BATTER UP!

[LizzieMaine]

Dustin Pedroia's knees say "Manny Machado is a pig."

 

[Fading Fast]

Dustin Pedroia's knees say "Manny Machado is a pig."

What are your thoughts on the home plate and the double play rules?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't think baseball needs to be a blood sport, and I've felt that way ever since I saw the Pete Rose-Ray Fosse play in 1970. The Red Sox have had too many good second basemen over the years -- Doug Griffin, Jerry Remy, Marty Barrett, Pedroia -- who have ended up having their careers shortened by injuries, and overenthusiastic take-out plays were often contributing factors.

There's a fine line between aggressive baserunning and dirty play -- and I think that line gets crossed too often. If I want to see body checks, I'll watch hockey.

 

[ChazfromCali]

Welcome to the modern era?

Atlantic League coach ejected for arguing over automated strike zone just one inning into robot umpire era
Frank Viola will go down as the first victim of the automated strike zone

https://tinyurl.com/y6go7ydm

Viola later tweeted about the incident:

1st time use of trackman with @RockersBaseball at York tonight. Got myself tossed in the 1st. Problem was was it trackman, or was it human strike zone?! That was problem. Who or what was in charge?? Major problem. Let each team know at all times what’s going on...

— Frank J. Viola, Jr. (@FrankViola16) July 13, 2019

 

[Fading Fast]

Meant to post this right after it happened. The rare triple play:

 

[DeaconKC]

Wow! I am glad you posted it, because I had missed it completely! Thanks!
Happy that my Cards are playing better in the dogfight that is the NL Central.

 

[Fading Fast]

From Yesterday. This is incredible:
http://www.espn.com/videohub/video/clip?id=27266650&categoryid=4823314

 

[LizzieMaine]

And people don't think that baseball and ballet are compatible.

 

[Fading Fast]

During baseball broadcasts, they show clips from games past. I understand why the clips from the '70s and '80s are very grainy, but why, for example, are clips from the '99 World Series also horribly grainy - weren't they using better technology by then? And a follow up question if I may, will today's recordings which, I assume (I have no knowledge), are digital, not have this issue in decades to come?

Seems a good time to flash the @LizzieMaine Signal:

 

[LizzieMaine]

Baseball was still being shown in what's now called "standard definition" up until the 2002 World Series, when HD telecasting began. Anything from before that is going to look blurry when blown up to modern HD standards. Looks fine when you watch on a 17 inch black and white set, though.

The window for surviving television footage of baseball is surprisingly narrow. The earliest game to survive complete is game 7 of the 1952 World Series, preserved by NBC as a kinescope, and there are a number of scattered World Series and All Star Games thru the sixties. But the earliest surviving full game to survive on color videotape is a regular-season Red Sox game from 1967, and the earliest complete World Series to survive on tape is 1969. The networks didn't begin to methodically save World Series games until 1975 -- and most teams didn't preserve their own broadcasts until the 1980s. That's why when you see "greatest games" features on cable, they're drawn from such a narrow pool.

Red Sox fans are lucky -- WHDH-TV saved quite a bit of random videotape and most of it ended up at the New England Sports Museum, where bit by bit it's been trickling out onto the grey market. Few of the games in this archive are complete, but there are many tantalizing fragments. Here, for example, is the only known videotape footage of a game from Sick's Stadium in Seattle -- ten minutes of clips from a 20-inning Red Sox-Pilots game in 1969, a game I have vivid memories of watching live and wondering when they were ever gonna wrap it up.

As far as the future survival of digital recordings, while all current games are being stored that's no indication that they'll survive. Try to find a computer you can play your old floppy discs on and then imagine what it'll be like for MLB trying to play current mp4 files in 2050.

 

[Fading Fast]

Baseball was still being shown in what's now called "standard definition" up until the 2002 World Series, when HD telecasting began. Anything from before that is going to look blurry when blown up to modern HD standards. Looks fine when you watch on a 17 inch black and white set, though.

The window for surviving television footage of baseball is surprisingly narrow. The earliest game to survive complete is game 7 of the 1952 World Series, preserved by NBC as a kinescope, and there are a number of scattered World Series and All Star Games thru the sixties. But the earliest surviving full game to survive on color videotape is a regular-season Red Sox game from 1967, and the earliest complete World Series to survive on tape is 1969. The networks didn't begin to methodically save World Series games until 1975 -- and most teams didn't preserve their own broadcasts until the 1980s. That's why when you see "greatest games" features on cable, they're drawn from such a narrow pool.

Red Sox fans are lucky -- WHDH-TV saved quite a bit of random videotape and most of it ended up at the New England Sports Museum, where bit by bit it's been trickling out onto the grey market. Few of the games in this archive are complete, but there are many tantalizing fragments. Here, for example, is the only known videotape footage of a game from Sick's Stadium in Seattle -- ten minutes of clips from a 20-inning Red Sox-Pilots game in 1969, a game I have vivid memories of watching live and wondering when they were ever gonna wrap it up.

As far as the future survival of digital recordings, while all current games are being stored that's no indication that they'll survive. Try to find a computer you can play your old floppy discs on and then imagine what it'll be like for MLB trying to play current mp4 files in 2050.

As always - great information - thank you for sharing. I'll disagree with only one thing - if there's enough money to be made recycling today's recordings (heck, most of us here watch movies from 100 years ago), then the technology to play it will be kept alive or "re-learned."

 

[Fading Fast]

Yankees to play White Sox at iconic ‘Field of Dreams’ location in 2020
MarketWatch Published: Aug 8, 2019 2:00 p.m. ET

A temporary 8,000-seat stadium will be built on the site to accommodate the first major league game played in Iowa

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/y...ation-in-2020-2019-08-08?mod=newsviewer_click

 

[DeaconKC]

Now that is classic!

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Kids and I did our annual visit to America's Most Beloved Ballpark (TM) yesterday to see the Red Sox take on a Little League team that somehow got into the Baltimore Orioles' equipment trunk and stole their uniforms. Sox won 13-7, but not for lack of ineptness on their own part, not the least of which proceeded from that overcooked meatwad Nathan Eovaldi, who gave away five runs in two innings before a merciful extraction.

We sat in the last row of the right field grandstand, right near an outraged fellow with a British accent who demanded to know why the cost of beverages was not included in his ticket price. Is that a thing in the UK? No wonder hooliganism is such a problem. As usual, my seat was behind a pole, but whoever had the seats next to ours didn't show up, and a little judicious scooting allowed us a fine view. Fenway's upgraded family-friendly usher corps, which fifty years ago was made entirely of beefy red-faced fellows named Doyle who'd grab you by your neck and haul you back to your seat if you cruised, was nowhere in evidence to shoo us back.

The cuisine, was, as always, up to the expected standard except on one point -- the mustard is now furnished by French's. BRING BACK GULDENS. Harry M. Stevens must be revolving on his grill.

One thing that struck me -- the current fad among modern hitting coaches stressing "launch angle" has produced far too many slap-hitting infielders who think they need to aim for the fences with ridiculous swooping uppercut swings that look like a cross between a little kid playing wiffle ball and a terrified farmer trying to kill a rabid weasel with a hoe. The result is a ton of spectacular pop flies, enough strikeouts to keep the air moving comfortably on a humid afternoon, and practically no ground balls. In all of yesterday's game the two third basemen received, according to my scorecard, precisely one fielding chance between them -- and that one led to a throwing error. What ever became of Brooks Robinson?

 

[Fading Fast]

The Kids and I did our annual visit to America's Most Beloved Ballpark (TM) yesterday to see the Red Sox take on a Little League team that somehow got into the Baltimore Orioles' equipment trunk and stole their uniforms. Sox won 13-7, but not for lack of ineptness on their own part, not the least of which proceeded from that overcooked meatwad Nathan Eovaldi, who gave away five runs in two innings before a merciful extraction.

We sat in the last row of the right field grandstand, right near an outraged fellow with a British accent who demanded to know why the cost of beverages was not included in his ticket price. Is that a thing in the UK? No wonder hooliganism is such a problem. As usual, my seat was behind a pole, but whoever had the seats next to ours didn't show up, and a little judicious scooting allowed us a fine view. Fenway's upgraded family-friendly usher corps, which fifty years ago was made entirely of beefy red-faced fellows named Doyle who'd grab you by your neck and haul you back to your seat if you cruised, was nowhere in evidence to shoo us back.

View attachment 181072

The cuisine, was, as always, up to the expected standard except on one point -- the mustard is now furnished by French's. BRING BACK GULDENS. Harry M. Stevens must be revolving on his grill.

One thing that struck me -- the current fad among modern hitting coaches stressing "launch angle" has produced far too many slap-hitting infielders who think they need to aim for the fences with ridiculous swooping uppercut swings that look like a cross between a little kid playing wiffle ball and a terrified farmer trying to kill a rabid weasel with a hoe. The result is a ton of spectacular pop flies, enough strikeouts to keep the air moving comfortably on a humid afternoon, and practically no ground balls. In all of yesterday's game the two third basemen received, according to my scorecard, precisely one fielding chance between them -- and that one led to a throwing error. What ever became of Brooks Robinson?

Just seeing underneath the bleachers and that wonderful green of Fenway brings back fun memories of my time in Boston.

It's definitely a home-run oriented game for the moment - the algorithms have deemed it so - but that can change as some team will win with a squad of single and double hitters and baserunners, etc., and then everyone will try to copy it.

Also, they need to figure out what the heck is going on with the ball as that's also part of it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think my favorite thing about Fenway is the smell -- that sweet-and-sour odor of old hot-dog water that saturates the place, blended with essence of damp concrete. Now that you don't have everything suffused with the reek of cigarettes and cigars, the true aroma of the place is allowed to waft gently to the surface.

I've never smelled that particular old-ballpark smell anywhere else. Olympic Stadium in Montreal, when I used to go there, always smelled like a parking garage.

 

[Fading Fast]

I think my favorite thing about Fenway is the smell -- that sweet-and-sour odor of old hot-dog water that saturates the place, blended with essence of damp concrete. Now that you don't have everything suffused with the reek of cigarettes and cigars, the true aroma of the place is allowed to waft gently to the surface.

I've never smelled that particular old-ballpark smell anywhere else. Olympic Stadium in Montreal, when I used to go there, always smelled like a parking garage.

Old Yankee Stadium also smelled like a parking deck.

Re Fenway's "aroma:" nice poetic description of an "acquired taste" smell, but accurate and, like you, I oddly like it (in small doses).

Going under the stands to get to your seats at Fenway has two great things about it, one, you can feel the step back in time with the (as you note) smell, congestion and beat-up old architecture and, two, when you walk out of that cave and to your seat, you are always a bit surprised to see sunlight (or any light) and to see how close to the field you are. That moment is one of the best in baseball - you can't wait for the game to start.

 

[Harp]

Just seeing underneath the bleachers and that wonderful green of Fenway brings back fun memories of my time in Boston.

It's definitely a home-run oriented game for the moment - the algorithms have deemed it so - but that can change as some team will win with a squad of single and double hitters and baserunners, etc., and then everyone will try to copy it.

Also, they need to figure out what the heck is going on with the ball as that's also part of it.

The Cubs I no longer consider a lock on the Central D, but lately the team has been playing real baseball: base
hits, thievery, squeeze play, and have proven that playing the game the way it was meant to be played is a far
superior approach than analytic home run derbyism; however, despite a more than adequate pitching rotation
and capable hitters, something is missing besides of late a strong bullpen. Cannot quite put my finger on it
but the road kills are mounting and the deck has been accordingly reshuffled.
----------
Love Fenway, the old Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field-each unique unto itself.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I first experienced that, at seven years old, having only ever seen the place on television before, it was stunning. The uniforms were the whitest white I had ever seen, and the contrast against the pool-table-green grass was breathtaking.

Fenway was a lot grubbier back then. People forget how seedy a place it was in the 1960s and early 70s -- Yawkey had been threatening to move to San Diego as recently as 1966, and not a lot of money was being spent on upkeep. And of course there was none of the street-fair atmosphere surrounding the place that you get now. You came out of Kenmore station and walked up the street toward the park and you ran a gauntlet of panhandlers and sidewalk souvenir peddlers that looked like they'd cut your throat if you didn't give them money. Everything was sad and dirty and broken-down the way every Northeastern city was in the 60s and 70s, and when you got to the park and saw the grimy brick walls and the crushed paper cups and cigarette butts all over the pavement, and the rats running around, you felt disappointed -- is this what it's going to be like? And then you walk thru this cave, as you aptly put it, and finally go up the ramp and it all bursts out at you at once -- the grass, the Wall, the sky, the players warming up on the field, John Kiley pounding away at the organ -- and it's like you just woke up out of a bad dream.

I always sit in the right field grandstand to this day, and I always go up that exact same ramp I did the first time, and even though the place has been cleaned up tremendously compared to how it was in 1970, the thrill is still there.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Cubs I no longer consider a lock on the Central D, but lately the team has been playing real baseball: base
hits, thievery, squeeze play, and have proven that playing the game the way it was meant to be played is a far
superior approach than analytic home run derbyism; however, despite a more than adequate pitching rotation
and capable hitters, something is missing besides of late a strong bullpen. Cannot quite put my finger on it
but the road kills are mounting and the deck has been accordingly reshuffled.
----------
Love Fenway, the old Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field-each unique unto itself.

That's great to hear. Every once in awhile a real baseball game breaks out even with the home-run-mad Yankees. A little over a week ago, I saw a 1-0 pitchers' duel with the Yankee starter - Tanaka - pitching into the ninth. I'm not a Stoic, I don't want every game to be 1-0, but it was refreshing to see a game not about homers. Hit and run, bunting, stealing, quick throws to first, etc., is where extra joy is tucked into baseball - we need more of it. It was great to see each team value and agonize over every single baserunner and advance.

As I noted earlier - and I'm trying not to become a conspiracy theorist on this - MLB has to figure out and change whatever is going on with the baseball. Clearly it's for a different reason, but the homers are hurting the game the same way they did in the steroid era - it's fake, too much of a good thing, diminishing other efforts, etc.

Oh, and as to the Yankees. Everyone and I can put our finger on the problem - not enough starting pitchers who can get though five innings (let alone a game) without giving up four or five runs. Unless that changes quickly, the Yankees will make a quick October exit.