Caution! You are about to enter a complete spin zone!
OLBERMANN: This tension over the decades between tearing down our past in baseball or continuing it — Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, legendary memory, evocative of Jackie Robinson and all that’s great with the game, was built a year after Fenway Park and has been gone for 52 years. Fenway Park, you’ll remember this very well, we both fought against it, the ownership of the Boston Red Sox in the late 1990s was trying to tear it down. There is always this tension. Fortunately, I think the thing has swung the other way, because this week we also had a 50-year-old pitcher win a game, only the second time in baseball history. Fortunately, that pendulum has swung back towards recognizing that the history is a vital part of this game.
WILL: We conservatives are always told, “You can’t turn the clock back.” You can turn it back. We’ve done it with — beginning with Camden Yards and all the other retro ballparks. They said the past was better. Words to live by.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Before we go, quickly, who’s got the best chance this year?
OLBERMANN: I like the Tampa Bay Rays. I know that’s not a trendy pick, but I think it’s a balanced organization.
STEPHANOPOULOS: George, your Nationals are doing pretty well.
WILL: Nationals are doing well, but it’s April. Texas Rangers are the team to fear right now.
Repoz
Posted: April 22, 2012 at 04:28 PM |
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1. AndrewJ Posted: April 22, 2012 at 05:18 PM (#4113227)Nah, he offered up the prerequisite quip (not verbatim): The good news is that the Cubs are in mid-season form. It's also the bad news.
Retro ballparks suck.
People who want to live in the past---and who want everyone else to live in the past, too---suck.
That was the thesis of Mr. Will's essay in the companion book to the Ken Burns Baseball documentary, that baseball was at its best in the 1950s because the US of A was at its best in the 1950s. As we discussed here a few weeks ago, the minor leagues in the early 1950s were dying off quickly, MLB outside the New York City area was stagnating, and by the end of the decade even two NYC teams had to pull up stakes.
Oddly enough, Will was 14 in 1955.
Makes you wonder when Will's last visit to the Yards was. Even the new old stuff isn't what it used to be. Or is that the old new stuff?
Words to live by if you insist on living life on lies and delusion. The past is not better than the present. If it were, it would still be the present.
Moyer is 49, and no 50-year-old pitcher has ever won a MLB game. But who's counting?
I don't see it being petty. I think it is the obvious reason why Will thinks the 50's were the golden age of baseball. I think if you were to poll all of the fans of baseball as to what timeframe was the best I think you would find that the vast majority of fans would say whatever timeframe it was when they were young.
This is world class trolling. I tip my cap to you sir, internet performance art at it's finest.
Dear God, please not another poop thread.
Didn't he own a stake of the Red Sox?
Not to turn this political, but its always interesting to me that conservatives seemingly want to turn the clock back to the 1950s or so. Wasn't the early to-mid-20th century the height of liberal power in this country?
Piffle.
Good luck!
According to Will himself, the 1950s just aren't conservative enough. 1900s is where all the cool conservatives set their sites.
I dunno, I think that baseball was at its best right about when I was 65. Of course that may have something to do with living in Washington when I was 14.
Are you just saying that because in 1900 you were 14?
8-)
DB
It's the meme, baseball is always the "best" when you were 12. 14 is close enough.
Good catch. Can this be the end of Zombie Hans Wagner?
Baseball is always best in that period for which you first created a romanticized myth, which you do at the time you were 12 or so, but it doesn't have to be the baseball being played at the time you were 12, though. But it can be if you aren't a big reader interested in the history of the game and are without much imagination.
If they all quit, tomorrow and forever, would the world be a worse or a better place?
That's it. You're looking at it. They just look slick all day.
I think boxing was better than. Well, not for the boxers, but for gamblers and lowlifes.
That took too long.
I prefer the dream of the 1890s.
I should know better by now, but it still amazes me how one's political feelings so easily spill over to coloring one's view of other areas so much that they can't be objective there, either.
Personally, I disgaree with the above comment that KO had better baseball insights in this exchange. Read the text.
But more to the point, I would now assume based on what I see in these threads that 75% of coinservatives would trust Will more on baseball insight, whereas 75% of liberals would trust Olbermann. Which realy shows how silly many of us are.
Will tried (why, George, why?) to make political points out of the geenral consensus that Retro stadiums are better then the cookie-cutters of the 70s. If KO had been smart he would have given him the point that SOMETOIMES the past was better, but the game of the 70s/80s was more interesting to watch than the 50s. Or the slug-happy 2000-era.
And some respondents here (why, people, why?) reflexively have to disgaree the minute they see Will open his mouth. Sad.
Interestingly, while I don't care for Will's politics, his column Sunday was downright liberal.
Whenever I see George Will open his mouth I reflexively think of Kramer's take on his handsomeness.
Speaking of which, any word on Harvey's? I hope he is recovering nicely.
In fact, though an avowed leftist, I think KO is kind of a baseball #########... and I got banned from commenting on his old MLB blog for telling him so. Contrarily - while I don't think Will has any great baseball insights to offer either, as a Cubs fan - I'll give him the appropriate Emil Verban Society props if I had to choose one of them to catch a game with, it would probably be will.
...but that said - I think Will's point about stadiums is poorly thought, at least from a liberal/conservative standpoint.
Aesthetically, from a creature comforts POV - they're better, but that seems to me more like a liberal POV.
The cookie-cutter 70s stadiums were designed to be multipurpose - virtually all of them housed by MLB and NFL teams and I think the cities also maintained a lot more control over them. From a public expenditure standpoint, they were a better deal (even adjusted for dollars, they certainly came cheaper, too). The new retro parks are much more expensive, serve only a single, niche purpose, and presumably, no one on this thread argues the wisdom in a government going into hock to provide a private enterprise a shiny new bauble.
Based on one comment that no one has bothered to agree with? I'd hate to see some of your other assumptions.
Politically, I think Olbermann fights the good fight, but does so as absolutely stupidly and shrilly as possible. At this point he is nothing but an embarrassment.
As far as his baseball thoughts, I find them even stupider.
However, I very much enjoyed Will's book Men at Work, and he was great when he subbed for Harry Caray on WGN that time.
Therefore, George Will wins.
Personally, I would trust 75% of the posters on BBTF more on baseball insight than I would either Olbermann or Will.
DB
The most unique and wonderful part of baseball as compared to other sports is that if you teleport back 100 years, it's essentially the same game. There have been variations to the rules and to run-scoring environments, but you don't see most all-time records set in the last twenty years (hello, NFL). I'm not going to take this thread off the deep end of playoff structuring, but while I hate looking backwards politically, maybe a deeply "conservative" message of resistance to change makes sense for the Game.
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