User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Buy MLB playoff tickets, plus 2011 World Series, 2011 ALCS tickets and NLCS game tickets. We also have Texas Rangers playoff schedule, tickets to Red Sox games and Yankees game tickets. Plus, buy Phillies baseball tickets, Tigers playoff tickets and the biggies like ALDS baseball tickets and 2011 NLDS tickets. |
Demarini, Easton and TPX Baseball Bats
|
AllianceTickets.com has cheap MLB Tickets. Get all your Colorado Rockies Tickets, Seattle Mariners Tickets, San Francisco Giants Tickets and all your favorite baseball tickets here. We also carry cheap Denver Broncos Tickets, Seattle Seahawks Tickets and Denver Nuggets Tickets. |
Page rendered in 1.4397 seconds
40 querie(s) executed
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
They really need to tweak the game to allow for more scoring, though. Set the mound further back? Three balls for a walk? Higher arcs on the pitches?
Furman Bisher must be pissed.
He's pretty old so...yeah.
Which in turn, makes conspiracy theories more attractive...
While it would really cost MLB a ton of money to do it, I really think having MLB players in the Olympics would be good for the sport, especially if it was a "no opt out" situation, so you'd have all the best players. And ESPECIALLY if it was done outside the United States.
EDIT: BLB's second point makes sense.
During the water polo broadcast of US v. Croatia, they talked about how almost all the top US players spend their non-Olympic time playing for European pro teams. It totally blew my mind that Europe HAS professional water polo teams.
IMO, one of the "problems" with baseball / softball is that the interest in them is too concentrated. In countries where they are played seriously, they are very popular, there's a large audience. But outside of those countries, baseball / softball pretty much doesn't exist at all. Other than "hip" people wearing Yankee or RS hats, because they are trendy.
Weird
Most of the big-name Israeli, Greek, and Turkish teams are like this. There's Real Madrid and Barcelona basketball teams as well as football teams. I even found a Wikipedia list.
And in England, a lot of the big soccer teams have women's teams now as well as one or more youth teams.
So my point is that it's easy for a fan of PSV Eindhoven to also become a fan of PSV Eindhoven's volleyball team and the PSV Eindhoven water polo team because they sort of have the same image/brand/personality as the football team.
I bet if the Pirates were called "Pittsburgh Steelers Baseball Club", to go along with the Pittsburgh Steelers Football Club and Pittsburgh Steelers Ice Hockey Club, they'd have a lot more fans in other cities and the fans would be a lot more annoying.
It's basically said above, but most Olympic sports have pro leagues around the world. The US strikes me as being fairly unique in having such huge professional sports industry with a relatively few sports dividing up the pie.
2004 FIFA World Footballer of the Year Ronaldinho says hi
Hi, Ronaldinho. As you know, it's a 23-and-under tournament, though each team gets three age exceptions. So a few of the world's best players show up, but generally speaking, the most notable fact about the Olympic soccer tournament is the absence of the world's best players. Which is by design.
Just click over to nbcolympics.com and watch to your heart's content. Its also nice that they have top plays from each day of action.
Anyone hear anything like that? It certainly seems plausible enough and the other excuses I've heard don't really hold up. Baseball is increasingly international with high-level play on multiple continents. This kills the "no one else plays" argument. Moreover, the "the best guys don't play" argument seems unlikely in view of the soccer competition.
If there were an under-23 baseball tournament, where MLB teams released their 22 year old rookie of the year candidates, and teams also picked 3 superstars per country, that would be great. But that's not what happens. Instead, you get some prospects, some AAAA no-names, and a Japanese team with a smattering of top stars and no-names, all competing against the Cuban all-stars.
If you picked "the best of a limited set, plus others", baseball could work. Instead, you get whoever isn't good enough to be unavailable and feels like going.
OK, it's been three hours, I'm going to call it: The Zeth-beacon is officially broken.
How nice. How about if Chicago declines to build a whitewater rafting facility or skulling complex? Jeeze, you agree to host all the Olympics, not just convenient portions.
Duly noted and changed. I mean I knew it was a powerful handle and all... it's fine on my screen though, maybe you just need a bigger one.
#30: I think it's almost certainly a combination of multiple factors. The cost of facilities that have no further use a certainly one of them.
Secondly, there really is just no general appeal. The countries where it would be viewed are all pretty much focused on the MLB pennant races. Outside of those nobody cares about baseball.
It's simply a cost-benefit black hole.
Another aspect that often gets overlooked is that MLB does not adhere to the IOC's standards with regards to steroids (testing and punishment). So basically, there is no guarantee (in the IPC's eyes) that anybody coming from the minor league affiliates etc. is clean. And the IOC can get very picky about those kind of things...
As for 2016, it's possible, but I wouldn't hold my breath. As I said, this decision is based on more than one criterion, and a lot of the problems that London faces with holding baseball/softball will persist well past 2012...
How nice. How about if Chicago declines to build a whitewater rafting facility or skulling complex? Jeeze, you agree to host all the Olympics, not just convenient portions.
But that's not what happened. The IOC made the decision to can baseball and softball, not the London 2012 comitee. London's concerns were probably a (big) part of decision, but it wasn't London that made it.
It would be a damed shame if the games are held in Chicago or Tokyo with no baseball. And I think there's about a 90% they will be in one of those 2.
Looks like a starter handle, works like an off switch.
Yeah, but I bet Smitty hates it.
It's the new market inefficiency in the pants industry. We'll finally be able to compete with the Underwear Gnomes again!
By the way, the officially given reason for killing softball was "excessive US dominance." Never mind that the US has been dominating a certain other two-on-two women's "sport" to an even greater extent, and said "sport" continues to be played.
Maybe we can strike a compromise and let softball continue under the condition the players play 93% naked?
Whatever they say it's about, it's about the ratings -> it's about the money. Playing softball in the Olympics isn't profitable to anybody.
I thought it was the Chinese that were the best at ping-pong?
It would. The next host will likely play a big part with regards to baseball being back on the schedule. But I don't think the IOC likes going on/off with Olympic events. If they decide to reinstate it, I suspect they would want some type of insurances that it will remain viable beyond 2016, regardless of where the Olympics are being hosted.
Although, come to think of it, I believe I read somewhere that the host nation gets to nominate one event for their Olympics. That might be a backdoor to putting it in 2016, but not beyond...
That is not right, although the IOC was concerned about building facilities that wouldn't be used after the games. However, the decision to drop baseball and softball was certainly separate from London --- the announcement of London getting the games and the IOC dropping the two sports were made within days of each other. The decisions were made by separate voting comitteees. London certainly didn't have any say in what sports they would host.
Baseball was kicked off as a result of an ongoing power struggle between MLB, the IOC, and the International Baseball Federation. In a nutshell, the IOC had been upset with MLB's drug testing policy for quite sometime, plus the fact that MLB did nothing to send the major leaguers to the Olympics. When Selig and the IBAF announced the WBC, the IOC reacted by cutting baseball. Softball was collateral damage.
That's in the AMV Awards, not the Olympics.
The host has absolutely nothing to do with what games are on the venue.
I think it'd be hilarious if the host just decided at the last minute to host games and sell tickets anyway. What's the IOC going to do, cancel the Olympics and tell everyone to go home?
Also, if Bud Selig is the reason softball was canceled as an Olympic sport, then that's another reason to hate him.
They probably lost because they didn't take the best players to the Olympics. Granted, it was still an enormous upset, but the U.S.A. roster selection was not based on ability. Certain players past their prime were selected because of who they were rather than their ability while younger, better players were denied.
{checks BBREF}
Yep. The Braves were on the road from Jul 18 through Aug 4, 17 games in a row.
Plus, if you think it's hard getting London to build a baseball stadium, try convincing some small town in the Alps or the Caucases.
There's no reason you couldn't, if you wanted to.
With respect to the baseball decision, I think there is a lot more respect for the IOC process here than I would have generally expected. My sense of the situation, based on the Utah games, was more of the London people telling the IOC, "We have the construction of baseball and softball facilities in our left-hand and the use of a dozen prime London flats in our right."
If nothing else it allowed me to put Gilbert Gottfried in the IOC role.
Demonstration sports have been banned since 1992.
There really is no reason not to have softball other than "US dominance" which is a crock of ####. They should ban any sport where one country wins three Olympics in a row, which would be most sports (at one time or another).
Yeah. Why didn't they ban Hockey around 1976? Why do they still have pairs figure skating?
Water Polo was the first team sport at the modern Olympics.
More different countries have won the gold for Water Polo and Soccer than any other sport and by almost the same countries.
You must live in part of the country that doesn't have much Water Polo. But it is the corresponding team sport to a pool. Swimming isn't as popular as Track & Field corresponds to Water Polo isn't as popular as Soccer. Diving is the pool Sport that is losing popularity due to extra equipment needed, deep pools required, lots of injuries and law suits.
But I know what you meant, you just didn't pick the right sport.
Softball really does have the least numbers of countries participating. If they want the sport back, they need all those Latin American countries that have Baseball teams to start up Softball ones.
Someone already mentioned the lack of reusability of the Baseball fields. That is really important to a host country. The Table Tennis Center can be reused for Volleyball, Team Handball, etc. That site is worth building.
The World Baseball Classic hurts baseball rather than helps it. It is probably right that Baseball/Softball are dropped. But there are a lot of other sports that should be looked at for competitive imbalance: Judo, Greco-Roman Wrestling, Table Tennis, Weight Lifting (although this has become popular in a lot of countries), Trampoline, Rythym Gymnastics, Badminton, some of the Shooting, and Archery. But China is good at a lot of those sports so they weren't about to be dropped.
Thank goodness. They were an affront to decency and needed to be banned.
I grew up in an LA suburb and just wrapped up the third-grade when the '84 games were held. For a kid and a sports geek they were the greatest thing ever. I can remember specific events from virtually every day of that two week stretch. Based primarily on that experience, I've remained one of the three or four people left in this country who actually cares about the Olympics.
I am certain that the IOC has simply decided that they want everyone to hate the games. Its the only reasonably plausible explanation. How a governing body can get people to remain ambivalent about, or even dislike, an opportunity to gather people from around the world to play and to watch sports will remain one of the greatest achievments of the modern age.
Three. Beatrice M. Schnupp of Monticello, Indiana, died age 71 in February. :(
Another cool aspect of including baseball in 2016, if Chicago is selected, would be playing games in a stadium that is over 100 years old. Has that ever happened before for any event in the modern olympics? Although, I guess, even without baseball/softball, they could still probably find some sport to host at Wrigley.
I hope she Fed-Exed the potato salad for Saturday's BBQ before she kicked.
I remember in Athens they used a stadium that was thousands of years old for the shot put and some other track things.
Someone tell me how the #### a throw to home on a comebacker to the pitcher is LATE.
Maybe fully grown women should play on something a little bigger than a tee-ball field.
And instead of medals, they can give out little foil-wrapped pieces of chocolate at the end.
This was basically my wife's idea. My wife isn't even a baseball fan, and she figured it out...why can't MLB/IOC?
To whoever suggested that baseball be played during the winter olympics: The Winter Olympics are comprised of games played on snow and/or ice. Baseball doesn't meet that requirement.
Er, that was me; file that one under "It's So Crazy It Just Might Work...!" It would work in Vancouver in 2010; after that they'd need to make other arrangements. How about building a permanent Baseball Olympia in Japan or something?
For a kid and a sports geek (the 84 Olympics) were the greatest thing ever.
Hear, hear. I ate free McDonald's food for weeks.
Oh, for the love of god, host 'em at the Cell (if we're unfortunate enough to actually get that godforsaken international circlejerk). It's a vastly more modern facility, and it's much closer to the proposed Olympic park.
Someone's never been to Cleveland in April.
If ping pong is a sport, though, why not foosball? Imagine how cool it would be to see foosball replays in slow motion from various camera angles, including inside the "arena".
An obstacle course combining strength and speed would be fun too. So like the Eliminator in American Gladiators, but with more strength components included, as the current course is biased towards speed.
Finally, team dodgeball and everyone-for-themselves dodgeball would rock. Start each of the latter with 75 players representing 25 countries (so three player per country). The three players on a "team" (country) could work together of course to eliminate all the others. I think this would be extremely intense and violent enough to attract the viewers.
yes it is. they focus on the sports that shouldn't be in the olympics as far as i'm concerned. volleyball, handball, basketball, more volleyball, water polo, swimming, more volleyball, more swimming, beach volleyball, synchronized swimming (yech). i exxagerate but that's what it's felt like. i've gotten some relief from watching online, true. so there is that.
I am with you for the most part, especially with synchronized diving. Diving is great, but synchronized diving? That is the stupidest #### this side of rhythmic gymnastics. Or maybe trampoline.
But SWIMMING? Swimming is fantastic. Just amazing, and I don't get the yawn at all.
*Rolls eyes*. Just because you watch the sport for the naked girls doesn't mean it isn't a sport.
China only became good in some of these sports, weightlifting for example, very recently. When they began pouring money and resources into it in preparation for Beijing. And they are only really dominant in women's weightlifting. And even in women's weightlifting that domination might not last long, as many smaller countries are improving quickly. Imbalance in women's lifting is expected, as it was only allowed into the Olympics in Sydney 2000. China has no long tradition of excellence in weightlifting.
The 2 dominant nations in Archery historically are Korea and the US.
The dominant countries in Wrestling are principally the countries of the former USSR, Japan, Iran.
Out of your list, the only sports in which China has a long tradition of excellence / domination are Table Tennis and Badminton. And even in Badminton, there are other countries that are as good in it as China: Indonesia.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main