I just can't appreciate baseball the way it should be appreciated. So uninteresting to me. Football is hard enough with the constant commercials and 12 minutes of game time spread over 3 hours, but baseball is unbearable. Edit: I should clarify that I mean to watch on tv/discuss. I'll happily sit in the sun at Wrigley/US Cellular/Elfstrom and drink beers. Although, it is way cheaper to do the same thing in my backyard...
Baseball has always been a game best viewed in the back of the newspaper and on Topps cards with a stick of nondescript dusty pink bubblegum. It's also like basketball in that you can skip the 1st 3 quarters of any given game and rarely miss anything important, tune in for the last quarter or 2-3 innings, check the score, and then decide whether to watch to the end.
Being a baseball fan is a far different "investment" than being a fan of the other major sports. None really come close. There are baseball fans and then there are baseball fans. They are as similar and different as house cats and lions. We can leave aside the Bull Durham quotes or passages from Green Fields of the Mind and just plainly state that the game is far deeper, more romantic than the others. The history and statistics of game dwarf everything else. Soccer is too spread out in every sense; basketball too frenetic, football too brief and specialized, while hockey seems to take something from each of the others and sets it on ice. Baseball begins when the days are short and ends the same way. Once it gets started, it's always there with you each day until it isn't. I think the best days for the game are well behind it. The 1950s-70s was its heyday. The stadiums nowadays are far prettier, the analytics more efficient and effective, and the athletes are better conditioned and trained. But the game isn't better. The naivete of hope is gone. It's all calculated and accounted for before the season starts and genuine surprises are fewer and further between. Nothing will harm the game more than making it more accessible and more exciting to the casual fan. The White Sox have been doing their best to beat the fan out of me and I can't afford to go to as many games as I used to but it's still my first love and I don't know what I would do without it. In it's most natural, common setting there is no sport as perfect and beautiful as the game of baseball. Soccer is more popular, football is more exciting, basketball and hockey are faster paced, but none of them comes even close to baseball.
The mid-late 70s Cubs and Sox drove me to start watching the Sting playing a sport had no conception about. Gradually, I started to know and enjoy it -- even becoming a hardcore fan. Baseball does have some appeal as a summertime sport you can watch with friends, discuss the problems of the world or whatever, and pop a few brews. But once you get bitten by the soccer bug, it's understandable how it seems like slow motion drudgery. Even as bad as the Fire have been the last too many years, it's hard to go back and enjoy baseball again.
Anyways.....let's get back on topic here lol.....Anyone know the next event like a STH thing or something where Nelson will be at and can ask if any other additions are coming before opening day? Brad Friedel just had said the Revs were bringing in a player from overseas very shortly. I just want to know when we can ask that.....Also Roman Torres is it looks on the outs with Seattle, would be great for us. He's old yes but this team is built to win now with our core players older so it'd be a great investment.
With Kappelhof and Marcelo I think the CBs are set (with Lillard as backup). More depth wouldn't be bad but realistically I don't think the fire would do it.
https://www.gsp.ro/fotbal/liga-1/in...-pe-ce-suma-se-poate-face-mutarea-560004.html You say that and then this drops haha. 21 yr old Romanain his value is about $2.5 million and says he could be coming to us in the next few days. He's 6'2 and 2 caps for the Romanian National team. A person on reddit posted another article that 2 years ago when the transfer for came, they put in a $50 million release clause lol. The guy was talking him up so big haha
https://www.gsp.ro/fotbal/liga-1/fo...ai-vrea-un-jucator-de-la-viitorul-518049.html Here is that article of the mention of the release clause....if you all arent Romanian, just go into Google Chrome and copy the link and at the top on the browser line to the far right there is a translate button for you.......you're welcome lol
And just now Guillermo Rivera the Fire beat writer for The Athletic says there is no truth to that.....well it was fun while it lasted haha
@FireJuveChelsea, putting the "speculation" into the 2019 Roster Speculation Thread! Keep that up, I like the rumors, even if they are smacked down 3 minutes after being posted. Better than just reading about @sportscrazed2, latest attempts to eat and drink himself into oblivion.
I love the sport. Spring remains the smell of freshly cut grass and Glovolium. The sound was Jack Buck radiocasts of Cardinal games (although I was a Reds fan in downstate IL). Time and place - was VERY fortunate to be friends and, because of that, the enthusiastic battery-mate of a friend whose father scouted for the Orioles. Learning the game's fundamentals from the catcher's position (after Ernie Banks began to disappear from my daily existence, Johnny Bench exploded onto the scene in the 1970 NLCS, and that was all she wrote). The '94 work stoppage killed MLB fandom for me. ******** 'em. Never went back, never will. Still enjoy playoff baseball, but strictly as a player appreciating the sport., not due to any rooting interest. Hauptmann has done all but the same for the Fire. A change in the majority ownership has until a Chicago USL side kicks a ball in anger before the door is permanently closed and I mindwipe the Fire. Until then, a token appearance or two so that my son can see Basti play (although it would be hard to top last summer's fluke against NYCFC), will be the most that I'm willing to hold my nose. Christ, I sound like a betrayed lover....and in a real sense, I suppose I am. Something precious destroyed by greed and stupidity in '94, and now on the verge of a repeat.
What an interesting thing to read about on a soccer forum that happened to me 30 years ago. Couldn't have been the same guy, could it? If so, small world.
Unlikely, my baseball playing experience ended almost (let's see...oh my!), 43 years ago. ...on a planet far, far away. Springfield, to be exact. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
I didn't say we do not enjoy knowing everything you consume and listen to on youtube, but reading a few rumors now and then breaks things up.
This is a tweet from someone who is I think on the board of Section 8 who has been off lately with his tweets but here you go.... "Hearing that although #cf97 has not added any new trialists to camp ahead of the Carolina Challenge Cup, they are still in talks with Standard Liege over Milos Kosanovic. The Serbian CB isn't featuring much despite injuries and suspensions to other players." 2 other things. The first one is does anyone else hate The Athletic? I mean I've read it's great and all but it is stealing all the good writers covering soccer. Paul Tenorio, Kristian Dyer,Guillermo on the Fire beat. I'm afraid they are going to scoop up Sam Stejskal too ....I heard it's really good which is great but paying for articles even though it's a small amount each month just seems dumb. Anyways Guillermo just released a new article and it talks about potential incoming additions. I was just wondering if anyone has it and you don't have to copy it but just to get a summary about the potential of the 2 new people, that would be great.
It's much less the site stealing talent than the writers need to eat. Unless they work for MLS/SUM state sponsored media The Athletic is one of the very few well capitalized online sports magazines for soccer writing. According to Pauno the two major additions are blending well with their counterparts (the usual blah blah coach speak blather).
I'm not trying to flog the horse, I like horses, and I realize the available domestic pool would scarcely get your ankles wet, but aren't we already 2 international slots short on a squad with 24 players?
Ah damn I thought I read someone say he mentioned they were still in talks to bring in another piece or two .....I hope we do.