In the case of baseball, look-at-me stuff would at least add something entertaining during the interminable wait between pitches. Frankly, I find it sickening that even a minority of players believe a fastball to the head is justified by anything (save perhaps another violent act).
Baseball is boring. Part of it is the fact that the game has a relatively sedate pace, but part of it is the fact that the season is 162 games played over six months. Any one game is a little more than half a percent of the entire season(0.62%). and any single inning is 1/9th of that (0.07%).
Unless you’re someone who actually gets into the actual beauty of the whole baseball experience, you have a perfect storm for some fan boredom in most games- a sedately paced game without timekeeping that typically doesn’t have a lot of fast paced action, and where any given game is on average, a tiny datum in the standings.
Contrast this with say… basketball, where the season is still long at roughly half the number of games, but where the actual game itself is fluid and fast paced.
Football is kind of the opposite in many ways, with its very few games, the drama of the clock, and the violent and dynamic action, even if it is divided into individual plays. In terms of stakes, each NFL game is roughly equal to 10 MLB games in terms of season percentage, so each one is roughly 10x as important to the season as any given baseball game.
So it’s not surprising to me that some fans might be kind of bored in the 6th inning during an afternoon game in late July when the score’s 1-1, and nobody’s out in front for the pennant by very far.
They don’t.
And the active player with the most home runs who has played his entire career with one team is also a Phillie.
Ryan Howard
I wasn’t actually addressing your posts, and see I wouldn’t have to. I did know that about Mike, I grew up in Philly and recognized his talent as soon as he came on board. I have an autographed rookie card too. The HOF recognized his talent, in his first year of eligibility he was voted in by over 96%, and the only candidate that year who made it in their first year of eligibility. I think he suffered from being on a mostly weak team. On a better team he could have had more plate appearances. He hit all those home runs in huge parks, and they hadn’t juiced up the ball yet either. To top it all off he became a great infielder too, an improbable feat for a power hitter who needed the fluid from his knees drained before every game.
I love Pete Rose’s quote: “To have his body, I’d trade him mine and my wife’s, and I’d throw in some cash.”
Phillies are also part of a great stumper. 3 players that hit more than 500 home runs and started and ended their careers in the same city playing for different teams in different leagues.
[spoiler]
The two most people get are Babe Ruth (Red Sox, Braves) and Hank Aaron (Braves, Brewers). Lots of people miss on third thinking it’s Willie Mays, but he was always in the NL.
[spoiler]
The mostly forgotten Jimmie Foxx, started with the Athletics and ended with the Phillies.
[/spoiler][/spoiler]
Though of course several of them still have single-team totals to beat his.
The Phillies were quite a good team for most of Schmidt’s career. They won five division titles and a World Series and generally had a pretty good supporting cast around him.
Yeah, but they were good at blowing opportunities. They brought in Rose to get that Series, they should have spent money and built a better team for the quality players they did have. No doubt it was weak management, the players and the fans deserved better. Well not the fans actually, we are really rotten fans.