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1. Baseball is a game of standing around waiting for something to happen. It usually doesn't. You've got to make your son pitch or catch, if you don't want his time completely wasted -- scratch that. You've got to make him pitch, if you don't want your time, as a parent at the game, completely wasted.
Justin Ruggiano's and Nelson Cruz' and Mike Zunino's and Brad Miller's strikeout rates are not going to offer Dr. D any solace. And don't even get him started on the 27 seconds that precede every pitch that Hisashi Iwakuma throws -- the result of which is always the catcher simply tossing the ball back to Iwakuma again.
It's hard to see the point of a game of "catch." Do you and your wife play catch with your remote control for 2 hours and 48 minutes? Who winds up holding it? Why are you playing? There is no reason, because you don't. Play "catch," that is.
But the 2015 season promises many, many, MANY games of catch at Safeco Field.
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2. Did somebody say "it usually doesn't"? The ball is in interesting live play -- as opposed to popped in the air or two-bounced to the third baseman -- about as much as Iron Man was in his own third movie. Roughly 42 seconds per three hours. Last night Dr. D went to the Blazers-Lakers game. The ball was active for more than 42 seconds.
Anybody here call a Seahawks game a "pastime"? You "pass the time" by counting sheep, or whistling Dixie, or spacing out at your desk, or by watching Erasmo Ramirez try to whick the edge of the strike zone on 2-0.
Cutting to commercial while the 5th reliever of the night trots down the ramp in left-center? Don't tell me that even qualifies as "passing the time." McClendon's bullpen has taken nonaction to its absolute ultimate manifestation.
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3. Captive audiences and $8 beverages. Well, those apply to other sports too. But at other sports you do not need refreshments, in the absolute sense, because other sports are not over-wrought picnics.
True, you can't swill suds and boo the ump at The Hunger Games. But that's small consolation for the fact that Woody Harrelson does not exist in baseball. (Well, he hasn't since Lou Piniella retired.)
Making money is one thing, but MLB's cash grab would send Fidel Castro screaming into the night. I think they've monetized the outfield fence, haven't they? Next up: monetizing the QuesTec pitch tracker. Oh, wait.
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4. Absolutely zero "Friday Night Lights" factor. The 162 games mean that game #87 has a bit less at stake than did the Seahawks-Rams game last week.
As G-Money can tell you, a good story is one that has the fate of the world at stake. A bad story is one that has your personal savings account at stake. If you're reading this, that's what, $312. About what it will cost you to get your family into, and out of, game #87. Maybe there's some drama in there somewhere, after all ...
Yellow Night at the King's starts? I'll give you that one. Two strikes on the hitter, Felix staring in, that is the one phenomenon in baseball that even begins to approach any kind of sports tension, such as you receive on every single defensive play you watch at CLink.
It's the exception that proves the rule.
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5. Pitchers hitting. I'd much, much rather see Stephen Hauschka try to block Ndamukong Suh, than see Chris Young try to hit Clayton Kershaw. But other sports don't exhibit that kind of nonsense, because other sports do not share MLB's self-righteous commitment to the conceit that it was born perfect.
"Rounders" wasn't born perfect. It was made up by a 9-year-old so that he could run all inside the fence at the playground. True, baseball is fun to play, if you're on the playground and the pitches are underhanded and you run after every swing. And it's fun to analyze, provided that you're a math major. But to watch it? Do you watch kids play outside? Whoops, Dr. D is starting to get creepy here ... maybe that's the disquieting undertone he feels when he's sitting in the third deck, watching the local skyscrapers rather than Willie Bloomquist.
Born so perfect that you dare not tweak it? MLB's attitude toward itself is simply breathtaking.
On the far end of the spectrum, there are a few NFL-style third-down pass rush specialists trickling into Safeco and hinting at a 21st-century mentality, if only obliquely. But here again, James Jones and Nelson Cruz and Charlie Furbush are the exceptions that prove the rule.
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6. The reason that sabermetrics work is because baseball is comically simple. Granted, this same principle allows Dr. D to make a nice little living, "analyzing" a game of checkers that everybody else understands at least as well as he does.
But we are talking about the "pastime" in the abstract, not about Dr. D's personal coffers.
Everybody knows what Seth Smith will do, regardless of what Justin Ruggiano does. Try predicting the outcome of a LeBron James / Kevin Love teamup. Too many moving parts.
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7. Baseball is just flat-out a game of --- > miserable failure, almost all the time. Robinson Cano is the best player in the game other than Mike Trout. And his 2014 felt ... sad. Don't tell me that watching Cano's first Mariner season filled you with a feeling of triumph. Those were 5.2 extremely dreary WAR, gentlemen.
If an NFL quarterback went 2-for-27, he would quite literally be media-lynched out of public existence. When an MLB superstar does that, we nod and smile. In baseball we "focus on the process." This is because the results are never there. Good life training? Sure. Good entertainment? Nada.
To get good at baseball, you have to endure many tens of thousands of soul-murdering failures in order to get anywhere. And that's just Game Two at the "Big A."
Do we even want to think about how much live action we have in store, when they put James Paxton inside the mini-Death Valley that is Safeco Field? Felix Hernandez' perfecto was cool in the abstract. But did you ever stop and think about what you actually saw in that game? Exactly. You saw zero. When you go to a game hoping you'll see absolutely nothing, there is something very wrong.
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8. The inmates run the asylum. NFL players have never won a strike; MLB players have never lost one. To watch John Nordstrom to run a billion-dollar business is one thing; to watch Milton Bradley, or any random 22-year-old jock, do so, is another thing.
And Little League? Basketball parents don't blast the coaches with socks full of nickels to get their kids into the game. Bitterness of soul starts early in this game.
Lloyd McClendon and the Toronto Blue Jays have restored a bit of order to the mental hospital in Seattle. Amazingly enough, the RF's incoming have meekly submitted to their part-time electroshock. Danny Hultzen and Taijuan Walker will be only too glad to pitch in the bullpen.
But precious seldom is it, that org's will Billy Beane their rosters into submission. The 2015 Mariner season is strictly an outlier in this respect.
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9. Minor league games where nobody cares who wins. And Houston Astros games, and most Mariner June games, existing under the same conditions.
Last week, Rex Ryan won a game to go from 3-12 to 4-12 and wept for joy at the podium. NFL games are wars that contain value, completely aside from any broader context. NBA games are physical displays rivalling Cavaglia. MLB games, after Nelson Cruz has run the score up to 7-0 in the third, are .... pastimes.
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10. They never do what I tell them to.
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Pitchers and catchers shortly,
Dr D
As much as I loved Edgar, I love the pitcher being a player who has to hit. It changes the managing dynamic of the game, making it better. The strategy of bullpen and bench use becomes more important.
By the way, making Edgar hit wouldn't have meant there was no Edgar in Seattle. It would have probably meant there was no Olerud.
Here we have it. After all of these years. Doc has finally turned Twelve on us. Maybe it was blogging about a bad baseball team for more than a decade. Maybe it is a Hawk related hysteria that has addled the good Doctor's mind. Let's see if we can pull him back:
1. In baseball, the Players mean more. In Baseball, you can watch a player grow into a man. Felix Hernandez has been playing for the Everett Aquasox, or some other Mariners team, since he was sixteen. He will probably be with us for another decade or so. You can really pull for a longstanding baseball player. Contrast that with football. Football players are as fungible as Orcs. The average shelf life of a football player is three years from the rookie season until he is out of the league and suffering from a life of pains and Alzheimer's disease. Even without the on field turnover, the salary cap in football makes it impossible to preserve a good team. What was Doc saying about Marshawn Lynch, that dynasties have great players? Well, enjoy the dynasty when Lynch signs elsewhere because the collective bargaining agreement doesn't allow the Hawks to spend an extra $20 million on the franchise player. Y'all are rooting for ice cream on a hot day. Enjoy it while it lasts.
2. Teams in baseball don't share profits. Baseball teams get to keep their stars, if the fans pay the owners enough to do so. In football, a significant portion of each teams profits are given to weak teams that you don't care about. This is necessary because the weak teams need money to sign your stars away from you. Imagine a world where half your Mariners ticket money went to Oakland and Houston so those teams could afford better baseball players. Maybe I shoulda made this point No. 1. We know how Doc feels about socialism.
3. Baseball stadiums are unique. Each stadium has its own dimensions, playing field and fence height. Also, the ball carries differently in each locale. This adds layers to the strategy and nuance of the game that other sports do not have. C-Link field isn't anything special. It has the exact same dimension as any high school field, except that it has extra bleachers. A team doesn't alter its play, or change its strategy to accomodate any individual stadium.
4. There is no clock in baseball. It gets over when its over, and there is no way to stall a baseball game. In football, the final ten minutes or so are usually dull, as the losing team tries to stop the clock and the winning team tries to keep it going. In baseball, the late game is when the most interesting stuff happens. There are relief pitchers, pinch runners, pinch hitters, defensive replacements. There are strategies and counter stategies, but no stalling.
5. In baseball, people go to watch the players play. Umpires wear all black, keep quiet, and try to stay out of the way. In football, people go to watch the referees referee. In football, a good percentage of live plays are nullified by a mic'd up little guy in a zebra suit with a yellow handkerchief. The players don't have microphones and cannot talk to the fans. The referees address the fans whenever they want, over a sound system with hundreds of decibels. Football fans apparently like this, because a favorable ruling broadcast from the football referee often gets louder cheers than the play that preceeded it. "YAAAY. A ten yard penalty and that touchdown didn't count." is a usual football fan statement. Also, this aspect of rooting for referees' favorable calls might be more fun if the Seahawks were ever in the good favor of any football referee. Here are some study questions: Which team led the NFL in penalties in 2014? Why? Are y'all over the 2006 Superbowl yet? What are the chances that the 2015 Seahawks post season will be affected by the reffing?
6. Baseball is getting more fun to watch. This is a golden age of baseball with hi def and slo motion cams that show the bat strike the ball. Aside from looking at Derek Norris in hi def, baseball is in a golden age.
7. The Mariners finally have a team worth blogging about and pitchers and catchers report shortly. Don't wuss out.
-Mojo.
Everything that guy just said is Baloney. Thank you.
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1. You can play golf until you're 71. Doesn't mean you want to watch it. Come to think of it, that's the primary reason you do NOT watch it. I'm curious: did you SEE Gaylord Perry and Tommy John in their retirement seasons?
If there were a sport in which the 4-day survival (literal "survival") rate was 50-50, nobody would watch anything else. You talk like it's a bad thing to burn through players ferociously.
2. If we lived in 29 other cities, this would be a reason to like baseball. Here, the "voluntary humility" that has the filthy-rich Castros wearing fatigues in the press box makes life the more painful. So: Stricken From The Record.
3. We could create nuance to the game if we made the field goal posts or baskets move like Pop-a-Shot. Doesn't mean I want to see a popup land on the street outside Fenway, or a grand slam home run nestle safely into the glove of Mike Trout standing ten yards in front of the kids on the Safeco patio.
4. I'm stunned.
There is also no clock when your wife takes you to the 5th Avenue, or when the CIA is waterboarding you. The fact that there is no clock in the White Room, that is precisely what the CIA has used to prevent nuclear catastrophes for fifty years.
5. I'll give you that one.
Who was the ump with the yellow handlebar mustache, who was weeping after he cost that Tiger meatball his no-hitter? Quite a contrast to the NFL. They pick up a flag, send Suh home, and backstage it's like those Dumbo clowns popping corks hilariously, "I can't get over the way we rolled 'em in the aisles!"
6. The previous generation was always the golden age. Odd you wouldn't realize that.
7. Too late. Dr. D wussed out when he shut down the original D-O-V; Klat is merely providing the scaffold on which he twists in the wind.
8. I will admit, though, that I don't know what "turning Twelve" means. Borg reference? (A bit seriously for a second) What do you do in court, when some reference is made that goes totally over your head?
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Feb. 20th,
jemanji
Option A: this is all tongue-in-cheek, sprinkled with nuggets of truth
Option B: you sincerely don't enjoy the thing that you spend so much time considering.
I've always thought that there were fundamental differences in worldview that separated core baseball fans from core NFL fans and core NBA fans.
And until now, I thought you were one of us.
Huh...
Some people fail their Rohrshach tests :- )
The absence of a DH is what provides the spectacle of Dick Stuart, Adam Dunn, and Nelson Cruz caught in grassy traffic intersections with gloves on their hands, watching baseballs whiz by from every direction.
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Hey, here's an interesting factoid I just saw. Guess what the following defenders have in common?
Dexter Fowler
Mike Trout
Jose Altuve
Andrew McCutchen
Coco Crisp
They were all included in the ten WORST players for UZR last season. Guess Trout needs a second DH on his behalf.
From my research into the matter, Twelves, or Twelfth Men are what Seahawks fans call themselves. I think that there is an initiation ritual involving beer, skittles and sparkly blue body paint when someone turns twelve and is adopted into the tribe.
Love Baseball But Hate Watching Many Baseball Games?
I've got to the point where that's the case with me. To me baseball is about a story to which I feel connected that gives it meaning. If I feel no particular connection to the story of a given game, then unless that game quickly develops some compelling story it's like watching paint dry, and I tune it out. Didn't used to be that way for me.
HOWEVER.
Baseball is also, I think, serendipitous (in a way that transcends other sports?) precisely because of the long, 162-game season. If you watch ENOUGH baseball, you will in the end be delighted for having done so. And the delights are sublime, so sublime, that you endure many boring games in order to see them. If you watch an entire season of M's games, or even a fruitless decade, indeed they become even more sublime because of the investment you have made watching boring baseball. I don't know how else to explain why I've watched so many M's games over the last decade.
We non-ADD folks have to have SOMETHING to watch. :)
Have no idea what that means :(
to watch. But have you ever noticed how many times during a game, during a season, when something happens that has never happened before, even in the history of the sport, until it does? Games by themselves may seem boring and uninteresting, but no two are alike. Each baseball game tells its own story, an inning at a time.
Hmm. Dr D and Mr Hyde? Or is this a really long koan?
Doc - are you being completely serious here? Understand, I don't want you to think I'm attacking you here, because I'm really not. This just feels like the kind of thing a hardcore anti-baseball fan would say and is completely inconsistent with the reasons most baseball fans watch. I'm going to respond to each point one by one.
1) This criticism is very common among football fans who seem to have no problem with constant time spent in the huddle but balk at the waiting in baseball. It's hogwash, and you should know better. Baseball is not a game of standing around waiting for something to happen that usually doesn't. Baseball is a game of dreams. A thinking man's haven in a world that gives us no time to wonder and let loose our minds. To vicariously experience joy and terror and sorrow between every pitch.
Mariners down 3-1 in the 8th inning, 2 outs, runners at first and second and Kyle Seager at the plate. The count is 3-1. The pitcher has just barely missed with a vicious slider and Seager has miraculously laid off. Now there is a conference on the mound. The sort of waiting you profess to hate. What goes through your mind. Are you sitting there growling at them to hurry up already? I suggest you find another sport to watch if you are. I'm trying to guess what pitch they'll go to next. I'm picturing that pitch. I'm picturing Seager reacting...laying off and walking or taking a painful strike two? Swinging? Making contact? HOMERING? Oh how I'll explode if he gets into one...oh what that will feel like!! My heart soars while nothing is happening...I am sweating just a little as the pitcher returns to the mound...clenching my fists...taking a deep breath to prepare for the joy I somehow KNOW is coming...here comes the pitch!!! In some sense, it doesn't matter whether Seager succeeds...I already had my emotional experience...lived vicariously in beautiful and terrible dreams of the play to come, reveled in trying to out-think the pitcher and catcher...lived with Seager's struggle. If he fails, my heart will sink, but it will have been better than never watching. If he succeeds, the improbability of that success will be apparent and the joy will be so much the greater.
That is the quintessential sports experience. Living and dying a little on the pitch...on the strategy...on the struggle. Complaints that nothing happens in baseball are a sign of a lack of understanding of the game just as much as my beef that soccer is boring as heck...I don't understand soccer strategy...I can't anticipate...can't feel the storm clouds gather...can't live vicariously with the players...so it's just guys kicking around a ball and never even trying to score for 89 minutes.
2) Really? Most baseball plays bore you? Why do you watch again? I'm teasing a little, here, but if you find no joy in it, why are you here? :) The thing that makes baseball worthwhile is that even the routine plays aren't routine. Just because they get made 99% of the time, you don't know it's going to be made until it is. I love watching defense...love the artistry of it...love the way the players look as they make that routine catch and release. Personally, I find a huge number of the plays in football and hockey to be routine too. Such as fair catches on punt returns, 3 run runs up the middle, and extra point kicks. But in baseball, the routine plays are beautiful.
3) The average beverage at a football stadium is about 11% more expensive than the average beverage price at a ballpark. That has been studied. And the notion that you need food more at baseball games than football games when the game takes LONGER in football is hilarious to me. And clearly psychological. Moving on.
4) No Friday Night Lights? Do you even WATCH baseball?? :-D What about Felix vs. Matsuzaka? What about Felix vs. ANYONE. :)
But more to the point...even if you were correct, just because baseball has a different pace than football doesn't mean baseball is less rewarding. The grind of the season makes the race considerably more rewarding for the loyal fan...the lare number of games means the roster depth matters more...means we care about the bit players more (and opens the game up to interesting personal stories that you would never hear i football). Not only that, but baseball's long season means I get to revel in it for longer...football goes by in a flash and all the strivings of the teams can be completely undone in a single game...the difference between an 8-8 team that misses the play-offs and a 9-7 team that hits the mark can be a single fumble on a cold day. That isn't fair and doesn't make the game better.
5) Fair catches. What's your point?
6) This is just plain old wrong, factually. Sabermetrics do not work because baseball is simple...and the fact that you would suggest that the game is simple is SHOCKING to me. As in, when I read that line, I gasped. It is truly bizarre. Sabermetrics work because baseball is DISCRETE...the plays are sequential and involve identifiable contributors. That doesn't make it simple...a discrete mathematician would literally slap you for suggesting that it does. If anything, baseball is the most nuanced and complex sport in existence.
7) And soccer isn't? A game a failure I mean? Football and basketball have more frequent successes, but at the price of cheapening the feel of those successes. Basketball is simply the dullest sport in the universe...oh...they scored again...who cares?
8) Labor peace is bad? Interesting. The other sports have all had horrible and costly work stoppages. The other sports have holdouts. Baseball is working to please everyone. I think the MLBPA is too powerful too, but I'd hardly hold that against the sport itself...that's a criticism of the owners, perhaps.
9) Well here you have me...but I'm not a fan of sports at levels other than the highest ones...so I don't really care about it.
absolutely fascinates me. It is a huge part of what I called the serendipity of baseball, and what you say SeattleNative57 is in my experience true in a way that far exceeds any other sport. And I've been watching sports since the early 1960's.
When I got married in 1982 I used to exclaim this to my wife several times every season as we, living then in Southern California, watched Dodgers games on TV. (As an aside, my wife once came up with THIS priceless gem: "We'll be needin' fewer balls and more strikes!" when Tom Niedenfuer was pitching in relief.) Every season, year after year, this phenomenon continues.
Patience is rewarded. While sorely trying patience, baseball is a game for the patient.
Dr. D is knowingly taking on the role of agent provocateur in this post. It certainly worked, Doc.
Doc,
I've been reading here for years, and joyfully so. Never had anything worthwhile to say that wasn't already said eloquently and with dashing wit and humor. I still don't, in fact. But I do know why people watch baseball. I know why you watch it, even. And I know why it's the most popular sport (and ergo, the richest) in the country.
Simply put, baseball is a microcosm for life.
1. Life is a game of standing around waiting for something to happen. It usually doesn't. Unless and until it does, in which case you have a few seconds of utter chaos, and after a quick struggle with that chaos, calm emerges the victor, and more moments of quiet desperation ensue. How many Tuesdays have you seen in your lifetime? And how many days like September 11th? The calm gives meaning to the chaos, and the chaos meaning to the calm.
2. People like things they can relate to, consciously or unconsciously. True, Basketball and Football may have more movement of the ball in "live" ways than does baseball, but would Dr D. trade his life of relative obscurity for that of Kim Kardashian? Do you want your life to be like Jack Bauer's? Does anyone? Or do we prefer to sit on our couches and admire from afar the immense and inexorable struggles of some distant 'other,' which lies safely outside our four walls?
3. You can pay $10 for a very good ribeye at your local deli, or $55 in a very good restaurant. Sometimes you want to pay the $55 to bring a lovely lady out to celebrate her birthday or an anniversary. Sure you could cook her the $10 steak yourself, but you voluntarily choose to overpay so that you can get dressed up and have someone else do it for you. It doesn't mean you're a sucker, just that you enjoy voluntarily breaking up the calm with a bit of chaos from time to time :)
4. Einstein said there are two ways to look at the world - One is as though nothing were a miracle, the other as though everything were a miracle. The emotional investment you allow yourself in any particular game, whether game #87 in June, or the Superbowl in February, depends entirely on you. A few years ago I lived in San Diego and the Seattle Mariners came to town to play the Padres. I've been a Mariners fan since I was 10, watching Griffey dive headlong into history. He had returned to Seattle for his farewell tour, so I bought first row tickets in left field. I was one of about eleven Mariners fans (and about 600 total fans) in the stadium. I yelled to Kenny every chance I got, cheered him on and watched in delight as he grounded out to second base over and over. And then later in the game, a Padre lifted a ball way way back, out towards me in left. Griffey disappeared below me and as the ball came to settle into my first row glove, another one appeared above the wall snatching the home run from my very fingers. It was Him. And I think sometimes about that home run, and how he took it from me. I realize that what he gave me was even greater.
5. Imperfection is the only beautiful thing. Perfection is for snowflakes. Give me an imperfect game because I am an imperfect human watching other imperfect humans fail in spectacular fashion, as I often do.
6. The reason any analytics work is because Life is comically simple.
7. Life is a game of flat-out, miserable failure, almost all of the time. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Struggles are universal. Success is not. Our aim in life is not to succeed though. It's merely to matter. To someone, anyone, to a group or a team, or another person or a cause. And regardless of how rich or poor, how talented or plain we are, we have all failed and in failing learned something true about life, which is that we are human and against all odds, we have existed.
8. What was that, about something going over your head? Point conceded, I suppose.
9. Ask a minor league player's parents, friends, relatives, the bartender who served him his scotch the night before and got tipped $20, if nobody cares who wins. Ask a Spartan in a sparring match if he cares who wins. To your point about bitterness of soul starting in little league… I would think that belied an immense depth of emotion for who wins. Maybe theirs is a different definition than yours.
10. I have great respect for the wisdom and wit you've provided here over the years. When I'm allowed, I'll even pay for it. But something that's always gotten me in trouble, everywhere I've gone, is the need to speak my mind when I feel the grand master has erred. My strength of conviction is overcome only by the blindness of my youth.
Cheers,
Dave
Generally, lawyers tend to ignore what they don't understand.
If an opponent makes the reference, then the comment is ignored if it seemed to have traction with the jury, or highlighted if it didn't; "I don't know what any of this has to do with twelve or any other number, but Mojo's argument doesn't make any sense. Baseball is Booooooooorring."
If a judge makes an obscure reference, just smile and nod or keep your head down. If he asks about it, apologize and state that you don't understand.
Generally you'll find that jury selection dictates how well your trial will go, and not whether you state the perfect thing during it.
For example: In this case, the jury was issued a special interrogatory: "Do you find by a preponderance of the evidence that football is better than baseball?"
Jemanji, the plaintiff's lawyer, put on a fine case, while Mojo, for the defense, slaps one together in about 30 minutes of scribbling. Then the verdict rolled in:
Moe the Dog: Undecided
Diderot (foreman): "Nay. This case was frivolous"
Grumpy: "Nay. I'm worried about the Plaintiff's lawyer. He appears to be suffering from a manic delusion."
DaddyO: "Nay"
Sabr Matt: "Nay, and may the Plaintiff's lawyer be horsewhipped?"
Seattle Native: "Nay"
Sumo Dave: "Nay. Baseball is a microcosm of life"
A true verdict
Mojo shakes hands with the jury, shakes Jemanji's hand, closes up his laptop and goes back to his office to gloat. :)
It's called hiking Everest. And no one watches it. :-)
Knew there was a reason we kept yer around Mojo!
You got me there!
What a post Dave. Wish I'd have just cut-and-pasted that, instead of the Far Side post.
But DaddyO, in view of the ca. 1,000,000 words I've written in the past, how is it that amigos were so easily convinced that I dislike baseball? :- )
From Wikipedia, the death rate of Everest is 1/16 climbers. The worst mountains in the world are K2 and Annapurna, with death rates of 1/4 climbers. From what I understand, the summits of these places are littered with skeletons and bodies frozen in place, as there is no way to get them back down, which is something that they never seem to show on the Discovery channel.
Then Voltaire's vision of the press will have been fully realized. :- ) Good thing we're only writing about baseball ...
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Right. Baseball isn't simple; it's compartmentalized. You can analyze it more clearly.
And I don't think anyone else was either, Doc. I ask rhetorical questions like "to you even watch the game" to make a point...not because I uncritically believe that you dislike it. My fundamental beef with this post is not that it suddenly revealed that you hate baseball...it's that it reveals a lack of understanding as to why many of the rest of us do...it seems to say everything I love about the game is the very reason not to like it...
in the past you have given folks just enough warrant to believe you capable of diving off the deep end now and then. You circle the planet, circle the planet, circle the planet, circle the planet, then unexpectedly you spin out of orbit and off into the universe.
That was a masterful counter left hook to the jaw of the unsuspecting blog-reading public ;-) We're too used to seeing the straight right that we had no idea what happened until the ringside doc informed us, through eyes misty with emotion, that we'd been floored about twenty minutes earlier by the most beautiful counter he'd ever seen.
Bravo.
But that kinda made me chuckle out loud.
Hey Jonezie, any chance you could email me a few details about your new novel? I think I kinda lost the info in the Twitter maelstrom ...
Ah! Thanks DaddyO.
More electricity, Eye-gore! More electricity!
:- ) Like writing a fishing post that complains there's never anybody around. Or a golf post that moans about getting grass on your shoes. Or an SSI post that complains about commenters who are always making life complicated ...