# "It's Just a ball", umm, no it isn't **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 8, 2011, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320 "2011-07-08T15:37:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/61 "2011-07-09T02:57:39Z")
Nate Silver is quoting eTrade? I trust handicappers almost as much as baseball fans. They have more on the line, but they have more on the line, if you get my drift.\* - - For people unfamiliar with the Sport of Kings, handicappers set the odds, but using inside information they can also set them in their favor. For people unfamiliar with the Sport of Schmoes, baseball statisticians, like Silver, are robotic in their adherence to numbers, the only facts in their universe. Guys like **Frank** just need to buy a beer and the next edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/62 "2011-07-09T03:07:16Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Guys like **Frank** just need to buy a beer and the next edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia. 😃 Before my library abandonment, I had three editions of The Baseball Encyclopedia. So there. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/63 "2011-07-09T03:08:20Z")
Sorry, that was Intrade. Who may help you more than the guys at eTrade. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/64 "2011-07-09T03:10:20Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > I meant if I still didn’t have a ball. I’m fine with one. Nowadays, I don’t even keep score anymore. > > I don’t care about the ones they toss into the stands. Even if I didn’t have my ball, I wouldn’t try for those. Okay, thats certainly better then. Something totally unrelated. Just saw that our RV park neighbor has a pet/creature that looks like cross between a racoon and an anteater. Our dog had no idea how to react 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/65 "2011-07-09T03:10:41Z")
Okay, I asked this of a friend decades ago and he said, “Because they sometimes drop very early stats,” but why keep earlier volumes? ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/66 "2011-07-09T03:16:55Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > Something totally unrelated. Just saw that our RV park neighbor has a pet/creature that looks like cross between a racoon and an anteater. Our dog had no idea how to react 🙂 My Shi Tzu/Westies have a catchall response: They bark at anything they disapprove of. Which is anything, according to their Scottish nature, and everything, as the job of the Shi Tzus is to wake the Mastiffs. Regarding the OP: It’s a sad story, Dad took it too far, but Junior is young enough that a repeated story by Dad that he caught the home run ball would quickly replace the reality that he bought it from a vendor. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/67 "2011-07-09T03:19:08Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Okay, I asked this of a friend decades ago and he said, “Because they sometimes drop very early stats,” but why keep earlier volumes? They were books that I’d spent good money on. I had room for them, and there was no reason to dump them until the time came that I dumped damn near everything. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/68 "2011-07-09T03:21:07Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > They were books that I’d spent good money on. I had room for them, and there was no reason to dump them until the time came that I dumped damn near everything. Are you speaking English? ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/69 "2011-07-09T03:33:15Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Are you speaking English? When I went to Ottawa in August, 2007, I had something like 45 boxes worth of household goods in the U-Haul. About 35 of those were books. (Seriously. I still have the customs inventory somewhere.) I left Ottawa with two boxes of books. (And somehow forgot to fit in my car a half box of books that also included my shot glass collection, and pictures that my mom is still pissed at me about.) ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/70 "2011-07-09T03:33:31Z")
Just because it is horrible and tragic and undeserved and sad doesn’t mean it wasn’t precipitated completely by his own stupidity. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/71 "2011-07-09T03:51:50Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > When I went to Ottawa… You’re a fuckin’ Canuck? No wonder I can’t understand you. 😉 I have crates of books I placed in the crawl space 27 years ago that may not follow me to my next home. (Plan A: Old folks home. Plan B: Grave.) I think of it like how a previous tenant of our house in '64-'65 left behind '40s-vintage Readers Digests (“Canada: Sleeping Giant on our Doorstep?”) and the first generation of Mad compilations, including “Super-Duper Man” and “The Highwayman.” (When I first heard Loreena McKennitt’s version I couldn’t get the art of Harvey Kurtzman (was that right? “The moon was a ghostly galleon” was the trigger) out of my mind. Then I remembered.) But the next owner gets antique Anthro texts and and a nearly-complete collection of Twain. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/72 "2011-07-09T03:52:43Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Oh god, the “sports are stupid and you’re stupid for liking them” argument! Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Let’s define sports. Sports is not watching millionaire playboys that trash-talk like street gangsters and blow more money on hookers and coke weekly than most folks make in a year chase after a ball for a couple of hours a week. Sports is not sitting near-comatose through 12 continuous hours of TV at home, 17 pounds of nachos balanced precariously on your stomach while you swill a couple of gallons of Keystone Lite and pray that your Texas catheter (or Depends) holds out so you don’t have to miss a second of advertisements to sit on the toilet. Sports is not spending $100 on a jacket that says “Bulls” or “Australian Dick-wrestlers 2012!”, made by Taiwanese slave laborers for $0.03, while your kids go to school with holes in their shoes. And sports isn’t the near or complete deification of these millionaire playboys, like St. Earnhardt, to the point where you see folks actually praying to them. Sports is a group of accountants playing softball on their company team. Sports is a teenage girl out playing soccer in the rain. Sports is my grandmother playing darts at her retirement home. Sports is a mom who supports and coaches her son on how to be a better goalie. Sports is 10 kids in wheelchairs fencing in a double-elimination pool. Sports is even one woman, out running in the early morning to practice for a 10k breast cancer benefit run. Sitting in a $300M stadium on the edge of your seat to hope Lord Fauntleroy deigns to toss a piece of leather at your seat, like a pauper in the French gutters hoping that a monarch will fling a mouldy chicken wing her way, is not sports. Disdain of the cult-of-personality pyramid scheme that is modern professional sports is not a hatred of sports. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/73 "2011-07-09T03:56:43Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > … a nearly-complete collection of Twain. The Twain was in the car. We may have different priorities. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/74 "2011-07-09T04:00:00Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > Disdain of the cult-of-personality pyramid scheme that is modern professional sports is not a hatred of sports. This. I live across from a park with Little League/girls softball fields that, yearly, get fresh clay from the mother lode down south. I start being annoyed, as this is my tax dollars at work, but then I pull into my parking space and sit captivated by a 12-yr-old girl with an arm like a rocket. That is sports. ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/75 "2011-07-09T04:13:44Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > Sports is a teenage girl out playing soccer in the rain. Umm… what? ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/76 "2011-07-09T04:18:42Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Of course it’s heartbreaking. That’s what makes it funny. Not seeing it, sorry. I just can’t stop thinking about that poor kid. Great day at the baseball park with dad, and then…ugh. I need to stop reading about this story. It is really, really bothering me for some reason. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/77 "2011-07-09T04:19:27Z")
I can work with this. What’s she wearing? ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/78 "2011-07-09T04:24:08Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > This. I live across from a park with Little League/girls softball fields that, yearly, get fresh clay from the mother lode down south. I start being annoyed, as this is my tax dollars at work, but then I pull into my parking space and sit captivated by a 12-yr-old girl with an arm like a rocket. That is sports. Yes, yes it is. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/79 "2011-07-09T04:32:11Z")
And I felt like a perv, but I had to compliment her and her coach. ☚ ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320/80 "2011-07-09T04:42:54Z")
Not being a baseball fan or really interested in professional sports at all, I tried to imagine a unique memento from something I do enjoy that I would race to beat out children to attain. I couldn’t think of one that wouldn’t be overshadowed by the fact that I raced a kid to get it. (And they are just balls. Regardless of any given person’s emotional attachment, it has all the functionality of a plain old baseball.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-just-a-ball-umm-no-it-isnt/588320.md?page=5)