I didn't know where to put this so if mods think it would fit better somewhere else feel free to merge it. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...08/24/for.love.of.soccer/index.html?eref=sihp An excellent column about an American falling in love with football, and Arsenal in particular, and 17 years of excitement and frustration. Great read and I'm sure a ton of people in this forum can relate. I know I did.
Sportspages really was a true gem. I can't really describe how unbelievably good that bookstore was, except to say it's baseball section was as good as anything you'd see in the United States. You can imagine its quality for more indigenous games..
Steve Rushin was always one of my favorites when he wrote in SI. Didn't realize he was a Gooner. He is also married to Rebbeca Lobo (UCONN basketball, etc.)
"The league is as crass as any in America, every bit as mercenary and willfully anti-competitive (there were three 6-0 scores just last weekend)" One of those was Newcastle thumping Villa - how does that prove it's "anti-competitive"? Agree about the acronym though. EPL is just another TLA. Nobody in England calls it that.
You have to understand where he's coming from Grim. I think he's making the direct comparison to baseball where, though in the past few years a few smaller teams have gone decently far, it's the same 6 teams every year vying for the World Series.
Baseball has had 8 different champions in the last 10 years, and 16 different teams win the pennant. So yeah, who are these "same six teams" every year? Prem has had 4 different champs and 8 clubs qualify for the CL since non-champs could qualify despite having up to twice as many spots available as pennant winners.
Sox, Sox, Yanks, Cards, Phillies, Marlins, Diamondbacks, Angels... damn! I hadn't realized that til you wrote it. TBH I hate competitive parity... makes a championship so much less meaningful. How many truly great teams has American sports seen in the last decade?
Baseball gets way too much crap for "lack of competitive balance" when it's probably the most competitive major sport, mainly IMO because ESPN bigs up the Yankees/Red Sox to the point that they are ordained the certain champs every year even though history tells us that's not the case at all (since the playoffs in MLB are a crapshoot). One of them isn't going to make the playoffs because of the Rays for the second time in three years and I guarantee I'll still hear complaints about how the Red Sox/Yankees dominate baseball. I'm not saying baseball is perfect, but people just totally overlook how ineptly run the Orioles are and how cheap and dumb the Blue Jays have been at times (every other division, even the NL East, is pretty wide open). The weakest team in the AL economically is going to win 100 games in that division because they're actually smart. Baseball more than any other sport rewards intelligent planning, because it's a real team game. In the NBA you're screwed if you don't have a top 5 player or a Big Three like the Celtics. In the NFL you're screwed without a top QB unless you have a really great defense.
Cmon man I'm a Sox fan... you actually expect me to pay attention to the rest of the league? Any year we don't win the World Series they might as well not hold it.
Not really. Good pitching can take you far, but one pitcher alone isn't gonna do much for you. Unless that pitcher is Mariano Rivera.
yeah, MLB is a league where its shown that if you are ran well, you can win and with the leaked financial reports for some of the smaller teams, a lot of these owners may not see the incentive since the team can pocket 20-40 mill pure profit
Baseball in America is about as important here as.... Maybe completive darts, if that, in the UK. Baseball writers are old men romanticing about a game that doesn't exist as they learned. If they were soccer pundits they'd whine about Celtic winning Europe in 68 with a team raised completely in the metro Glasgow area, longing for the purity of the game. There are truly no words for how much it now sucks. Yoda
There are two reasons why baseball has seen so many different winners over the past decade. 1. George Steinbrenner: Possibly the worst owner in the history of sports. Yes, he spends lots of money on his team but he is a terrible owner. Once he became too ill to run the team, Brian Cashman had the freedom to go sign players he actually wanted instead of crap that Steinbrenner demanded like Gary Sheffield and Kevin Brown. It's not a coincidence that when "The Boss" was banned from 1989-1993 the Yankees stock piled talent like Jeter, Pettitte, etc. instead of trading them away for players that Steinbrenner would have demanded. This of course is important because, when the Yankees spend their money correctly, they have a massive, MASSIVE monetary advantage over every other team. With Stein gone Cashman bought proper players like Sabathia, Texiera, and Burnett. This off-season he's likely to buy Carl Crawford and Cliff Lee. They may not have been dominant over the last decade, but I could honestly see the Yankees buying there way to more than half of the World Series for the foreseeable future. 2. Outside of this, baseball by it's very structure is a complete crap shoot. A great team wins 60% of its games? You have to get hot at the right time and you have to be lucky to win in the playoffs. For example: What are the chances that Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer of all time, blows Game 7 of the '01 World Series? What are the chances that Josh Beckett comes into Yankee Stadium and shuts out the Yankees in game 6 of '03? What are the chances the Red Sox become the first team ever to come back from a 3-0 deficit in '04? A few things fall the right way and the Yankees have won the title 50% of the time since 1996.
Well, probably a little more suburban, but point taken. Baseball's pretty big out in California, but the South still produces a ton of ballplayers. Saying that, if you look at the stats, the top 16 (!!!) teams in college baseball attendance are all Southern teams, and billy's Arkansas are #3, so it looks like people down there care about baseball, just not MLB so much. Minor league baseball is pretty popular down there too. Meh, people always say the Yankees will buy X, X, and Y, and sometimes they do. But many times they don't. I remember when Carlos Beltran was 100% certain to be a Yankee and people said the Yanks were for sure going to get Matt Holliday and they didn't. They have a budget, it's just a bigger one than everybody else. It reminds me of how people thought the apocalypse was coming when Abramovich took over Chelsea, and while they've been very good and bought their fair share of big stars, it wasn't armageddon like people thought it would be. The Boss dying and Cashman being finally in 100% control might make them better, but it might not. Cashman's had his share of mistakes. I think he was the one who decided on Randy Johnson over Beltran, the AJ Burnett contract doesn't look great and who can forget The Joba Rules? As for luck, yes, the postseason is a lot about luck. But you can't just say the Yankees have been unlucky. The Braves folded like a cheap suit in 1996 and Armando Benitez's refusal to throw a gimpy Paul O'Neill a strike in 2000 might have changed that series (it's worth remembering that the Mets won 7 more games that year than the Yankees did).
baseball isn't even a sport a bunch of fat roiders running round a diamond every ten minutes for a 5 hour period worse than cricket why do u guys have to compare the greatest sport in the world to american systems that are not properly comparible? football is a world wide sport that is played differntly to everywhere else in one country...hmmm i don't think u can compare american sports with the draft system/salaray caps to a completely open game
"I saw Zaragoza midfielder Nayim score from the halfway line against Arsenal keeper David Seaman. In my punch-drunk state, I thought it was a hallucination. Even the dog beneath the bar looked up in disbelief." Hahaahahaahahahaah!!!!!!!!!!!!