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posted by takyon on Friday February 24 2017, @06:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the take-a-walk dept.

From the Huffington Post:

Major League Baseball is about to make a major rule change, altering how intentional walks are handed out. Instead of a pitcher throwing four pitches out of the strike zone, the walk will be awarded by a signal from the dugout, ESPN reported Tuesday night.

The network said the league and its union have agreed to the change, which will take effect this season. MLB has been trying to make its games shorter. However, The Wall Street Journal said last week that the change would save an average of 14 seconds per game.

Fans are not happy about the change, with many pointing out that botched intentional walks have led to game-changing moments.

Wikipedia: Intentional base on balls.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Friday February 24 2017, @09:30AM

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Friday February 24 2017, @09:30AM (#471046) Homepage Journal

    Baseball was always a horribly boring game to watch, really no better than watching some silly children's game. Its heyday was decades ago. Obviously, this proposed rule change is proof they're trying desperately to keep it relevant, but it's too late. It'll be dead within another decade. And good riddance.

    Don't like it? Don't watch or play it then. That wasn't too difficult was it?

    You're also pretty uninformed as well. Millions of people watch MLB games on television and online [fangraphs.com], Across the US, nearly half a million people attend games just about every day during the regular season [baseball-reference.com], and many millions more play baseball. So no, baseball is not dying. It's not even ailing.

    tl;dr: You're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too.

    Rob Manfred [wikipedia.org] has and is doing a bunch of stupid shit. Hopefully he'll stop.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday February 24 2017, @03:25PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday February 24 2017, @03:25PM (#471129)

    Millions of people watch MLB games on television and online,

    Only Americans, who are also the people dumb enough to elect Trump and watch NASCAR and Honey Boo Boo. No one in the civilized world gives two shits about this horribly boring "sport" which completely lacks any athleticism.

    • (Score: 2) by lentilla on Friday February 24 2017, @04:52PM

      by lentilla (1770) on Friday February 24 2017, @04:52PM (#471168)

      "sport" which completely lacks any athleticism

      There is a lot to be said in favour of sports that "lack athleticism" - the kind of sport where "normal people" can participate. Head out on a nice afternoon and play with a couple of mates in the backyard or the local park, with a minimum of equipment - and play to a level that is enjoyable for everyone.

      We would all be healthier and happier if - instead of "watching" sport - we played it ourselves. Crack a decent sweat, have a laugh and spend the rest of the day on a high.

      Sure, it's good to see athletes at the peek of their physical performance play a skilful game after many weeks of 40 hours-per-week practice, but it's better for everyone if it's us kicking a ball around the yard instead.

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 24 2017, @05:17PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday February 24 2017, @05:17PM (#471188)

        There is a lot to be said in favour of sports that "lack athleticism" - the kind of sport where "normal people" can participate.

        Right and wrong. If you're talking about a game meant for being played by "normal people", just for fun and leisure, sure. For something meant to be played by elites and observed by others, no. Would you watch an Olympic competition for walking around a circle? Of course not; anyone can do that, and there's no reason to regard people who walk as superb examples of the human physique. The Olympics are supposed to be about showing the pinnacle of human physical achievement, so it involves competitions like gymnastics, races, etc., things that only the best-trained humans will win at, and which many humans can't even compete. Hitting a ball and running around a circle simply doesn't qualify as a valid competition here. But if you just want a simple and boring game for your non-athletic friends to play, that's perfectly fine, just don't get any ideas about making it a serious sport to be played by true athletes.

        We would all be healthier and happier if - instead of "watching" sport - we played it ourselves. Crack a decent sweat, have a laugh and spend the rest of the day on a high.

        Sounds good to me. But Major League Baseball is not like this. It's about sitting on your ass and watching some other people whack a ball and slowly job around a circle.

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Chillgamesh on Friday February 24 2017, @08:36PM

          by Chillgamesh (4619) on Friday February 24 2017, @08:36PM (#471306)

          Baseball is a precision skill game and not an endurance game, except for pitchers. Different from both kinds of football

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by NotSanguine on Friday February 24 2017, @05:32PM

      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Friday February 24 2017, @05:32PM (#471201) Homepage Journal

      No one in the civilized world gives two shits about this horribly boring "sport" which completely lacks any athleticism.

      Yup, no civilized country ever has anything to do with baseball [worldbaseballclassic.com]. Only third-world backwaters like Canada, Italy, Australia, Japan, The Netherlands, Germany, France and the UK [wikipedia.org] to name a few have any interest in baseball at all.

      I wish someone from a civilized country would show these backwater hellholes the error of their ways.

      Once again, you're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 24 2017, @07:24PM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 24 2017, @07:24PM (#471277) Journal

        Well - I should point out that I'm an American, and I don't give a small damn about baseball. I mean, I went to my son's games when they were playing Pee-Wee, and Little League. I didn't give a damn about the game, I only went for my boys. Ditto with football. Basketball is even lower on my scale of useless things. I made excuses to miss the boy's basketball games. Seriously, I just couldn't be bothered with it. I only attended a game if I couldn't find a good enough excuse.

        If I had to choose between sitting through a professional sports game, or hitting myself on the head with a hammer, I'd have to think about it for awhile.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 24 2017, @07:17PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 24 2017, @07:17PM (#471275) Journal

      "which completely lacks any athleticism."

      Not fair! You take that back! Baseball involves bar-bends, which burn a lot of energy. People all over America pop tops, and lift beers to their mouths throughout the game. Athleticism at it's finest!
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      Dammit, what happened to the sarcasm font?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @09:53PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @09:53PM (#471335)

      Only Americans, who are also the people dumb enough to elect Trump

      It isn't that, Trump got elected because too many namby-pamby shithead millennials didn't do jack shit to vote. They think they come off as nihilistically cool to not vote, which is why they tell you at every instance that they didn't vote. Like you, it is far easier to bitch about a situation than to actively participate and do something about it. Brexit happened the same way. Dipshits like you are the dog shit on the sole of society where you just want to scrape you off and leave you behind because you add absolutely no value to society nor to discourse.

      • (Score: 1, Troll) by Grishnakh on Friday February 24 2017, @10:27PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday February 24 2017, @10:27PM (#471346)

        Wrong. It's not the "namby-pamby" Millennials who love baseball, it's the Trump voters. Statistics show that most baseball fans in the US are over the age of 55, so they're clearly in Trump-voter territory. Bash the Millennials all you want, I'm just pointing out that baseball voters are dumb, and coincide with Trump voters. I never said that a vast majority of Americans were baseball fans (or Trump voters for that matter), only that it was mainly America where baseball has any real popularity.

        Similarly, NASCAR is a purely American interest, but that doesn't mean that most Americans care about it.

        Dipshits like you are the dog shit on the sole of society who can't even understand basic logic and set theory.

        • (Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Friday February 24 2017, @11:39PM

          by Hawkwind (3531) on Friday February 24 2017, @11:39PM (#471365)

          Beyond the age reference as far as I know your off. I'm under the impression nationwide baseball demographics cut across social groups (in N California I would say we're rather liberal). And the international following is growing, which continues to raise the quality of the talent pool.

          And dumb, compared to other US sports fans? Again I'm under the impression that baseball's nerd base is the strongest you'll find in American sports.

    • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday February 25 2017, @03:17AM

      by Reziac (2489) on Saturday February 25 2017, @03:17AM (#471404) Homepage
      --
      And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday February 25 2017, @09:30PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday February 25 2017, @09:30PM (#471621)

        To be fair, Japan is a really, really odd country and not at all like any other country in the world. You're talking about a country where their idea of a game show is to have regular people running around elaborate obstacle courses and risking severe injury. I won't even go into how weird the porn is there.

        But overall, worldwide, baseball is simply not a very popular sport. The only place it has any real popularity is the US, Japan as you pointed out, and Cuba, and maybe one or two other Caribbean islands. And even in the US it's in decline, with most of its fans being retirement aged; basketball and American football are the popular sports here now. In the rest of the world, soccer (association football) is generally the most popular. Hockey is the most popular in nearby Canada.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Saturday February 25 2017, @10:51PM

          by Reziac (2489) on Saturday February 25 2017, @10:51PM (#471652) Homepage

          A few stats:

          http://chartsbin.com/view/33104 [chartsbin.com]
          (India? cricket?!)

          http://www.topendsports.com/world/lists/popular-sport/sports/baseball.htm [topendsports.com]
          (apparently using Google searches as a proxy)

          Baseball is certainly an acquired taste, perhaps in part because it's a cerebral game -- sort of chess with warm bodies, often described as a "game of inches" not just for how by design it has so many close plays. Probably the next closest that way is sumo, where the preliminary psyching is the real match and the action is just how you keep score. (Perhaps not coincidentally, also primarily Japanese.) But we no longer teach that patience to our youth; now it's all about instant gratification and the fun of the moment, and they just can't understand the appeal of a game built on precision and restraint.

          A lot of what used to be warm-body fandoms have wandered off to the internet and computer gaming world, but I'd hazard that declining MLB attendance has a great deal more to do with ticket prices -- as little as 30 years ago you could get decent season tickets for a hundred bucks. Now that'll buy you a bare handful of nosebleed-seats. And the changes made in the name of improving attendance by making every team more "competitive" have done the opposite; when anyone can win it all, there's far less reason to care. Meanwhile, community college games are still packed.

          --
          And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.