MLB Regular Season 22: The Thread

[BBTV]

I'm one that grew up collecting baseball cards in the mid-late 80s, and the numbers were simply magic to me.  60, 61, 660, 714, 755, etc.  I have no problem with people breaking records - but the steroid stuff and the sheer unlikability of all the guys that have passed those numbers really ruined what was one of the more special things that baseball had going for it that none of the other big sports had, which was the magic numbers that every kid knew.

 

I was in college in '98 and had totally bought in, and it was absolutely awesome.  I'm not naïve - I knew they were very likely cheating, but at the time I didn't really care since it was so fun and at the time I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime season.  But then it just kept happening, and then Bonds out-cheated everyone.  I even thought it was cool that McGwire hit 70, because that became the new 60, and then there would eventually be some chase for the magic 71 - but they ruined it.

 

Now, 61 just doesn't matter.  I once thought, when Ryan Howard was on #58 back in his MVP season, if he'd be considered to be the "clean HR king" if he hit 62, but then I realized that it just wouldn't have mattered.  It's over.

 

AL vs NL records should still be kept just for historical consistency, but they're meaningless now.  It's not even so much that interleague play ruined it (though next year will be the nail in the coffin), but the rules are now the same, the leagues technically aren't separate from a legal standpoint anymore, and you can watch any game any time, so the allure of the "other league" isn't the same as it was back in the day when if you lived in a NL city, you only ever saw AL games maybe once every other week on the Saturday national game or when there used to be Monday Night Baseball.

 

In conclusion, a boring record for a boring guy.  I have nothing against Judge - he seems like a good dude - but like Trout, he's just not the guy that baseball needs to carry it into the future.  I'm not exactly sure who is that guy, but it ain't Judge... and if he was on the Rangers, #61 wouldn't even be on the front page of ESPN.com.

[McCall]

2 minutes ago, BBTV said:

I'm one that grew up collecting baseball cards in the mid-late 80s, and the numbers were simply magic to me.  60, 61, 660, 714, 755, etc.  I have no problem with people breaking records - but the steroid stuff and the sheer unlikability of all the guys that have passed those numbers really ruined what was one of the more special things that baseball had going for it that none of the other big sports had, which was the magic numbers that every kid knew.

 

I was in college in '98 and had totally bought in, and it was absolutely awesome.  I'm not naïve - I knew they were very likely cheating, but at the time I didn't really care since it was so fun and at the time I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime season.  But then it just kept happening, and then Bonds out-cheated everyone.  I even thought it was cool that McGwire hit 70, because that became the new 60, and then there would eventually be some chase for the magic 71 - but they ruined it.

 

Now, 61 just doesn't matter.  I once thought, when Ryan Howard was on #58 back in his MVP season, if he'd be considered to be the "clean HR king" if he hit 62, but then I realized that it just wouldn't have mattered.  It's over.

 

AL vs NL records should still be kept just for historical consistency, but they're meaningless now.  It's not even so much that interleague play ruined it (though next year will be the nail in the coffin), but the rules are now the same, the leagues technically aren't separate from a legal standpoint anymore, and you can watch any game any time, so the allure of the "other league" isn't the same as it was back in the day when if you lived in a NL city, you only ever saw AL games maybe once every other week on the Saturday national game or when there used to be Monday Night Baseball.

 

In conclusion, a boring record for a boring guy.  I have nothing against Judge - he seems like a good dude - but like Trout, he's just not the guy that baseball needs to carry it into the future.  I'm not exactly sure who is that guy, but it ain't Judge... and if he was on the Rangers, #61 wouldn't even be on the front page of ESPN.com.

Yeah, damn them talented, likeable players who are upstanding citizens. They just flat out ruin the game.

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, McCall said:

Yeah, damn them talented, likeable players who are upstanding citizens. They just flat out ruin the game.

 

That's not at all what I said.  You're really stretching things there.

[Sport]

The "AL Record" is convenient code for "clean home run record" and we all know it. It allows them to cover this like it's a big deal. I have no idea what they'd be doing right now if Aaron Judge played for a National League team. 

 

 

 

 

 

[gosioux76]

2 hours ago, BBTV said:

I'm one that grew up collecting baseball cards in the mid-late 80s, and the numbers were simply magic to me.  60, 61, 660, 714, 755, etc.  I have no problem with people breaking records - but the steroid stuff and the sheer unlikability of all the guys that have passed those numbers really ruined what was one of the more special things that baseball had going for it that none of the other big sports had, which was the magic numbers that every kid knew.

 

I was in college in '98 and had totally bought in, and it was absolutely awesome.  I'm not naïve - I knew they were very likely cheating, but at the time I didn't really care since it was so fun and at the time I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime season.  But then it just kept happening, and then Bonds out-cheated everyone.  I even thought it was cool that McGwire hit 70, because that became the new 60, and then there would eventually be some chase for the magic 71 - but they ruined it.

 

Now, 61 just doesn't matter.  I once thought, when Ryan Howard was on #58 back in his MVP season, if he'd be considered to be the "clean HR king" if he hit 62, but then I realized that it just wouldn't have mattered.  It's over.

 

AL vs NL records should still be kept just for historical consistency, but they're meaningless now.  It's not even so much that interleague play ruined it (though next year will be the nail in the coffin), but the rules are now the same, the leagues technically aren't separate from a legal standpoint anymore, and you can watch any game any time, so the allure of the "other league" isn't the same as it was back in the day when if you lived in a NL city, you only ever saw AL games maybe once every other week on the Saturday national game or when there used to be Monday Night Baseball.

 

In conclusion, a boring record for a boring guy.  I have nothing against Judge - he seems like a good dude - but like Trout, he's just not the guy that baseball needs to carry it into the future.  I'm not exactly sure who is that guy, but it ain't Judge... and if he was on the Rangers, #61 wouldn't even be on the front page of ESPN.com.

 

You and I grew up in a similar era, so my feelings for this are very similar to yours.

 

In a way, I feel bad for Aaron Judge.  We can't rewrite history, and we'll never know whether Bonds/McGwire/Sosa were capable of touching the 60 mark without juicing, but it's pretty easy to think that the Steroid Era robbed Judge of a truly spectacular moment. 

 

Aside from the aforementioned Steroid Era players, it would have been 61 years since anybody had hit the 60 mark, proving just how difficult it was. 

 

[Sport]

 

Unrelated, this tweet made me sad

 

 

For context Bob Castellini took control of the team in 2006 so in 17 seasons they are responsible for more than half of our 90 loss years. They have two division titles, a wildcard appearance, and an appearance in the COVID Tournament to speak of in that time.

 

This franchise mattered when I was a kid. They had recent championships and some of the best players in the history of the game. When I moved here after college the city was in love with the Reds and they were a bigger deal than the Bengals. A civic institution. We had legit fun rivalries with the Cardinals, Brewers, Cubs, and Pirates. Teams came to town for important series and the city felt hyped. That's over. Now it feels like we don't even have a team. Nobody talks about them anymore, local media barely bothers to cover them, and when they were semi-competitive the last two years it wasn't near the level of interest I saw ten years ago. They're just a schedule filler for the rest of the league and it's a top two reason why I've drifted away from baseball the last 5 years. I 'm not sure tanking is not a net negative, even if it happens to result in a 2015 Royals like championship. If you make your customers eat s*** 4 years for every 1 year of semi-competitive baseball then eventually they're going to say "Hey, I don't have to eat this s*** anymore. The one year out of 5 that doesn't suck isn't worth it." 

 

What Bob Castellini and his silverspoon, dickhead of a kid have done to the Cincinnati Reds is tragic. 

[DEAD!]

18 minutes ago, Sport said:

 

Unrelated, this tweet made me sad

 

 

 

To nitpick on the tweet, but the AL expanded to 162 games in 1961. That was why some fans wanted the asterisk on Maris's home run record.

[ManillaToad]

Are they still juicing the balls these days?

[Germanshepherd]

Ok the media hype of the Judge chase was all worth it because now we know of a man named Frankie Lasagna

 

[FiddySicks]

11 hours ago, LMU said:

The Judge chase has to be one of the most meaningless, overhyped stories in recent memory. He tied a league record in a sport where leagues practically don’t matter anymore, putting himself now tied for seventh all-time and eight back. Setting aside feelings about steroids, this whole thing wouldn’t have raised a single eyebrow if anyone but a Yankee was involved.

Couldn’t agree more. Baseball has been losing popularity my entire life, but it’s always had one thing going for it. The history. It’s legit the ONLY thing baseball really has to sell at this point that’s worth any value. Trying to ignore the current records, despite your feelings on steroids, is nothing short of revisionist history. All that does is take the one thing baseball has left going for it, and completely delegitimizes it. How are you going to ever attract fans when your entire operation is that unserious? 
 

Look, there are ways to handle the whole steroids era issue that doesn’t just erase the history of the sport. With some creativity, baseball could absolutely include these records (as well as put these dudes into the hall of fame) while pointing out the context of the era. In fact, that’s the only really correct way to teach history. But, no. The people in charge of baseball are pathetically lazy and would rather just operate on old man outrage and erase the history rather than do the challenging work of embracing it and putting it out there in a way that explains the history of the game. 
 

I get some of the anger the steroids era brought up (Not really from the fans, though. Get over it. What a waste of your life to be mad about that). But if I’m being completely honest, for as tough of a situation as that was, it’s more the response to the steroid era from the old heads and executives that has really killed my interest in the game. It’s a :censored:ing children's game made pro. You (the Royal you) look like a legit loser trying so hard to gatekeep for what is essentially just a TV show to all of us. 

[DEAD!]

57 minutes ago, Germanshepherd said:

Ok the media hype of the Judge chase was all worth it because now we know of a man named Frankie Lasagna

 

 

 

[LMU]

14 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

Couldn’t agree more. Baseball has been losing popularity my entire life, but it’s always had one thing going for it. The history. It’s legit the ONLY thing baseball really has to sell at this point that’s worth any value. Trying to ignore the current records, despite your feelings on steroids, is nothing short of revisionist history. All that does is take the one thing baseball has left going for it, and completely delegitimizes it. How are you going to ever attract fans when your entire operation is that unserious? 
 

Look, there are ways to handle the whole steroids era issue that doesn’t just erase the history of the sport. With some creativity, baseball could absolutely include these records (as well as put these dudes into the hall of fame) while pointing out the context of the era. In fact, that’s the only really correct way to teach history. But, no. The people in charge of baseball are pathetically lazy and would rather just operate on old man outrage and erase the history rather than do the challenging work of embracing it and putting it out there in a way that explains the history of the game. 
 

I get some of the anger the steroids era brought up (Not really from the fans, though. Get over it. What a waste of your life to be mad about that). But if I’m being completely honest, for as tough of a situation as that was, it’s more the response to the steroid era from the old heads and executives that has really killed my interest in the game. It’s a :censored:ing children's game made pro. You (the Royal you) look like a legit loser trying so hard to gatekeep for what is essentially just a TV show to all of us. 

Throw into that the complete disregard to the other eras that the supposedly pure records were set in. Deadball. Segregation. Frequent ball doctoring. Stadiums under 300 feet to the foul poles, 500 to center, and massive foul territory, etc.

[MJWalker45]

5 hours ago, BBTV said:

In conclusion, a boring record for a boring guy.  I have nothing against Judge - he seems like a good dude - but like Trout, he's just not the guy that baseball needs to carry it into the future.  I'm not exactly sure who is that guy, but it ain't Judge... and if he was on the Rangers, #61 wouldn't even be on the front page of ESPN.com.

If Judge were playing for any other team, he would still get plenty of coverage. I don't think he'd get the level of coverage that meant interrupting college football games for every at bat though. Judge and Trout have been touted as the faces of MLB for the last few year, but at least Judge has a team around him while Trout has literally had to carry the Angels and gotten nothing in return. 

[ManillaToad]

2 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

It’s a :censored:ing children's game made pro

 

Why do people always say this about sports? They are invented by adults for adults, and are taken seriously to an appropriate degree.

[FiddySicks]

19 minutes ago, ManillaToad said:

 

Why do people always say this about sports? They are invented by adults for adults, and are taken seriously to an appropriate degree.

This is where you’re wrong. 

[Sport]

3 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

This is where you’re wrong. 

 

I was thinking about this not too long ago. They last time I played in a baseball game was when my high school team was eliminated from the state tournament in 2006. So it's been 16 years. If you made a graph of baseball games I played in by age it would be heavily skewed to when I was a child. I'm 35 now and the thought of rounding up some buddies and playing baseball feels laughable. 38 year old Joey Votto spending his adult life swinging a bat at a ball? It's a little bit silly! And he's older than me. It's 100% a kid's game that a lucky few get to play for longer. 

 

And sports are taken far too seriously and we prioritize sports far too much as a society. 

[ManillaToad]

5 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

This is where you’re wrong. 

 

You're right, they aren't taken seriously enough

[FiddySicks]

45 minutes ago, ManillaToad said:

 

You're right, they aren't taken seriously enough

This is legit manbaby think. 

[GDAWG]

 

[BBTV]

Welp, the Phillies coughed up not only a multi-game lead over the Padres for the 2nd WC slot, but a 5 game lead over Milwaukee for the final spot.

 

I don't understand how a team that's not the Mets can consistently choke every single September, despite different management and different players.  It's absolutely maddening how they had the 2nd or 3rd best record in baseball from June 1 - Aug 31, then one of the worst since Sept 1.

 

This team sold out every single game for 5 or 6 consecutive seasons, now can't sell any tickets for late August or September games even when they were up 5 games in the WC chase.  They sent out a poll to former ticket holders (like me), and apparently many people replied that they weren't going to waste money because they knew the team would likely fail.  I totally get not selling tickets in August, but struggling in September speaks volumes for how lousy they've been.