explain going to a baseball game to someone from the UK

Apparently the average last year was 2:45, way better than I thought and down from the '90s. (I'm sure my view is heavily skewed by seeing games in a hitter's park, and a preference for watching pitching duels.)

College basketball does nothing for me. Low scoring, a lot of the players can't shoot or take over a game. Which goes for most of the NBA, too. A few teams make it fun when they're cooking - scoring inside and outside, ball movement, none of that 'throw it to the fat guy in the post' stuff (I forget whose quote that is.) I don't really know enough about basketball to say what's wrong, but I suspect it's a lack of experience and fundaments and there are a few dominant big men that everyone's trying to emulate rather than work around.

i'm shocked that the average game is at 2:45, i'd always just assumed they were 3+ hours. 2:45 sounds fantastic, all things considered.

Even then, I'd rather watch a team run up and down shooting threes than half-court "dump it to the fat guy in the post" and 69-65 games.

but i doubt that theory because one would think that after a couple years in college such a tendency would be pretty well drilled out of a player, and it's not as if most of the NBA's talent is coming straight from high school (at least not yet).

Some of the blame has to go on GMs too - gambling on a guy with one or two great assets instead of an all-around game. Upside blah blah blah.

I don't think it's hopeless, but I'm lucky enough to have a local team that's good and fun to watch (until Cuban gets pissed off at not winning a title and trades for an all-D team).

College basketball, partially because most teams have a couple of good players and the rest role players is a more watchable form of basketball, sometimes it gets deathly ugly, but in it's best moments has more raw emotion and passion than all but the very best and rare NBA games.

During the season, so many NBA teams seem to dial it in until half way until the fourth quarter or until they are down fifteen. Yawn...

Sometimes a late season Arizona Cardinals vs. Minnesota Viking game is interesting and the playoffs are usually good and sometimes great. You can't say that about any late season NBA game, too many teams make the playoffs to worry about it. Look at the Lakers, they didn't have the top seed and didn't even care, they still just rested their players in the last few games, even though they were within a game or two of getting home court.

Then again, I am a football junkie. I never played basketball in school, so I don't really have any attachment at all to the game like I do about football or baseball, which I played. Still, I grew up watching alot of NBA games, but I rarely can sit down and watch an entire game, it is way too fugly.

It isn't the high school kids that are messing up the game, most of them end up on the pine for two or three years anyway. The college players also can't shoot very well. Most of the newer shooters are from Europe, some exceptions of course. Until back court guards and small fowards start being able to nail that mid range jumper, the scores are going to continue to be low. There is just too much athleticism for all but a rare few to exploit that matchup style game that became so popular with Jordan. McGrady can do it, Kobe can do it and a few others sometimes can play like that, but most of the league cannot.

Something else that is becomeing more rare is the dominating center, which was pivot of the game from the 50s to the 80s. Other than Shaq and now Ming, there just isn't as many great centers. There are good players of that height, but they are not centers in the way that Ewing, Hakeem, Russell, Parrish and the old school centers played. They are either very athletic power forwards (like Ben Wallace) or big forwards that can shoot and move (like Duncan or Garnett).

I kind of feel like it's too much work for too little reward, personally. Even if you master the in-mouth shell-cracking and seed-extracting procedure, the seeds themselves are so small as to render the whole thing vaguely unsatisfying.

I can't think of sunflower seeds without thinking of Sparky Anderson. That guy was a sunflower seed FIEND.

wow, chewing radioactive waste! gotta try some of that....

the sunflower seed thing i never got at all--why would you want something so salty when it's just going to make you thirsty?

anybody remember "plug" tobacco? sometimes called "snuff," bizarrely

http://www.jimbouton.com/i/chew_org.jpg

god help me I'm not 100% sure I understand a double switch /alfan

specifically wrt the timing of the events involved with the switch

event 1) remove pitcher and position player from the game;

event 2) replace pitcher and position player

event 3 ????????

event 4) batting order results in position player batting in pitcher's spot and visa versa.

you just replace the pitcher with the position player and vice-versa. so when the pitcher's spot comes up, the position player is actually there.

I get that but it's not a satisfying answer for me, i guess. is it just as simple as calling a P a 2B and a 2B a P? i.e. a semantic manuver?

i think maybe try taking the positions out of it? you are free to substitute any guy for any other guy, and because it's the nl, you are free to let anyone play any position. so.......

btw i'm an al fan too just trying to work through this for both of our benefits

>i think maybe try taking the positions out of it?

I don't think that's my issue. i can't figure out where in the timeline of events that lead to the players ending up in the advantageous BO slots.

ACCEPTED EVENT: event 1) remove pitcher and position player from the game;

ACCEPTED EVENT: event 2) replace pitcher and position player

event 3 ????????

ACCEPTED OUTCOME: event 4) batting order results in position player batting in pitcher's spot and visa versa.

I took my Afrogermanic neighbor to a game last year and it was probably the hardest (explaining stuff) I had to think since my SAT.

:\

like, everything makes sense independent of the whole

I get that but it's not a satisfying answer for me, i guess. is it just as simple as calling a P a 2B and a 2B a P? i.e. a semantic manuver?

what's semantic about it? aren't the replacements in the lineup? (i.e. couldn't any player conceivably play any position?)

the two substitutions don't technically happen simultaneously. so you can first take out the pitcher and put the position player in his spot, and then take out the other position player and put in the pitcher. it may happen at the same time on the lineup card, but that doesn't matter until either a) the NEW pitcher's spot comes up because the inning continues or b) the inning ends and someone needs to pitch the next inning.

all that's relevant initially is that you are batting a position player for a pitcher. what the double switch is really doing is allowing him to stay in the game after his AB.

its mostly an NL thing.

+ if it happens in the upper half of the lineup (in a 9 inning game) it's usually due to injury or an older player needing rest (often during a blowout).

+ if it happens in the bottom half of the lineup it's usually to take advantage of poor batter or to insert a defensive replacement.

so say your light hitting SS (say, 2009 jose reyes off the roids lol) is batting 8th and made the last offensive out and your pitcher has tossed 7 innings and is due up in the next inning. after the batter makes the out, the manager would indicate a double switch taking reyes out of the 8th spot and inserting a pitcher in that spot instead (then up 9th in the current batter order = less chance of getting an at bat by end of game). then in the 9th spot, you'd insert the switch, usually the next best offensive player and either move him in at SS or shuffle the defense around to accomodate him.

does this make sense? cuz i could go on but i'm not sure how much sense this is making...

yah it makes total sense - you're rejigging the line-up to put as much distance btw your pitcher and having to bat as possible

the two substitutions don't technically happen simultaneously. so you can first take out the pitcher and put the position player in his spot, and then take out the other position player and put in the pitcher. it may happen at the same time on the lineup card, but that doesn't matter until either a) the NEW pitcher's spot comes up because the inning continues or b) the inning ends and someone needs to pitch the next inning.

^^^^ this is basically what I was looking for

so, yes, it is all effectively instantaneous, but that's the order I was looking for.

order of operations cf. maths.

https://i.redd.it/1zu5qfagdlh71.jpg

incredible comeback as the herts falcons improved to 1-23 on the season. they've been outscored 351-98

Can we have that in English please?

lmaooo

i know some of those guys

A Dead Armed Pitcher is Not Yet a Man

The path of a pitched baseball 
can be curv    or sl
           ing      urv
                       ing
          t
narrow or a  
          l
          l
cutt        n
    ing or k u                    arc's
              ckl              the      f
                 ing      bends         a
                 the wind               l
                                        l
sli
   ding or drop
               p
                ing 
    like a sick stomach
    having just reached the top
    of a rollercoaster ride that screams like a rocket 
until the bottom falls out of it and comes to the most sudden
                                                         stop

Instead of throwing the ball like any of that
I throw it right down the middle
as hard as I can
My ass is handed to me in front of an audience

I grunt when I throw because they asked me to
because if I don’t they’ll ask why I didn’t
because they thought it would add a couple miles per hour
to my cartoonishly slow and extremely hittable deliveries
The other kid grunts back as he slaps a loud smack
The crowd roars because our team is away and they are safe at home
We’re 13 years old, I sucked
I got roughed up on the usual
but our team had no reliable bullpen
so they left me in to soak up the remaining innings
until the 10-run rule arrived, the rule of mercy

x-posting here because it's for baseball nerds

and also to help explain baseball to only people in the UK