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2018 MLB Postseason: The Hunt for <insert team color here> October


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10 hours ago, SabresRule7361 said:

I don't get the complaining about this matchup- these teams have not met since 1916

Because it’s a Boston team who’ve had probably the best city championship run in the past 2 decades and everyone is just tired of them.

 

The Brewers are new and therefore more interesting to me. I like to see the teams who almost never get a championship shot. 

 

I was really enjoying the postseason in recent years because of the new teams in the playoff mix like the Royals, Mets, Cubs, Blue Jays, Orioles, and Astros. Most of them have fallen back to obscurity but I was hoping the Rockies, A’s, or Brewers would help continue that trend. I don’t care about the usual suspects like the Dodgers and Yankees who will have a 2-3 year playoff absense then come back better than ever. 

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4 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

That's fascinating - it's the Euro / Paris edition.  I didn't realize they had such a thing back then.

 

Do you think many - if anyone cared about the World Series at that time, considering the gravity of what was going on in the world, and the amount of Americans overseas being killed (and killing)?  I love stuff like this - look back at what was on the front pages during events that you - as a younger fan - think were important, because you're evaluating them based on today's standards.

It’s a very good perspective for these sorts of things. 

 

Still I have to be a nitpicky :censored: and point out that America didn’t enter the war until 1917 :P 

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5 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

That's fascinating - it's the Euro / Paris edition.  I didn't realize they had such a thing back then.

 

I don't claim to know everything about the history of New York newspapers, but one nugget I've managed to keep in my brain is that the old Herald-Tribune was renowned for its international edition. I think I read about it in The Boys of Summer, to circle back to the Brooklyn Dodgers here.

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

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8 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

That's fascinating - it's the Euro / Paris edition.  I didn't realize they had such a thing back then.

 

Do you think many - if anyone cared about the World Series at that time, considering the gravity of what was going on in the world, and the amount of Americans overseas being killed (and killing)?  I love stuff like this - look back at what was on the front pages during events that you - as a younger fan - think were important, because you're evaluating them based on today's standards.

thanks

so long and thanks for all the fish.

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4 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

It’s a very good perspective for these sorts of things. 

 

Still I have to be a nitpicky :censored: and point out that America didn’t enter the war until 1917 :P 

yes and no, yes we were not in the War them but we did have volunteers fighting in the War:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafayette_Escadrille

also when these teams last met in the World Series, my Great-Grandfather was in Mexico fighting in this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa_Expedition

so long and thanks for all the fish.

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9 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

That's fascinating - it's the Euro / Paris edition.  I didn't realize they had such a thing back then.

 

Do you think many - if anyone cared about the World Series at that time, considering the gravity of what was going on in the world, and the amount of Americans overseas being killed (and killing)?  I love stuff like this - look back at what was on the front pages during events that you - as a younger fan - think were important, because you're evaluating them based on today's standards.

Was there even radio in 1916? I think it existed but wasn't widespread. Which means outside of either being at the games or reading the newspaper, there was virtually no way to know who was playing or who won. So I would imagine that no, probably no one outside of Boston or New York cared much about baseball at that exact point in time.

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Baseball games weren’t broadcast on the radio until the 1920s. Until I looked that up just now, I had absolutely NO idea radio came in that late. That’s surprising to me, because that also is something I would’ve never thought about, Then who the hell would’ve even known baseball was a thing back then? All the talk about 1908 couldn’t have even been a thing outside of the city of Chicago. 

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On 11/19/2012 at 7:23 PM, oldschoolvikings said:
She’s still half convinced “Chris Creamer” is a porn site.)
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5 minutes ago, Bucfan56 said:

Baseball games weren’t broadcast on the radio until the 1920s. Until I looked that up just now, I had absolutely NO idea radio came in that late. That’s surprising to me, because that also is something I would’ve never thought about, Then who the hell would’ve even known baseball was a thing back then? All the talk about 1908 couldn’t have even been a thing outside of the city of Chicago. 

One of the reasons radio was demonized in the 1920s and seen as the latest method for corrupting the youth was because it was threatening the influence of the newspapers. Back then, you wanted to know about the results of a World Series game? You were either there, or you trusted your newspaper to tell you the truth about what happened. Once radio started up, it became less important to have a newspaper, and the powers that be didn't like that.

 

The evolution of baseball is tied to technology in many ways. White and gray jerseys were more the result of poor dying and laundry services at the time. Teams didn't exist west of the Mississippi until the age of the jet travel. Baseball itself wasn't very popular until it existed beyond just the pages of newsprint and people could watch the games for real.

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Two thoughts:

 

1. I think classic, old-school matchups like Dodgers/Red Sox in a sport like baseball, which is so much about its history, are really cool. I’m looking forward to a World Series in what, two of baseball’s three most iconic venues, between two of baseball’s most iconic clubs? This should be neat.

 

2. I hope the Dodgers win for a couple of reasons, the paramount one being that Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher of his generation, and it would really be stupid if #ringz culture affected his legacy. Getting him a title so that doesn’t become a Thing would be neat.

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28 minutes ago, crashcarson15 said:

2. I hope the Dodgers win for a couple of reasons, the paramount one being that Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher of his generation, and it would really be stupid if #ringz culture affected his legacy. Getting him a title so that doesn’t become a Thing would be neat.

I agree that I want the Dodgers (and Kershaw) to get a ring, but him not having one hasn't prevented him from winning the Cy Young and being recognized as one of this generation's best pitchers. I think it's more people who look at the game in a shallow fashion that equate championships with greatness. (By this logic, the Lakers have been bad ever since Adam Morrison left).

 

There's also hindsight. Charles Barkley never won a ring, but that hasn't tarnished his legacy one bit. He just had the misfortune of bad timing, playing the same time as Jordan. I don't think the Showtime era would have been as dominant if they had to play the 90s Bulls. In Kershaw's case, he had to spend almost half his time on the Dodgers stuck in the McCourt era which ran the team as if they were small market. Then last year's World Series was just plain bad luck, coming down to one poorly played game that unfortunately was Game 7.

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1 hour ago, Quillz said:

One of the reasons radio was demonized in the 1920s and seen as the latest method for corrupting the youth was because it was threatening the influence of the newspapers. Back then, you wanted to know about the results of a World Series game? You were either there, or you trusted your newspaper to tell you the truth about what happened. Once radio started up, it became less important to have a newspaper, and the powers that be didn't like that.

 

The evolution of baseball is tied to technology in many ways. White and gray jerseys were more the result of poor dying and laundry services at the time. Teams didn't exist west of the Mississippi until the age of the jet travel. Baseball itself wasn't very popular until it existed beyond just the pages of newsprint and people could watch the games for real.

 

Man, I absolutely eat this kinda stuff up. Baseball history is so great because it parallels American history so incredibly well. If you want to get some really great, subtle nuance as to how the world was during a certain historical time period, compare it to the history of baseball. It helps to contexualize just about every era. 

 

Also, another surprising thing I learned. Baseball on the radio and baseball on TV came about nearly concurrently. That’s mindblowing to me. I was absolutely sure in my head there had to be like a half-century gap in-between those two things. 

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On 11/19/2012 at 7:23 PM, oldschoolvikings said:
She’s still half convinced “Chris Creamer” is a porn site.)
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There's a lot of misinformation going on about what baseball was like at the turn of the century, so as a public service announcement I will clear a few things up.

 

1. Baseball was by far and away the most popular team sport in nearly every area of this country from the advent of the Civil War all the way up to the start of the baby boom.

 

This is not disputable. Major League Baseball was a successful and established sports league decades before the NBA or NFL were even thoughts.

 

The most successful renegade league in pro sports history the American League came about in large part because of the success one could have in the Wild West culture that was baseball at the turn of the century. What this means is that one cannot merely look to Major Leauge Baseball as a sign of the game's popularity at this time.

 

Yes if you look at the attendance numbers of regular season games, it looks sad by comparison. Your average Major League team only draws about 5,000 fans a game. It doesn't seem like much, but keep in mind most fans are getting around by horse and buggy. Your population base is limited to the neighborhood your in.

 

Beyond that lies thousands of minor-league, semi-pro, factory, business and church league teams that were each capable of drawing at least several hundred fans a game. You add those in, and the real popularity of the game becomes much clearer.

 

2. You could access the results of the game as it happened before the advent of radio, thanks to the Telegraph.

 

Bars would have these installed and turn them into media news feeds to get the results of the game as it happened. If you were in a city, it wouldn't be uncommon to install a makeshift scoreboard in a public gathering space to read off results and display them as they happened.

 

Here's a picture of Times Square during the 1912 World Series between the Red Sox and Giants showing this.

 

The electronic bulletin boards outside newspaper offices not

 

That is an electronic scoreboard that would light up and display as best it could a virtual reality experience of what was happening on the field. Amazingly cutting-edge technology at the time. People came from over 200 miles away to Times Square in 1912, to see this board.

 

3. Major League teams may not have existed West of the Mississippi, but there are semi-pro and factory league teams that started play within years of the city or town they played in being incorporated. The Pacific Coast League dates itself all the way back to 1903. Most of the original teams played in California. California wasn't even a state until 1850, and within five decades it built up the economic system to support the most successful minor league in major professional sports history. How the Japanese League compares to Major League Baseball is how roughly the Pacific Coast League compared to Major League Baseball well into the 1950's.

 

One of the reasons the reasons the Yankees made a then 21-year old Joe DiMaggio the sixth highest paid player on the team before even playing a Major League game was because he was perfectly content to spend the rest of his career playing for the San Francisco Seals if it came to it. Before he signed with the Yankees, he was making around $5,500 a year with the Seals, which is about $100,000 in today's money. Your average career minor leaguer in AAA today earns less than $30,000 playing ball and no baseball player in the 1930's was making the equivalent of $30,000,000 in today's money. DiMaggio was making more money as a teenager playing for the Seals than some everyday Major League starters.

 

No Pacific Coast league team was ever in a position to outspend a Major League team, but its nowhere near as lopsided as most may think it was. The best offer a Major League team could realistically present to a PCL player was to triple his current salary. Its a quality of life jump, but it's not life-changing money. Picture being a pro wrestler in the 1980's going from the NWA to the WWF. That's about as close of a parallel as I can draw. Push comes to shove most want to go there if given the opportunity, but it's not like the other side isn't without its benefits, and some may even be willing to stay over money. Same with the PCL.

 

4. The only thing to come out of New York City with regards to spreading baseball was a set of standardized rules. That's all the New York Knickerbocker club provided. To claim a year when baseball is invented is like measuring the fog. Ball and stick games go back to the times of the Egyptians. Baseball's origins are about as old as the invention of agriculture. To suggest a few bankers from New York City were solely responsible for the popularization of the orientation of a sport that had been around for several millennia does a tremendous disservice to the incredibly complicated nature of how modern baseball developed.

 

All 13 colonies enjoyed some various form of a ball and stick game with a differing set of rules depending on the region. None of these games was baseball as we know it today, but all had elements of what would one day become baseball. The sport doesn't begin to even resemble its modern-day form until the late 1880's. Before that, the game is about as standardized as beer pong, all the way down to not even being able to 100% agree on what actually to call it. Curveballs may be illegal to throw. Run limits may be in place. Gloves may or may not be permitted. The quality and types of balls used are all over the place. Mounds and bases have no set dimensions. Drinking may be encouraged or outright banned.

 

To try to put all of this in a neat and tidy perspective is impossible. Baseball is just another take on a game that's as old as recorded history.

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5 hours ago, Bucfan56 said:

Baseball on the radio and baseball on TV came about nearly concurrently.

I didn't know that myself, but it makes sense. Like a lot of technologies, it took some time for radio to evolve being just some novelty invention. People had to take it seriously, it needed time to become widespread, only then would networks put time and money into radio broadcasts.

 

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

Terrific post, best sport. How did we ever let football replace baseball in our hearts? We're a nation of idiots.

Football probably fits better with the modern lifestyle, at least in terms of parallels. It's timed, it's systematic, it's played the way people live their lives. We all have schedules, and everything has a beginning and an end. Baseball games, in theory, could go on forever. As long as that score remains tied, it'll just go on and on.

 

Always loved Carlin's bit about football and baseball.

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10 hours ago, the admiral said:

Terrific post, best sport. How did we ever let football replace baseball in our hearts? We're a nation of idiots.

 

Scarcity and violence.

1 hour ago, ShutUpLutz! said:

and the drunken doodoobags jumping off the tops of SUV's/vans/RV's onto tables because, oh yeah, they are drunken drug abusing doodoobags

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17 hours ago, Quillz said:

equate championships with greatness. (By this logic, the Lakers have been bad ever since Adam Morrison left).

 

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Adam Morrison the real GOAT, don’t @@ me

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