What do spring training games get? 0.1? Are they even broadcast nationally?
How many millions watched the All-Star game? How many millions watch any given spring training game?
Now explain how they “equate” in terms of meaning. If it doesn’t mean anything to anyone, why the outrage? The fact that it means less than the World Series - well, duh - doesn’t mean it means nothing.
I tend to go with Neurotik. Here is what I remember about the All Star Game: I remember Dave Parker making two insanely outrageous throws from right field in the 1979 ASG, one of which nailed a runner at 3rd the other a runner at the plate. he was named MVP and oh yeah, the game was played in Seattle.
I remember Cal Ripken Jr. winning the Home Run Contest in Toronto and that he also hit a home run in the game that year and was named MVP.
I remember last year when Cal hit another home run and again was named MVP.
That’s it.
4 memories and one of those is from the Home Run Contest!!!
On the other hand I can tell you who played in the every World series going all the way back to 1949, who was the MVP, and how many games the series went.
I can also telly you more then you would ever want to know about every Super Bowl, as well as the NBA finals going back to around1962.
Oh, as for spring training being a developmental time for young players and a means for players to warm up…that’s bullshit.
Complete and utter bullshit.
Most players train nearly year round, so there isn;t any “warming up” in spring training and the developmental time for young players is something known as the minor leagues.
Spring training is nothing more then yet another revenue stream for the owners and MLB.
I think you mean Derek Lowe.
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Originally posted by RickJay
Now explain how they “equate” in terms of meaning. If it doesn’t mean anything to anyone, why the outrage? The fact that it means less than the World Series - well, duh - doesn’t mean it means nothing.
Spring training and the All-Star game equate in terms of meaning because neither has any bearing whatsoever to the REAL big deal - the World Series. Nobody turns in to see whether the National League or the American League wins…they tune in because it is a massive assortment of the best players in the game. They tune in for the celebrity factor. Not to have a winner or a loser.
And there’s all this outrage because people are idiots. Plain and simple. Again…how many of those people would have remembered who won and who lost a year later? Probably not many. What they will remember is Torii Hunter’s steal of Bonds’ homer. What they will remember is Bonds’ eventual homer. Etc. Etc. Etc.
The All-Star game doesn’t just mean less than the World Series…it means less than ANY OTHER GAME PLAYED DURING THE SEASON!!! People don’t watch to see a winner or a loser, they watch to see celebrities. My point about the World Series is that the World Series is what matters. Can you, RickJay tell me who won the last ten All-Star games without looking it up? I bet you can’t. But, I bet you can tell me who won the last ten World Series winners. That is why this whole thing about people caring about the result is a joke…because no one REALLY cares about the outcome…they just think they do.
Hmmm…who wants to fix the coding on that? Just stick a
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at the end of RickJay’s quote. Thanks a heap.
I think the only reason people were interested in the outcome of the All Star Game was that there was nothing else in sports to be interested about that day. Baseball, unlike football, basketball, or hockey, has a nice exclusive day all to itself.
My problem with the tie is that it demonstrates that the people in charge of baseball have absolutely no foresight about things that are eminently foreseeable. Selig, Torre and Brenly were all surprised when the game went into extra innings after they had run through all their pitchers already, as if this was the first time the All-Star game had ever gone into extra innings before. The managers loaded up their pitching staffs with closers rather than starters, and used the closers for only an inning or a batter, and then were suprised when they ran out of pitchers. For crying out loud, plan ahead! Save some players for extra innings. If they get pissed about not getting into the game, explain to them the concept of making a sacrifice for the team. Of, if that’s too much to ask, then anticipate that reaction, and plan ahead. A tie after 11 innings would have been acceptable to the fans if MLB had announced before hand that that’s what was going to happen if the game happened to go into extra innings, rather than have Selig, Torre and Brenly all act surprised about it having happened after the fact.
You must be joking. If MLB wanted to expand the revenue stream, why not make the regular season longer rather than playing a few games in tiny parks in Florida for next to nothing in ticket sales?
In fact, pitchers absolutely do NOT train year round; they barely pitch at all in the off-season. Spring training is important to them.
As to the development of youn g players, if you honestly believe major league teams don’t use spring training to sort through young players and determine what players will make the team in Apriul, you’ve never followed a major league baseball team. spring training is often critical in determining who the last 1-3 players on the team will be or who’ll be the lefthanded setup man. Teams absolutely, unquestionably need some degree of spring training to get things sorted out, get the pitchers up and going, and get the team together.
And what the hell does this have to do with the simple fact that the All-Star game matters more?
Neurotik:
I trust you realize that “Game A doesn’t affect the World Series” doesn’t logically equate to “Game A doesn’t matter”? Technically, all regular season games after the divisions are clinched don’t matter, either, according to your logic, and yet I’d wager 99.9% of all baseball fans will say those games have intrinsic value.
But let’s address your second point. Okay; if people don’t care about there being a winner and a loser, WHY ARE PEOPLE ANGRY ABOUT IT?
This is an almost stupidly simple question and yet I have not seen a satisfactory answer. If nobody cares about the game producing a result, nobody would be angry about it. We would not have widepsread outrage, a near-riot at Miller Park, and editorial after editorial labasting Selig. I wouldn’t be here saying it was a travesty. It unquestionably MEANS something to someone, and I can prove it; millions of people care enough about it to be furious. A lot of baseball fans, obviously, DO care about the result. That, by itself, makes it MEAN something.
Can I tell you who won the last ten All-Star games? I can tell you who won every All-Star game back to the NL’s 11-year run than ended in 1983, the year Fred Lynn hit the grand slam. But frankly, that’s a silly, illogical way to assign “worth.” Just because it isn’t worth as much as the World Series DOESN’T MEAN IT DOESN"T MATTER. Can you remember the results of the Royals’ last ten games? I’m a Blue Jays fan, and I can’t rattle off their last ten regular season games. What kind of dumb metric is that?
BTW, the AL won last year, 4-1, and had won five in a row. The last time the NL won was in 1996,which was their third in a row; Mike Piazza homered that year and is the only NL player to ever hit homers in two straight ASGs, unless someone did it last year and this year. The AL won in 1993, the year Cito Gaston named four Blue Jays when they’d already had three players elected, and there was the big flap over Mike Mussina not pitching. I believe the AL pounded the NL in '92 but I can’t remember the score. 1991 was the only ASG ever played in Toronto and they won on Cal Ripken’s homer. That was the AL’s fourth win in a row.
Am I the only one who remembers…
How Mike Mussina whined, griped, and bellyached about not getting to pitch in the 1993 All-Star Game?
How much heat Tommy Lasorda took from fans and reporters in Texas, for not using Joe Niekro in the 1979 All-Star Game? The National League won that game, 7-6, in the 9th inning, and Lasorda tried, in vain, to explain to fans and reporters that he was saving Niekro in case the game went into extra innings.
Needless to say, we can now see how right Lasorda was, but nobody was having any of it at the time.
It’s a simple truth: PLAYERS control baseball. Make them mad, and they can make your life Hell. And it takes only the smallest perceived slight to send them into fits of rage.
Joe Torre and Bob Brenly learned this lesson all too well. Rather than risk having another pitcher throw a Mussina-esque hissy fit, they decided to use all their pitchers… but not for long, because the only thing sensitive pitchers hate more than NOT getting to pitch in the All-Star Game is actually PITCHING in it.
In the process of trying to keep a bunch of oversensitive whiners happy, Torre and Brenly ran out of pitchers. How any of that is Bud Selig’s fault is beyond me.
THe fault lies not with Bud Selig, but with:
Two stupid managers who bent over too far backwards to make everybody happy.
Decades of crybaby players who’ve made that kind of managing necessary.
Well, I believe Richjay hit the ball squarely when he said:
I trust you realize that “Game A doesn’t affect the World Series” doesn’t logically equate to “Game A doesn’t matter”? Technically, all regular season games after the divisions are clinched don’t matter, either, according to your logic, and yet I’d wager 99.9% of all baseball fans will say those games have intrinsic value.
If THEY don’t matter, why play them? For the money, of course. The All-Star game patrons? They already paid! THAT’S why it didn’t matter Tues. night!
There are no ties in baseball, period. Don’t give me that crap about soccer and hockey…we don’t play that way in America.
Since the game “doesn’t really matter”, why not bring it to a conclusion in a non-traditional way? A mini-HR contest was suggested. What about a foot race of the fastest from both squads? While playing on the streets of Brooklyn as a youth, (Yute?) when darkness would approach we would settle it in some such a manner. Sometimes, it would be a wrestling match (or worse). Wouldn’t THAT be great?..
I agree with Zev in the fact that you could blame it on the Mgrs. They have to worry about a player’s fragile ego? Then pick one of your own team’s pitchers to keep for “emergencies” like extra innings! He’ll know what his purpose is beforehand.
However, I think they should play the starting line-ups longer. That’s who the fans really want to see anyway. Problem is, unlike Willie Mays, thses guys want it to be like a day off! Bonds gets robbed his first time up, hits a massive HR the next time, then leaves the game. What about trying to make history? When the great Ted Williams hit the Euphus pitch to win the game, I imagine he played the whole game to get to that point! (I COULD look it up, but I’m lazy and I know someone will jump all over it if it’s not true!) THAT’S how great All-Star moments are made! If all the elected big boppers get just 2 swings and out, then it’s up to Benito Santiago to make dreams come true!
Granted the situations were different and I don’t have the date when this data was compiled, but there have been over 1100 tie games in Major League Baseball.
They don’t happen much now in the regular season, but they still happen, but not for the same reason as the All Star game.
Hey thank you, that was very interesting. I believe many of those games were either replayed or continued at a later date. And I couldn’t find one game that was called because they ran out of players. And no other All-Star games except the rain-out in 1961.
When I competed in sports, a tie wasn’t even an option to me. It would have felt like a complete waste of time. So… I’m curious…
Are the people who don’t care if the game reaches a conclusion spectator fans, or have they played the game at some point?
It is quite common in spring training games for games to end in ties because the teams have run out of players.
A regular season game never would because it can’t. The game would continue until somebody scored or decided it couldn’t field a team of nine players and had to forfeit. I don’t believe any team has done that.
Tie games during the regular season are replayed, if possible, in their entirety. The only ones not replayed are games that have no bearing on the pennant race and if the two teams don’t have a convenient date for making the game up.
Yes,yes …of course all those things are true. But spring training is just that…training. It really has no bearing on this topic, as I see it. The All-Star game, albeit an exhibition game, is not for the purpose of training. I don’t think you’ll find the arguement made that spring training games must be played to conclusion, because in the spring fans just go to see the game played, the next sure thing, the fading star trying to hang on for one more year, etc…
If we’re to equate those games with the All-Star game, then please Mr. Selig, don’t hype it to me for two months! I’ll take three days off instead!
As I see it there are two unreconcilable viewpoints on this matter:
or
I don’t see how you can form a compromise between the two. It’s easier to give in to the second camp because those people will complain. People who don’t care about the outcome shouldn’t care too much if someone else does.
Very well put, BobT…I’ve been thinking about why it was so important to me.
I've been a lifelong A.L. fan (Yankees), I would have to listen to N.L. fans put down the "junior circut". They would say the Yankees win the Pennant every year because they played in a weak league! And the N.L. dominated the All-Star game for quite a while, till the A.L. came back and won a few in a row. It meant something to me when "my guys" took on the big bad N.L.
Now, I guess the players change teams and leagues so often, they don't care anymore.