Why the f**k is baseball so boring?

You are joking, right?

You cherry picked one year. The Dodgers have how many titles in the past quarter century? They have had THE HIGHEST payroll for the past three years and have not even a pennant to show for it.

The Cubs?? The Cubs??? Honestly, the team has 0 world series in over a century? If they win this year, the count of WS wins in the past century will still be 27-1 in favor of the Yankees. IF they don't choke again.

The Yankees are ALMOST NEVER in contention? That's exactly right. If you mean not having the best record in MLB since 2000 or making the playoffs more than any other team in that span.

You are officially a baseball moron.

Your second point is equally stupid, but I don't have patience to explain it.

Vegas Doll wrote:

Dial it up wrote:

Claims like this are so stupid. I bet most runners on here can't even back squat 2x their body weight, and in my opinion you aren't all that fit or in shape if you can't do that. Baseball players develop their bodies to be good at baseball, not distance running. That doesn't mean runners are more or less "fit."

John Kruk, David Wells, Babe Ruth, Mo Vaughn and CC Sabathia are all poster children for the Fitness Council.

Even if I generously count the scholarships, gear, and travel that I've earned as a runner and combine it with anything you've earned...we still don't approach a season of CC Sabathia's pay. So, when it comes to sport-specific fitness he has us both beat. Neither of us have the strength to throw a ball that fast or the hand eye coordination to do it accurately. So what's your point?

I visited a baseball arena one time only. It was Texas stadium back when A-Rod was playing for Texas. Most of the crowd was disinterested in the game and many people spent more time in the bars and restaurants within the stadium.

Well, if one game over a decade ago in a place never known for passionate baseball fans isn't proof of your predetermined conclusion, I can't imagine what would be!

Wendell Gee wrote:

You are joking, right?

You cherry picked one year. The Dodgers have how many titles in the past quarter century? They have had THE HIGHEST payroll for the past three years and have not even a pennant to show for it.

The Cubs?? The Cubs??? Honestly, the team has 0 world series in over a century? If they win this year, the count of WS wins in the past century will still be 27-1 in favor of the Yankees. IF they don't choke again.

The Yankees are ALMOST NEVER in contention? That's exactly right. If you mean not having the best record in MLB since 2000 or making the playoffs more than any other team in that span.

You are officially a baseball moron.

Your second point is equally stupid, but I don't have patience to explain it.

You are swinging and missing, pun intended. The Yankees SHOULD be better than everyone since since 2000 because they have outspent everyone since 2000. The whole point is they vastly underachieve, not that they aren't good. Trying and failing to buy wins is hilarious and even they see that as they've tried to do a better job of developing players and buying fewer overpriced, old scrubs.

Dial it up wrote:

You are swinging and missing, pun intended. The Yankees SHOULD be better than everyone since since 2000 because they have outspent everyone since 2000. The whole point is they vastly underachieve, not that they aren't good. Trying and failing to buy wins is hilarious and even they see that as they've tried to do a better job of developing players and buying fewer overpriced, old scrubs.

Wonderful. And as your GENIUS counterexample, you bring up ... the Dodgers??? The team that is spending MORE and achieving LESS than the Yankees?

The Yankees have indisputably made some of the poorest roster decisions of any team in the majors in recent years. The Dodgers, however, are the team that make everyone else feel better about the stupid things they have done. The Dodgers are so dumb that when the Red Sox made their moronic moves a few years back, the Dodgers came in AFTER SEEING HOW STUPID THE RED SOX WERE and took over the biggest problems for them.

Confused as to why you are fixated on the dodgers, I'm too lazy to read back but I believe I stated the Cubs and dodgers so obviously I was referring to the highest spenders THIS year other than the Yankees. They are in the playoffs and the Yankees were not even in the hunt. The dodgers choke...a lot....but they have been far more relevant than the Yankees for the past 5 years.

Dial it up wrote:

The Yankees SHOULD be better than everyone since since 2000 because they have outspent everyone since 2000. The whole point is they vastly underachieve, not that they aren't good.

Every front-running Yankee fan boy is tortured by this fact.

It's quite difficult to find a sport with so many ugly, fat "athletes".

Joba's Gnats wrote:

Dial it up wrote:

The Yankees SHOULD be better than everyone since since 2000 because they have outspent everyone since 2000. The whole point is they vastly underachieve, not that they aren't good.

Every front-running Yankee fan boy is tortured by this fact.

http://media.nj.com/yankees_main/photo/19269932-standard.jpg

Isn't that a picture of their ridiculously priced Legends Club section? Intentionally priced very high to keep out the "commoners"?

In 2016 they ranked 6th for attendance. Interesting that Cleveland ranked 28th despite winning 94 games.

I was a D1 XC, Steeple, 5k and 10k runner. I worked with a guy who pitched for a major D1 program and was drafted but got injured.

We used to argue this exact same thing ALL THE TIME. I felt okay arguing it with him b/c I am more of a baseball fan than I led him to believe, played up until high school and he was a major stud that is likely still living off the interest of his MLB contract.

I would go on and on about how athletic runners had to be versus the fat asses that play baseball. He argued that the fat guys were phenomenal athletes that could beat me in a 100 meter dash or box jump twice as high as me despite being obese. The argument came to a head one day when he asked me if I would try to hit one of his pitches. I told him I would do that if he ran a 5k on the track with me. So it became an office thing and we set a date for the competition. I had to go first. I played baseball (2nd base) up until I got to high school so it wasn't like hitting a ball was totally foreign to me. I couldn't even touch the ball. It was like trying to hit a marble falling from a skyscraper. He told me that he was probably throwing somewhere in the low 70s and hardly putting any movement on the ball so he wouldn't re-injure his arm. He finally started lobbing balls over the plate just to make me look bad.

So then we run the 5k on a local high school track and I run just under 17:30 and he runs somewhere over 20 minutes. Like 20:something. So he runs a good 5k time for a non runner and I cannot even hit his pitches. Now I am not even going to go into how many people said, "17 and 20 aren't that far apart. If 'Jim' ran every day he'd probably be a much faster runner." 17:30 had me over a lap ahead of the guy at the finish, so it wasn't like I was all out, but the point is that he still ran an impressive time in the eye of the office voyeurs and it just made me look stupid.

I know there are a million arguments to be made in my favor (I hadn't practiced hitting, just one part of the game, 3 minutes is an eternity in running, blah, blah blah), but when it comes down to it, a lot of these baseball guys are super athletic and they don't need to be 4% body fat to make $30 Million a year. Some of them do better with the weight.

Baseball is extremely hard and you need to be a phenomenal athlete to excel at it. It is more than hard work and talent, you also need to be smart and know what to do in every imaginable situation. It is truly a thinking man's sport.

TL;DR - Never challenge a D1 baseball player to a physical contest. Even if you win, you lose.

Sounds fun, with weight loss over 6 months I'm sure he could break 18 though and with daily practice you probably wouldn't be hitting his pitches

I've never watched a baseball game, but I don't complain about it. I just turn the station to something else.

This novel seems to be more an exception that proves the rule.

Witness the fitness wrote:

This novel seems to be more an exception that proves the rule.

Hey, I offered a TL;DR... but I am not sure I get your point.

I have to be honest, though. He wasn't fat and didn't (doesn't?) have much weight to lose. Still, he could probably train down to a decent time. This was nearly a decade ago and I no longer work with him.

I don't think people understand how hard it is to hit a baseball that is thrown by a decent pitcher. We're all used to batting cages, softball or little league. Granted, hitting is only one part of the game, but I never really understood the hate for baseball players.

Dial it up wrote:

Sounds fun, with weight loss over 6 months I'm sure he could break 18 though and with daily practice you probably wouldn't be hitting his pitches

How long would it take for him to run 14:59?

With daily practice for years virtually no one here could return one of Nadal's tennis serves or even come close to winning a (-n errorless) point. But tennis is a sport of finesse AND endurance. How long is a tennis match? How long are rallies?

With a lifetime of practice no one here could beat Magnus Carlsen in chess. I'd argue that there is more finesse (read: refined, practiced intuition) in chess than baseball but neither are sports.

No one here is smashing a goal past Manuel Neuer.

___

Isolating the single split-second of (re-)action in an almost entirely actionless activity is no definition of a sport. And it isn't exciting. It is no more impressive than a million other skills that people do very very well.

Virtually everyone here who likes baseball grew up playing baseball, probably because they had to, and have to reflexively come to its defense out of thoughtless condition whenever sports enthusiasts point out how shitty and lame it is.

B-b-b-but muh fastball. 😒

Please.

How fast does a hockey puck travel? Ever try to hit one in skates?

Baseball isn't dead the same way Survivor and American Idol aren't: Relatable entertainment for thoughtless turds without taste.

Could take several years, maybe he would never hit 14:59, who knows, but it's not like 18 takes much ability other than a little work.

I've never played competitive baseball in my life, so there goes your little rant. Cool story bro.

Dial it up wrote:

Confused as to why you are fixated on the dodgers, I'm too lazy to read back but I believe I stated the Cubs and dodgers so obviously I was referring to the highest spenders THIS year other than the Yankees. They are in the playoffs and the Yankees were not even in the hunt. The dodgers choke...a lot....but they have been far more relevant than the Yankees for the past 5 years.

I talked about the Dodgers because YOU brought them up as an example of doing it right. Which is bizarre, because their strategy over the time span you reference is the epitome of the Yankees method on steroids.

Yankees were not in the hunt? They were just a couple games outside the wild card. Last year they WERE the wild card. Have they been good? No, absolutely not. But the Dodgers are an idiotic counter-example (and so are the Cubs).

Valid counter-examples:

Rays (until the last two years), Giants, more or less.

Look, I get it, you're a bandwagon fan who thinks 1-2 years of data is sufficient. But trust me, I know baseball numbers and your evidence is just wrong.

More evidence? The Cubs ... sure, they've got some awesome young talent. They also have made a bunch of high priced acquisitions. In fact, the Yankees payroll is closer to the Cubs than it is to the Dodgers.

Look, when you have evidence to refute what I'm saying, share it. But you've been wrong on every point so far.

Star wrote:

I’m doing great thank you wrote:

hands down the most boring sport?

As opposed to watching a marathon.

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