I don’t root for them to win every game or that my heart doesn’t break when they blow a game they should have won. It’s that baseball is about more than that. And for six months a year, there’s another chance tomorrow to see one of those moments.
This is exactly right. 2 of my 3 teams are terrible this year and 2 of them are terrible most years (but not the same two). I watch for all the reasons you do. They all just finished off series where they got swept, but I'll be excited to see them in their next games because who knows? Maybe they get a walkoff win.
Anything can happen! -- Garrett Whitlock's line last night: 6.0 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 0 HR. So much for three true outcomes. The Red Sox somehow got by the powerful Big Red Machine 7-1.
Speaking of kids and foul balls, did you see Starling Marte's 1st inning homer for the Mets on Tuesday? Landed on the part of the batter's eye that's blacked out seating (I guess). Anyway, it takes one bounce, and a guy with a baby in his left arm reaches over and snags it cleanly with his right. Absolute A-1 fathering right there.
I feel like this column perfectly captures the problems with baseball you outlined the other day. No one cares. When the Jaguars beat the Bills it was a huge story because it's so unlikely. A bad baseball team sweeping a good one is fairly inevitable each season. So it's not exciting and it doesn't mean much. It's good for local sports talk or online chats, but it's three games out of 162 and pirates are still going nowhere and the dodgers are still probably going to the world series.
I don't actually think that's inherent to baseball, I think it's just where baseball is these days. People who care about baseball, follow it closely, noticed and wanted to talk about it (the Mets booth was chatting about the Pirates taking the first 2 and admiring Marcano's name). But most American sports fans at this point care about their home team and otherwise read about the NFL 365 days/year. Joe's right that the sweep isn't as downright unlikely as something comparable in other sports (did the Brady Pats *ever* lose a home game to the #28 team?), but I don't think that makes it ho-hum.
PS It's probably a bigger story if the Padres hadn't simultaneously gotten swept by the Cards—had they swept instead, suddenly there'd be a tie in at the NL West
The Pats frequently lose to Miami in December. The Fins might not always have been #28 in a league where the Jets exist in their own division, but they were quite often very bad.
I understand your fear and/or paralysis. If I saw you in a lobby, even though I’m a subscriber and have purchased your books, I wouldn’t stop over and say hi. Not because I wouldn’t want to, but I just couldn’t. So the good news is we’ll both be safe from interaction if you and I ever find ourselves in the same lobby. :-)
I've actually met Ken Levine, blogger and former broadcaster for Baltimore and Seattle and writer for M*A*S*H and Cheers among others, a couple of times. One night I was in the Maui airport and I looked up and I saw him standing there looking rather unhappy (he's a very tall man and impossible to miss). He was in fact (and this was actually an entry in his blog) waiting for his daughter and her partner to arrive on our flight, after they had been rerouted and delayed for about a day, which explained why he looked like he did. From far away, I took a photo of him with my phone and posted it on his Facebook page, and he confirmed that was in fact him, and said he'd have been fine if I'd come by and said hi. I think that was him being polite. At that moment, he only wanted to see his daughter coming out of the exit from security, and nothing was going to take his attention off that exit.
This has actually happened to me, and I didn't say hi. I saw him at a Quiktrip years ago, knew it was him, thought about it, did nothing. It is just not my way, and I did not want to be the guy that waylaid him while he was just doing every day stuff.
I've heard baseball announcers say that every time you go to the ballpark you see something you never saw before. Has anyone tested this axiom? I've seen some unexpected plays in baseball, but I can't say every game has unique, memorable moments.
Now the 2022 Pirates sweeping the 2022 Dodgers in LA. That is very unexpected!
Great read, Joe.
P.S. -- Seriously, man, Gary Cohen is the best baseball announcer, period. OK?
This night is exactly what today’s post is exclaiming! You never know what you may see any given day in MLB! It’s also Exactly why I had to subscribe to this Blog! Because Baseball ⚾️!!!
Joe: love your blog and almost always agree with what you say. But the post about the season becoming meaningless seems off to me. In 1954 or 1962, just as many teams would already have a less than 1% chance of winning the pennant by Memorial Day as teams in 2022 are out of the playoff picture. It's nothing new for folks in Kansas City (except for the miraculous 2014 and 2015 seasons and that brief spell in the 1980s) to have a home town team that is always playing for next year--and the year after that. Any way you slice it up, there is much more churn at the top in MLB than the NBA. The Royals win a World Series; who thinks the Charlotte Hornets will ever win a NBA title?
I think one difference is that in the pre-division days or even the division-title only days, the exciting competition generally occurred at the top. In other words, a "pennant race," when there was one, was a high stakes fight between two or three or four (see: AL 1967) teams, and the ones who were in that race were the best teams in baseball. Last year, the Giants and Dodgers both had spectacular records, and even though they were fighting for the right not to face the Cardinals in a winner-take-all one-game playoff, neither team was going home on the last day of the regular season no matter what. This playoff format makes that even less risky for the team that doesn't win the division. Meanwhile, the really exciting finish was among the Red Sox, Yankees, Mariners and Blue Jays, fighting for two spots, but the teams were eight, eight, nine and five games behind their respective division winners. Good for their particular fans, but not the best teams in baseball. And the eventual World's Champions finished 19 games worse than the Giants (and 18 worse than the Dodgers, and two worse than the second NL wild card, as well as four behind the two AL wild cards, and also behind the aforementioned Blue Jays and Mariners). That's cool, in that the playoffs are meaningless if a lower-seeded team cannot win, and in baseball we know the best team doesn't always win in a short series. But it gives a very different vibe from the 1951 Dodgers and Giants, or even the 1995 Angels and Mariners.
Exactly. The current format almost ensures that the best teams over 162 are NOT meeting in World Series. Boo...
"Baseball, Where Anything Can Happen" . . . each day is like Casey at the Bat all over again!
The fact that anything can happen is a great reason to watch a random game in the middle of the season, or to follow a team in a year when you know they won’t contend.
For me, it’s exactly the reason why I want fewer teams in the playoffs. The best few regular season teams shouldn’t have to deal with the 12th best team on a hot streak. The playoffs should be about who’s the best of the best, and among the teams that proved to be best in the regular season let whatever craziness happen.
That last line..."maybe a kid will catch a foul ball."
If I'm the TV producer on a baseball game, I will make sure that EVERY foul ball is followed until we see who ended up with it (including if it is given away). With a replay if necessary. It's in the top five things in any game.
What else is there for those seconds? Watching the batter adjust his gloves?
I’m a committed and long time Dodger fan. As such, I would love to see them win 110+ games and win the World Series this year. But last night kinda fell in love with the name Rodolfo - and just can’t be all that upset about losing to the Pirates. Rodolfo!
If you enjoyed "Shoeless Joe", be sure to read the rest of Kinsella's work, especially the rez stories.
A few years ago, the Nationals won the World Series. I thought, great, I need to follow this team and there was a good chance I was going to go to Washington DC in August of 2021 (I ended up not going) and I thought, I could possibly catch a game. I probably would have tried to catch the game but where are the Nationals now? This is baseball. Last year the Dodgers and the Giants had over 100 games each yet, were they in the World Series? Well, this is baseball and that is why we love it.
More on the shelf in the Treetops Bookstore......
In addition to the unidentified bio of Joe DiMaggio, the authors represented are:
Roger Kahn
Joe Posnanski
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Roger Angell
Bob Uecker
Jim Bouton
Seven of the best baseball books ever written.....
I'm aware of 2 Joe D. bios. One by Richard Ben Cramer, which is excellent, like all his stuff. Then there's one by Maury Allen from the 1970s, which is a sickly sweet sepia-toned nostalgic journey of days gone by, and best left unread.
I’ve been a Cubs fan for more than 40 years, and during most of those years the team has sucked. Sure, there’s been plenty of stars, but not much around them. So if the whole point of the baseball season for me as a fan was to see my team win it all, well, at least I saw it once.
The joy of baseball then comes down to moments. A great throw. An exciting rookie (eyes on you, Christopher Morel). A monstrous homer. A dominating game by a pitcher. A come-from-behind win. And a midseason series win that they had no business winning.
It’s not that I don’t root for them to win every game or that my heart doesn’t break when they blow a game they should have won. It’s that baseball is about more than that. And for six months a year, there’s another chance tomorrow to see one of those moments.
This is exactly right. 2 of my 3 teams are terrible this year and 2 of them are terrible most years (but not the same two). I watch for all the reasons you do. They all just finished off series where they got swept, but I'll be excited to see them in their next games because who knows? Maybe they get a walkoff win.
Anything can happen! -- Garrett Whitlock's line last night: 6.0 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 0 HR. So much for three true outcomes. The Red Sox somehow got by the powerful Big Red Machine 7-1.
Speaking of kids and foul balls, did you see Starling Marte's 1st inning homer for the Mets on Tuesday? Landed on the part of the batter's eye that's blacked out seating (I guess). Anyway, it takes one bounce, and a guy with a baby in his left arm reaches over and snags it cleanly with his right. Absolute A-1 fathering right there.
I feel like this column perfectly captures the problems with baseball you outlined the other day. No one cares. When the Jaguars beat the Bills it was a huge story because it's so unlikely. A bad baseball team sweeping a good one is fairly inevitable each season. So it's not exciting and it doesn't mean much. It's good for local sports talk or online chats, but it's three games out of 162 and pirates are still going nowhere and the dodgers are still probably going to the world series.
I don't actually think that's inherent to baseball, I think it's just where baseball is these days. People who care about baseball, follow it closely, noticed and wanted to talk about it (the Mets booth was chatting about the Pirates taking the first 2 and admiring Marcano's name). But most American sports fans at this point care about their home team and otherwise read about the NFL 365 days/year. Joe's right that the sweep isn't as downright unlikely as something comparable in other sports (did the Brady Pats *ever* lose a home game to the #28 team?), but I don't think that makes it ho-hum.
PS It's probably a bigger story if the Padres hadn't simultaneously gotten swept by the Cards—had they swept instead, suddenly there'd be a tie in at the NL West
The Pats frequently lose to Miami in December. The Fins might not always have been #28 in a league where the Jets exist in their own division, but they were quite often very bad.
I understand your fear and/or paralysis. If I saw you in a lobby, even though I’m a subscriber and have purchased your books, I wouldn’t stop over and say hi. Not because I wouldn’t want to, but I just couldn’t. So the good news is we’ll both be safe from interaction if you and I ever find ourselves in the same lobby. :-)
I've actually met Ken Levine, blogger and former broadcaster for Baltimore and Seattle and writer for M*A*S*H and Cheers among others, a couple of times. One night I was in the Maui airport and I looked up and I saw him standing there looking rather unhappy (he's a very tall man and impossible to miss). He was in fact (and this was actually an entry in his blog) waiting for his daughter and her partner to arrive on our flight, after they had been rerouted and delayed for about a day, which explained why he looked like he did. From far away, I took a photo of him with my phone and posted it on his Facebook page, and he confirmed that was in fact him, and said he'd have been fine if I'd come by and said hi. I think that was him being polite. At that moment, he only wanted to see his daughter coming out of the exit from security, and nothing was going to take his attention off that exit.
This has actually happened to me, and I didn't say hi. I saw him at a Quiktrip years ago, knew it was him, thought about it, did nothing. It is just not my way, and I did not want to be the guy that waylaid him while he was just doing every day stuff.