Non-US Dopers, what mentions of contemporary American culture puzzle you?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
481

Since I originally posted I’ve been doing some checking. They played other local clubs and traditional rivals – arranging dates and fixtures themselves. In fact, in English Rugby Union (strictly amateur until 1995) this was the situation until 1987!

From the English Football League website, the League was formed when the professional clubs (all in the north of England) realised that “football had become a disorganised shambles with games constantly being called off because clubs had arranged more lucrative matches elsewhere.” What surprised me looking at the NFL web site was the this was almost the same pattern as occurred in the States with the formation of the original State leagues and the American Professional Football Association (the fore-runner of the NFL) in 1920. It isn’t clear looking at the sites is why they evolved so differently, both in terms of promotion/relegation and relative power of the league v the clubs.

Reading their histories I can speculate (in other words make WAGs :wink: ) that the shear size of the USA had something to do with the setting up of geographical Divisions rather than two or more national Divisions with promotion between them as the number of clubs in the league increased. Until air travel became common and the clubs richer it would hardly be practical to have truly national First and Second Divisions whereas even at the start of the twentieth centuary trains will get you anywhere in Engand in a few hours. Even so, the English Football League had a Third Division (North) and a Third Division (South) for a while between the Wars. On the relative power of clubs v the leagues I wonder if it could be something to do with the much earlier introduction of large amounts of TV cash into the game combined with competion between two rival leagues that required the clubs to cooperate more?

On the wider question, do any American sports have leagues with promotion/relegation?

482

MarcusF writes:

> Until air travel became common and the clubs richer it would hardly be practical
> to have truly national First and Second Divisions whereas even at the start of
> the twentieth centuary trains will get you anywhere in Engand in a few hours.

Until the 1950’s, even baseball wasn’t truly a national sport in the U.S., even though it pretended it was (and even though, as discussed already, it called the championship series “the World Series”). Until the 1950’s, there were no major league baseball teams that were south or west of approximately Kansas City, Missouri. (“Approximately,” I said. St. Louis or Washington might be slightly further south.) This means that approximately three-quarters of the U.S. (by area) was considered too distant to have major league baseball teams. It was generally thought until then that it would be too hard to have the baseball teams travel to other cities by train when travelling more than about a thousand miles would be too far to go many times in a sports season. In the 1950’s there were finally regularly scheduled plane schedules and private planes that could carry a baseball team in less than a day to pretty much anywhere in the U.S.

483

Least Original User Name Ever writes (in response to my question about Horatio Alger):

> I have. He ends up MUCH more affluent than he starts. “Rich” is subjective in
> this case, as it is in most real-life cases.

> Actually, I read that again and see that I’ve misspoken. I read “Ragged Dick”
> and have some knowledge about the others, although I haven’t read the rest.

I’m sorry, but I think your sources, whatever they are, are wrong. Consider the novels mentioned on this website, which summarizes many of Horatio Alger’s novels:

http://www.library.rochester.edu/camelot/cinder/Horatiomain.htm

Ragged Dick: Hero starts as a bootblack and ends as a clerk, who may perhaps someday rise to higher levels in his office.

Fame and Fortune: The hero (in a sequel to the above novel) eventually rises to being a partner in the firm.

Paul the Peddler: The hero starts by selling things on the street and ends by owning a small store.

Phil the Fiddler: The hero starts by playing the violin on the street and ends by being adopted by a middle-class family where he can attend school.

Slow and Sure: The hero starts by being a child in a family that owns a boarding house (which burns down, bankrupting them). He ends by owning a small store.

Bound to Rise: The hero starts by being a child in a poor family. He ends by being a reporter at a newspaper who hopes to eventually become an editor.

Risen from the Ranks: The hero (in a sequel to the above novel) becomes an editor and eventually a Congressman.

Andy Gordon: The hero starts as a janitor and ends by graduating from Yale with hopes of becoming a lawyer.

Ben Bruce: The hero starts in a somewhat poor family on a farm and ends by becoming a clerk in a firm (and with an inheritance that will allow him to start his own business).

Bob Burton: The hero starts in a somewhat poor family on a debt-ridden ranch and ends by paying off the mortgage on the ranch and becoming well off.

Are those enough examples? It appears that in any one novel, the hero starts poor (or at least working class) and ends on the lower level of the middle class. Sometimes there is a sequel to the novel in which the hero rises higher into the middle class. The highest any hero ever reaches is being a newspaper editor and a Congressman. More often, they eventually become owners of small businesses. They never become truly rich.

484

I read Ragged Dick and I’m relatively familiar with the sequel. The point I’m making is that compared to where Dick was, he’s rich. Is he a Rockefeller? No. Is he very comfortable? Yes he is. The patterns of these books are replayed many times after this. A contemporary one I can think of is the movie “The Firm”.

485

Because most people don’t carry around a tape measure to measure distance when they’re traveling.

486

Yet we manage with such estimates just fine :stuck_out_tongue:

(Actually, I do fully appreciate the usefulness of the ‘x blocks’ system, when appropriate)

487

What Gorilla Man said :smiley:

488

Well, I suck at it. I’d rather point out landmarks and street names than try to guess number of yards.

489

Oh, you can do that as well. Pubs are particularly useful (often on street corners, big obvious signs).

490

GorillaMan and {b]MarcusF**, thanks for the explanations. Doubtless the greater distances here had some effect on league formations, as it takes more money and planning for a team to go to a road game over here.

Relegation is unknown in US sports. Minor league franchises stay in the minor leagues because of the size of their markets - there isn’t enough money in Hooterville to support a major league team’s expenses, and not all that many people in New York would pay to watch their local team play a succession of Hicksburgs and Yokelvilles. Where markets are adjacent or even overlapping, like yours, it apparently isn’t a problem. For major US teams, a large percentage of their revenue comes from national TV contracts now, just as (I expect) the Premiership clubs get most of theirs from national/worldwide TV deals (right?), so that maybe isn’t the consideration it used to be.
Think of a distance in “blocks” as the number of street intersections you have to cross to get somewhere, as long as the intersections are fairly regularly spaced.

491

Aong the lines of:

"Go past the Dog and Slug, past Tesco, turn right at the Pig and Whistle, cross over turn left at Iceland, take a sharp right at the Rat and Ferret and the Slubbers Arms is facing Sainsburys.

Heh :smiley:

492

ElvisL1ves writes:

> Minor league franchises stay in the minor leagues because of the size of their
> markets - there isn’t enough money in Hooterville to support a major league
> team’s expenses, and not all that many people in New York would pay to watch
> their local team play a succession of Hicksburgs and Yokelvilles.

But that doesn’t explain what happens when, every few years, an American city that doesn’t have a major league team acquires one. Mostly this is because they take the team from a city that does have one. Rarely the leagues expand the number of teams in the league and some new cities acquire a major league team. Nearly always, there was already a minor league team in that city. Nearly always, the city easily had enough population that they could have supported a major league team. Nearly always, the city had been begging for a major league team for years.

The way that the team in the new city is established is the following: If the team is moved from a city that already has a team, the entire team, including all its players, simply moves to the new city. (This usually happens because the old city isn’t willing to come up with the money for a hugely expensive new ball park and the new city is.) If the new team is because of the expansion of the league, the owners of all the older ball clubs agree to allow the new team to choose a few players from their teams. The new team is also allowed in the annual draft and chooses some players from minor leagues or college ball.

There’s no real reason that they couldn’t do this (in the case of expanded numbers of teams in the league) instead by turning a minor league team into a major league one. They could do the same thing for the minor league team as they do for an expansion team. They could allow the minor league team to choose some players from the older teams and to be in the annual draft and choose players in that way. It’s just the decision of the major league owners that expansion is not done in that way. The team owners are the ones who have decided that minor league teams are never promoted into the major league.

493

Except all those minor league players are already under contract to the major league clubs. The owners would have to be convinced to release their entire minor league talent base.

494

Yes, that’s true. The minor league teams (the top ones anyway) are each owned by a major league team. The owners as a whole would have to pay the owner of that minor league team to buy the team. (The owner of the new team in any case pays to get into the league.) That’s not that much more overall pain than what happens anyway when an expansion team is formed. The new team is allowed to take a few players from each of the currently existing teams. In either case, players are taken from other teams. The only difference is whether to take the players from a single minor league team (with some additional ones from other teams and from the draft) or to take some players from each of the other teams (and some from the draft).

495

Right at the Pig & Whistle? Are you mad? That will take you onto the A455, in which case you’d best be taking a packed lunch with you, since you’ll be lucky to make the Chobham exit this side of Tuesday, I can tell you. Worse if it’s a Bank Holiday, you know.

No, what you want to be doing is going Left at the Pig & Whistle, following High Street for about 300 yards, just past the Tescos but before you get to the Tube Station, then making a right there, which will cut out the roundabout at Codswallop Corner. Course, if it’s a Sunday, you can forget all about that, since you would have needed to have left by Friday afternoon just before tea to get to Sainsbury’s by the time they close. You’d be better off heading to the Tesco in Jumping Dwarf Longbarrow, but to get there, you’d have to take the A303, which can get a bit crowded around 3ish, but otherwise it’s bot too bad. Just take the Wibblemarch exit, go right at the Dog & Parrot in Cottington- not the Dog & Parrot in Welwyn, God knows you’d be halfway to Oxford before you could turn around- and then make a left at the Red Lion, which is just next to the Railway Station and across the road from the Tesco and Marks & Sparks. They’re on a one way street, though, so mind you don’t get lost on the way back, or else you’d have to find your way back from Ashford, which is a bit dicey at the best of times, but even more so when you’ve got a boot full of groceries. Mine’s a Tetley’s if you’re buying, incidentally. :wink:

496

Martini Enfield has faaaaaaar too much time to waste.

(You forgot about the contraflow)

497

Indeed he has, he also forgot I’m hoofing it :stuck_out_tongue:

498

Yep, there was also a rabbit who would make a glass of Quik chocolate milk and try to drink it slowly, but could never resist slurping it down in one gulp. What is it with rabbits and sugary eats?

499

They’re high energy, love to screw, and do so on a very steady basis.

In short, rabbits are everything we aspire to be.

500

Embankment. I’ve got you huffed on a demi-strile. ID