Spotted at tonight's #Bluejays game. In the 2nd inning! Hang in there, trooper. pic.twitter.com/oTfndAOwMl
— Brad Gagnon (@Brad_Gagnon) April 14, 2016
April 15, 2016
"Spotted at tonight's #Bluejays game. In the 2nd inning!"
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At a game a couple of years ago, there was a couple of French tourists sitting next to us. At one point, one of them asked innocently: "Is it always this slow?"
Baseball may share this with soccer: If you don't grow up with the game and have a natural grasp of the intricacies, its appeal may be hard to appreciate if you come to it as an adult.
Answer: too long.
Three things have to come together for me to go to a baseball game. 1. I'm on a business trip away from home. 2. The tickets were free. 3. I go to the game alone with my stats book.
Otherwise, I can't take in a baseball game live or otherwise.
The stands start emptying around 6-7th inning. Even in a tight competitive game it's unusual to see more than 2/3 rds of the crowd still there at the end.
Minor League San Jose Giants gives away free tickets for a specific day and night twice a month. Parking is easy and a cheap. Food cost is realistic, churros fresh and amazing. free beer sometimes if a home run is hit. Even some sort of bingo for prizes. Weather great. Lots of families. One of the dwindling affordables in silicon valley.
I tend to leave early, and this ensures there will be dramatic ending in the 9th.
I can also cause neighborhood power outages by setting the clock on the VCR.
Maybe she's trying to plan out her beer consumption rate.
Want to know why the game is slow? The players are CP time.
As my daughter said when we took her to a game, "This is worse than church!"
Suggestions for improving baseball: 1. limit the game to 7 innings 2. allow a few designated baserunners (hitters stay in the game) 3. prohibit chewing and spitting by all involved.
Watching paint dry also takes four hours.
It is Toronto Blue Jays. Not Bluejays.
It is also the Creighton Bluejays. One word.
Toronto is suing Creighton on our new trademarked bird logo. The two birds are not remotely confusing and similar. And Creighton's baseball team is way better than Toronto's. The kicker in the case is that Toronto allowed the Creighton baseball team to use its exact logo in the 90's. Waiver.
But NYC trademark counsel will milk the Canadians for good six figures.
George Carlin answered this decades ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmXacL0Uny0
The longest game was 25 innings lasting 8 hours. Shortest was 9 innings in 59 minutes. Longest inning was one hour eight minutes with 118 pitches and 18 runs scored.
So, yes, hang in there.
The only thing needing change in professional baseball is the noise between innings. I really miss the quiet of the old days when only the sound of the ball hitting the glove.
They should have gone last night. We were out of there in 2 & 1/2 hours.
Michael, I miss the days when the fans were in charge of the cheering. Now we're relentlessly prodded by recordings, song clips, even videos. I doubt most fans even know how to cheer anymore, though I was pleased at how long we kept up the wave last night--the last holdout of a bygoe era.
Fullmoon a couple years ago my boss was looking for an affordable team activity for the annual get together at corporate HQ in San Jose. I suggested we go to a San Jose Giants game, it was a pretty good time, but as the only one in the group who was born and raised in the US I spent almost the whole game trying to explain baseball to my Indian, Israeli, Brazilian and English co-workers.
I can't stand the noise at baseball games either, and the only decent seats cost more than I am willing to spend.
Way too long!
Eh, I dunno, 2.5-3 hours for a baseball game doesn't bother me much, although I am glad they've cut down on batters (and, to a lesser extent, pitchers) taking unnecessary breaks after every darn pitch.
What chaps my hide lately are 4.5 hour college football games. It's worse in person, with TV timeouts after every 3rd down or so--baseball at least has a slower pace/natural breaks, but chopping a football game up like that ruins momentum and makes it harder to stay engaged and excited as a spectator.
Decades ago I would trot over to the Stanford baseball field and lay in the afternoon sun on the hill on the third base side. No music blaring, no forced cheers between innings, a sober announcer, the sun sinking down over the Santa Cruz mtns. I could hear the players communicate, the ball hitting the bat, the gloves. Played by men who had played it with passion their whole lives. No one was in a hurry for those games to be over.
College baseball is a real treat. Best bargain in all of sports.
What Michael said.
BB on TV always puts me to sleep. The perfect narcoleptic..just lie on the sofa with audio on low and be lulled to sleep by the background noise..
Then you turn on the TV and the Oakland "A"s are honoring past all stars. There's Dave Stewart, Vida Blue, Rickey Henderson and John Odom. And you think about all those games you saw them play. Baseball critics, bite me.
Depends on the pitchers mostly. Mark Buehrle should be in the Hall of Fame for how quickly he worked. Once the batter stepped back in the box, then Buehrle moved. He averaged just over 16 seconds between pitches while the major league average was 21 seconds between pitches.
Buehrle was a master.
I love baseball live. But if I'm not there, then radio. I can't watch it on TV.
And the best baseball movie for sound...this scene from the natural. Bat hitting ball, ball hitting seats. Perfect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Ancd0WztU
The beauty of baseball is that it is not timed. There is never a point that a team can't come back and win.
Is there a positive correlation between being dumb and calling questions 'dumb'?
IF you are really lucky, the game goes into extra innings, maybe set a record for longest game ever!
What stories you will be able to tell!
My favorite as a kid were Saturday doubleheaders at Wrigley. Of course they don't do that anymore. Even when they do day/night doubleheaders they treat thema s two games.
From my few experiences at ballgames, 8.99 innings too long.
In the words of the great philosopher, "it ain't over 'til it's over." Which is part of the charm. Baseball is an art form, but it does require some understanding of the game. If you think nothing is going on just because no one is moving, you're wrong. Major league baseball is perhaps ill-suited to the attention spans and financial pressures of the modern world, but it's really not baseball that needs to be "fixed."
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