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Thread: Baseball Fan Petty Rant

  1. #16
    Well, it's whatever your fans like, I guess - and whatever keeps people in the park spending money. I sound like a grumpy old man saying this, but the Saints' silliness wouldn't keep me there past the point when I was bored/tired. If I want to laugh, I'll go find a comedy club or channel. But it's like everything else - to each his own. Nuthin' wrong with that.

    Fred
    "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

    “If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”

  2. #17
    Never been to a MLB game, and don't watch them on TV either. Used to go to Durham Bulls when they were in the old park. Sat in the bleachers behind first base . Newer park has individual seats, instead of bleachers. The mojo isn't the same. Local paper here no longer publishes minor league standings either. Heck they don't publish much of anything anymore. Mainly adds for furniture, hearing aids and men's clinics, with a little news scattered in between. Obits are the most exciting section of newspaper anymore.

  3. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ole Anderson View Post
    But my pet peeve is that the TV producers would rather point the camera at a player standing in the outfield than focusing on the excitement of a fan that just caught a ball in the stands. Or watching the bat boy at work occasionally.
    They do both of those all the time.
    Never, under any circumstances, consume a laxative and sleeping pill, on the same night

  4. I moved to the united states as a teenager, so I came to baseball late enough that I missed the strike but got to watch the home run (steroid) era of the 90s. I never played it much but I do like watching it, at least passively. I find it makes great background in the shop or when I am otherwise engaged. It is rhythmic, a little slow, but there is always something happening, even if it is not frenetic action.

    My pet peeve is when the broadcasters spend an entire half inning talking about anything but the game. This is especially grating in the local broadcasts (since none of them are local to me), where you hear no announcing for three outs because they are talking about freeway construction or the buffet at their hotel.

    My other pet peeve is how MLB is fiddling around the edges with pitch clocks and mound visits and such when the real culprit of four hour games is the 5 minutes of pickup trucks and ED medication twice an inning or three times if there is a pitching change.

  5. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Günter VögelBerg View Post
    My pet peeve is when the broadcasters spend an entire half inning talking about anything but the game. This is especially grating in the local broadcasts (since none of them are local to me), where you hear no announcing for three outs because they are talking about freeway construction or the buffet at their hotel.
    I agree with you completely, Günter. It is particularly bad if the announcers think they are funny when they are not. The Cubs often, though less often than in past years, have quasi-celebrities come in to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. Most spend a half inning in the radio booth and another in the TV booth. During the radio booth visits, it is hard to tell that a ball game is still going on in the background.

  6. Quote Originally Posted by Jon Nuckles View Post
    I agree with you completely, Günter. It is particularly bad if the announcers think they are funny when they are not. The Cubs often, though less often than in past years, have quasi-celebrities come in to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. Most spend a half inning in the radio booth and another in the TV booth. During the radio booth visits, it is hard to tell that a ball game is still going on in the background.
    This is only acceptable when Bill Murray does it.

  7. #22
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    Bill Murray is one of the few "guest conductors" that might be more interesting to me than the game. He has sung on rare occasions, but I haven't seen/heard him in the booth in a long, long time. Most of the celebs are there to promote a project. I guess he doesn't need to do that.

  8. #23
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    I suspect people at the ball game that do that are not there to see the game, but to bee seen.

  9. #24
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    I don't think the people that hang around the Creek are the kind that would understand being at a game with your nose in a phone. As craftsmen/women, we are perfectly capable of putting the phone aside and concentrating on just one thing for extended periods of time. The folks who have to be listening to a podcast while facebooking and tweeting all at once don't seem to be able to focus on just one thing. They call it multi-tasking. I don't see how it can possibly work.

    I was with a guy at a family dinner who ignored the family for the first half of the dinner because he was posting to facebook, texting and tweeting about how he was enjoying a family dinner. I pointed out that he seemed to be experiencing an abstraction of the dinner while ignoring the real thing. He didn't get it.

  10. #25
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    My wife and I were watching a Mariner's game a few weeks ago (yeah, we're diehard fans), and she said "Look at the girls behind the batter." Sure enough, there was a row of 4 or 5 girls almost directly behind home plate in the 2nd row. Prime seats and probably very expensive. They were all staring at their phones every time we saw them. I think one of them glanced up at the game one time and then went back to her phone.

    We went to a game at T-Mobile Park last month and had seats in row 5 right behind the ball girl along the first base line. The only time I got my phone out was to take pictures before the game and when Mike Trout was batting. Trout, BTW, put that game away with a 3 run homer in the top of the 9th. My wife jumped out of her seat when he hit it.

  11. #26
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    IMO, cell phones have changed society for the worse. I've seen really rude behavior with these things. It's not unusual to walk into a restruant and see couples both playing with their cyber binkies totally ignoring each other and being oblivious all around them. Don't get me started on phone use while driving, should be a crime worst than drunken driving since it is totally voluntary. When someone is drunk they have lost all sense of reasoning. Just my take. Thanks for reading.
    Life's too short to use old sandpaper.

  12. #27
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    Watching sports has changed dramatically in the last ten-fifteen years.
    When my kids were growing up in the 80’s and early 90’s we were all sports fans. We had our favorite teams and we followed them closely.


    My kids are still big sports fans, but their focus has changed.
    Enter fantasy sports. Fantasy leagues has allowed the fan to be more interactive in their viewing. They can draft players to be on their team, then decide which ones will play on any given game.
    When they first started, TV would sometimes spend more time on the player’s fantasy potential, than the actual game effect.

    So during any game, the one that is on the screen or they are at, is only a portion of their interest during that time period. They might have an Aaron Rodgers from Green Bay at quarterback and an Antonio Brown from Oakland at receiver.
    There are web sites that cater to displaying just the stats of players absent the outcome of the games they are in. Their smart phones are their conduit to how “their team” is doing. They compare their “managing skills” to the rest of their friends in the league. They are now more than spectators but personally vested in the results of the players.

    They are still big fans of sports, but the results of the actual games are less interesting to them than the results of “their teams” that they formed themselves.
    Comments made here are my own and, according to my children, do not reflect the opinions of any other person... anywhere, anytime.

  13. I think often times those prime seats are actually owned by big companies or other entities who give tickets away more than they use them themselves. The company I work for has a box at Arrowhead stadium, but when you go to a Chiefs game there it is full of people who could not care less about the game and would rather post on social media about how they are in a swanky sky box because their spouse/parent/friend works for the company. It reminds me of that beer commercial from years ago where the beer guys burst into the sky box and ask if anyone can tell them what inning it is. When no one can they confiscate all the beer and hand it out to the fans in the nosebleed seats.

  14. #29
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    Remember, to lots of people, a "no hitter" is a game where nothing happens, at least for one of the teams.

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