Great Baseball Article About Bad Baseball in Today's Game

[Bigdaddy]

Ehhh.....these young whipper-snappers only play for the money. Why, back in my day, we'd pay the owners just to play stickball on the asphalt. And we loved it!! We had gloves made out of wooden planks and bats made out of horsehide. The balls were so soft, they'd wrap around the bat like a limp dishrag. We didn't have aeroplanes to take us to other cities; we had to walk from New York to St. Louis, and it was all uphill.

If we hit a foul ball in the stands, we had to pay the owner for it. Got hit in the noggin'? Rub it off and get back in the batter's box - no free base for you.

Just look at the "More from: Phil Mushnick" headlines, no sun shining on that patch of grass.

[steve B]

So I take it you like strikeouts... a lot. Or the occasional home run...

I liked Dave Kingman, but having an entire league of players like that is dull.

[todeen]

I actually like a lot about baseball in today's game. But I do miss bunting, ala Atlanta Braves of the 1990s. They could run, bunt, pitch, hit. That was good baseball. And while I like the shift defensively, batters must be prideful because very few of them even attempt laying down the bunt or hitting the opposite way. And I know they can hit the opposite way - these guys are professionals and have an array of skills to do it.

[GaryPassamonte]

Professional baseball has basically become slo-pitch softball with strikeouts. The players today are physically superior to their ball playing predecessors. It's a shame they aren't allowed to learn and implement all aspects of the game.
Regarding pitching and its nauseating specialization; in bygone days, a pitcher was allowed to overcome his fatigue and "reach back" to help his team win by making his start his game, all nine innings of it. This is what sports and life, for that matter, is all about. Rarely do we get to see any pitcher "reach back" today. To steal the "Wide World of Sports" theme, where is the "thrill of victory or the agony of defeat"?

[tedzan]

I will never forget the first World Series I saw....the 1947 World Series between the Yankees and Dodgers. Exciting 7-game Series which included a near No-Hitter.

A tremendously exciting Series.....Jackie Robinson's rookie year World Series.....Joe DiMaggio belting HR's, etc.

This is BaseBall at it's best.

Check-it-out, here are the highlights of this Series and the 1947 All-Star game......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRLCaPLOhhM


TED Z

T206 Reference
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[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Bigdaddy

Ehhh.....these young whipper-snappers only play for the money. Why, back in my day, we'd pay the owners just to play stickball on the asphalt. And we loved it!! We had gloves made out of wooden planks and bats made out of horsehide. The balls were so soft, they'd wrap around the bat like a limp dishrag. We didn't have aeroplanes to take us to other cities; we had to walk from New York to St. Louis, and it was all uphill.

If we hit a foul ball in the stands, we had to pay the owner for it. Got hit in the noggin'? Rub it off and get back in the batter's box - no free base for you.

Just look at the "More from: Phil Mushnick" headlines, no sun shining on that patch of grass.

LOL, Mushnick could take the fun out of fried dough and a ferris wheel at the carnival.

In his day, everybody just shut up and took it............and they were happy about it.....or they got beat by their parents and the nuns at school....and they were happy about that too, because at least they had a roof over their heads and people around them that cared enough about them to beat some sense into them, when they weren't eating their carrots, or catching the baseball with one hand instead of two.

[howard38]

Phil Mushnick is every crabby old man unmasked at the end of a Scooby Doo cartoon. An old fart dedicated to chasing kids off his lawn.