Welcome Back, Old Friend
I can back off the edge tonight for a couple of hours and be part of a game that has brought me comfort my whole life thanks to grandpas who taught me the game because they knew it is important. I learned math, geometry, physics, chemistry, poetry, and that impossible catches do happen.
Baseball fans, watch it full screen. Not a baseball fan? You’re missing something.
Welcome back, old friend. It is so good to see you. #OpeningDay
🖊️ Written by Tom Verducci
🎙️ Narrated by Jon Hamm pic.twitter.com/wO1R01rWrG— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) July 23, 2020
how exciting. maybe if the infection rates and death totals keep rising, they will bring back even more ways to spread the disease. brilliant.
thoughts and prayers to the all the minimum wage workers who support baseball.
1I also am a lifelong (very long at this point) baseball fan – watched the 60’s Yankees with my father in the Bronx. The only sport that interests me, and it fascinates me – always has.
2But that said, I also think it’s misguided to open. We will survive a season without baseball – OK, maybe just barely, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of complete games available on YouTube.
Yes!
3Dodgers-Astros in the World Series? Had to say it!
I went into that determined not to let the manipulation of a marketing department owned by billionaires make me blubber. But still it was nostalgic. I laughed at the quote, “if you’ve got three strikes, even the best lawyer can’t get you off.” Nice.
4Joel – no fans are allowed in the ballpark. Although, you can get a cut-out of yourself at the game. They will put them in the park for the home games and then give it to you after the season. The money goes to charity.
5This. I’ve reposted it to my local baseball buds.
6We could have earned a baseball season without any of those talented young men being killed or crippled by this virus. Trump and the Republican Action Faction ruined our chance.
This veteran of the “You Gotta Believe” ’69 Cubs Bleacher Bums has to face facts. These kids are going to get sick. The season is going to start today, and it’s going to end when we stop pretending it’s worth it some time next month.
Damn them. Damn them all to hell.
7To me, baseball is the perfect game. It’s the only game in which the defense holds the ball. It’s the fairest of all sports: One team cannot use the clock to prevent the other team from catching up, and even when you are winning, you have to give your opponent a chance to even the score. With its lineup and batting order, baseball is more democratic than other sports: Each player gets a turn, and a team can’t keep feeding the ball to its best players. It is a game that has moments of stillness and sudden flashes of speed. To a causal observer, not much appears to be happening during a game. But a knowledgeable fan understands the game’s intricate nuances, from the positioning of the defense to the batter’s count.” (“Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire” by Rafe Esquith, Viking Penguin, 2007, page 126. See also the Hobart Shakespeareans.) And he teaches baseball to kids ( i think in Lighting Their Fires)
8Book bans, the Constitution, & baseball.
Annie Kinsella responds to “oh yeah, well your husband plowed under his corn and built a baseball field!”
https://youtu.be/ur7pHRRKhV4
9After being a decades long fan of the Astros their cheating has turned me off. I know that everyone bends and even sometimes breaks the rules for competitive advantage but this was an organized effort and was just dumb. It goes against everything we teach our children in Little League. There is a price to pay for your actions.
10JJ, are baseball players in the ballpark? How is the social distancing between catcher and umpire? In the dugout? Are there hourly workers involved? Do they all have families?
11Ask MLS how this is gonna turn out.
12https://youtu.be/Xq3hEMUeBGQ
13There’s probably an ad to start.
But the song is John Fogerty
There’s a very big pix of Fauci doing the pandemic “handshake” with a Washington Nationals player in the Post this AM. Fauci threw out the first ball. This was the perfect alternate to all the miserable news in the Post about you know who. When I saw that pix I told myself, “And the angels sing!”
14Beautiful.
15For nearly a “NY minute” the Yanks had it going on with players and coaches taking a knee. But the heretofore “Damned Yankees” to most of y’all have ‘earned’ that sobriquet with us by default of their management. If people had negative thoughts about former owner George Steinbrenner, current owner Hal Steinbrenner proving to be as big a SOB as daddy George with an invite to the ***king moron* to throw out the pitch. WTH Hal??!
16Of course Trumpf was pissed that all the players and coaches took a knee in unity against racial injustice before the games. What a piece of shit he is. He’s running out of people to condemn that he hasn’t already twittered about.
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