Yeah, I believe it really is the national pastime. As in "past time." Time has passed by this dull-as-grass-growing sport.
It's a relic from old, rural-based America. Late 18th, early 19th century, that's when it started. Long before phones, TV, cars, computers.
From a time when people worked long, hard hours, when elders were respected, because you couldn't google a topic and come up with more info than they had accumulated in a lifetime.
Everything then was in slow motion, by our modern high-speed, nervous standards. Baseball derives, not from cricket as some believe, but from an old game called "rounders," still played in rural part of the UK.
A slow game of rounders must have hit the spot in midsummer of 1840.
I don't know for sure but I'd wager a dollar to the proverbial doughnut that when the first professional baseball leagues came into being they played less than 100 games. Maybe less than 50 a summer. The true Boys of Summer.
I think around 60 years ago they were playing 154. Then the schedule was expanded to what it is now. All asterisked up. Plus the added playoff games. A game for The Boys of Summer is now being played almost into November.
The players, pitchers especially, constantly blow on thier hands to keep them warm. Very edifying.
It was supposed to be a fuggin' summer game. Not played in frost, or on frozen tundras.
By contrast, football and basketball came from the industrial Northeast, a game for the higher-strung city masses. More in tune with our modern psyches.
And kept up with the times. In foots, the forward pass was invented in the 20th century, which revolutionized and sped up the game.
In hoops, the shot clock came about around mid-20th century, to deter any 19th century type dawdling around with the ball.
Baseball hasn't changed, except I suspect it's gotten even slower than rounders. Managers trotting out to the mound, pitchers playing with themselves between pitches . . . all the other components of Boringball.
Don't tell me that it's "tradition." Cut the number of games to 100 or less and I'll buy the "tradition" argument.
I'll turn the floor over to the champions of Boringball.
It's a relic from old, rural-based America. Late 18th, early 19th century, that's when it started. Long before phones, TV, cars, computers.
From a time when people worked long, hard hours, when elders were respected, because you couldn't google a topic and come up with more info than they had accumulated in a lifetime.
Everything then was in slow motion, by our modern high-speed, nervous standards. Baseball derives, not from cricket as some believe, but from an old game called "rounders," still played in rural part of the UK.
A slow game of rounders must have hit the spot in midsummer of 1840.
I don't know for sure but I'd wager a dollar to the proverbial doughnut that when the first professional baseball leagues came into being they played less than 100 games. Maybe less than 50 a summer. The true Boys of Summer.
I think around 60 years ago they were playing 154. Then the schedule was expanded to what it is now. All asterisked up. Plus the added playoff games. A game for The Boys of Summer is now being played almost into November.
The players, pitchers especially, constantly blow on thier hands to keep them warm. Very edifying.
It was supposed to be a fuggin' summer game. Not played in frost, or on frozen tundras.
By contrast, football and basketball came from the industrial Northeast, a game for the higher-strung city masses. More in tune with our modern psyches.
And kept up with the times. In foots, the forward pass was invented in the 20th century, which revolutionized and sped up the game.
In hoops, the shot clock came about around mid-20th century, to deter any 19th century type dawdling around with the ball.
Baseball hasn't changed, except I suspect it's gotten even slower than rounders. Managers trotting out to the mound, pitchers playing with themselves between pitches . . . all the other components of Boringball.
Don't tell me that it's "tradition." Cut the number of games to 100 or less and I'll buy the "tradition" argument.
I'll turn the floor over to the champions of Boringball.
arty:
