re: Is MLB becoming irrelevant in today's "Media culture"?

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I'm with you. I don't get the no hustle thing with routine ground balls. If you want to pile onto a guy who turns a double into a single because he's staring it down thinking it's a home run, then i can live with that. But you play 162 and the body can only handle so much. Conserve energy where you can. Or let them take amphetamines again. (kidding of course).

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I don't like seeing professional athletes loaf, ever. But they are paid atheletes and we are fans. And that sort of thing is absolutely not inclusive to MLB.

Also, if I were playing that many games, I'd take about every 5th or 6th game off.

Oh great. Another baseball is dead thread.

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The NBA is boring and dead- especially the regular season.

Much more dead nationally than MLB.

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This is pretty much factually wrong. I have nothing against baseball, but I was lurking this thread because I knew some people were going to start some NBA bashing. NHL & MLS fans seem to do the same thing for some reason. Never understood why it has to be a competition all the time. The MLB is still beating the NBA when it comes to the revenue side of things.

The NBA is experiencing their best numbers since Jordan retired and are rising with each season.

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ESPN keeps it alive by slamming all this Kobe/Lebron crap down everyone's throats

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Stars move the needle today in large part thanks to social media. LeBron is the biggest athlete in the world and a great face of the league. The league has also received a good string of good PR.

Baseball needs more stars imo.

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They give it more coverage in the OFFSEASON than MLB gets DURING its season.

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That is because it is a sport where a team can only have 5 players on the court at a time and what happens during the offseason often shapes what happens in the regular season. There is a reason my NBA free agency thread went almost 500 pages.

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Outside of the NYC/Boston area and SoCal, people hate the NBA.

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This just isn't remotely true either. The best local ratings are in places like Memphis, OKC, San Antonio, Indianapolis, and Portland with huge gains in places like Nola and PHX.

The NBA is built for the new social media era where you can get highlights in an instant in the form of a gif and where huge stars control the narrative.

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where soccer is concerned, not much ... many of their games outdrew baseball games in the same timeslot ...

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My newfound love for soccer has seriously begun to ruin my sleeping in chances on the weekends. I'm gonna be a mess with Fox gets the Bundesliga next year.

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1. too many times i see lack of effort. Ortiz makes no attempt to get to first base unless he gets a sure fire base hit or home run.

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Your example of lack of hustle is an allegedly 38 year old power hitter, who was never known for speed.

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2. too many non-english speaking players, making no attempts to learn english

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I've spent a lot of time around minor league players. The non-English speakers take English lessons almost daily. It's a hard language to learn, and most of them don't speak it publicly because they're self-conscious about it.

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3. games are too long

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The average length of a baseball game is shorter than a football game.

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4. season is too long

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Again, start to finish, the season is the same length as every other major sport. Shorter than the NBA season actually. And you don't have to watch all 162 games.

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5. because of 4, when a player farts, it strains their abdomen so they sit out 2 weeks.

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Eh, it's a long season so there's no rush to come back from a nagging injury. But it's a silly reason to not like watching the game as its not really that prevalent.

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6. too many stupid unwritten rules that make players look like douche bags.

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The only reason anyone knows about stuff like that is because the media blows it up every time something happens.

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7. too many fat asses playing

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Not really. The NFL has far more 250+lb players than baseball does.

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8. The fact that they treat the two leagues as two separate leagues, the dh.

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It's a unique aspect to MLB, but I don't think it gets played up that much.

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Your example of lack of hustle is an allegedly 38 year old power hitter, who was never known for speed.

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why did both of you fixate on the example as if i think Ortiz is the only player that doesn't hustle?
it's the fact that it's normal for many players to not hustle.

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How pissed would you be if one of your teams best hitters hurt himself running out a groundball that he had no shot at beating out?

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I'd be pissed that he's a klutz and can't run without getting hurt. Did you hear yourself? a guy getting hurt b/c he ran 90 feet?

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Too many games to waste effort on that when you'll still be out 99% of the time.

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THat way of thinking is like telling a football team to not even attempt to return the kickoff with 2 seconds left and down 4, or a telling a basketball player to not even attempt to shoot from across the court when there's 2 seconds left and down 2. You never give up b/c you never know what's going to happen.
I'm sorry but if you can't sprint 4 times a night b/c you're going to be tired the next day, then that just affirms the MLB is full a lazy fat asses. They have games that last 4 hours and they use the same amount of energy that a football player does in 1 or 2 plays.
Pete Rose didn't have a problem hustling every night.

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I've spent a lot of time around minor league players. The non-English speakers take English lessons almost daily. It's a hard language to learn, and most of them don't speak it publicly because they're self-conscious about it.

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great. most people would accept a guy trying. Having a home run champ two years in a row not capable of talking takes away from event. It's as if the event was played in Cuba, not the US.

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The average length of a baseball game is shorter than a football game.

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there's about 10 minutes of actual action in a baseball game.

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Again, start to finish, the season is the same length as every other major sport. Shorter than the NBA season actually. And you don't have to watch all 162 games.

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I don't mean the season is too long. THere's too many games. it doesn't take 162 games to figure out whos the best. There's too many insignificant games early on b/c it doesn't matter, and then too many teams are out of the playoffs later so there games are insignificant later in the season.
This is the first year since the 80's the Royals fans have a reason to watch past the first month of the season.

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Eh, it's a long season so there's no rush to come back from a nagging injury. But it's a silly reason to not like watching the game as its not really that prevalent.

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It is that prevalent. More guys like Ripken and less sitting out b/c your toe hurts.

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Not really. The NFL has far more 250+lb players than baseball does.

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The NFL 250+ athletes hustle every play. I don't hear anyone saying "man, that lazy fat arse didnt' even try to tackle him". You weigh over 250 in baseball and you most likely play like a lazy fat arse, with a few exceptions.

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where soccer is concerned, not much ... many of their games outdrew baseball games in the same timeslot ...

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(a) Link?

(b) Who the frick was talking about soccer?

(3) This is already addressed by the regional broadcasts scenarios mentioned in my post. Go pimp soccer on the soccer board.

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The hustle argument is foolish for a handful of reasons. HEY RUN REALLY HARD!!! that way you're only out by 4 steps.

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or hey, run really hard b/c you only have to do it 3 or 4 times a game, and you never know, they might make a bad throw.
You hit it strait to the pitcher, fine dont run it out hard. You hit it anywhere else, run it out.

You dive for a ball in the outfield and miss it, get your arse up and hustle back to it. Although there should be another outfielder hustling near by to back him up.

What else do you have to do? You can play in the field and not have a single ball hit to you. Why woudln't you want to run around? I know why. B/c they are lazy fat asses that don't like exerting energy when they don't have to.

I like seeing catchers hustle down the line, even though i think they should only do it if the ball is hit to teh second baseman. The right fielder should be hustling to back up first.
You say, why do this and exert energy. A bad play happens what, every 1 out of a 100 times maybe, probably less likely than that. It's b/c they don't care when they lose one game b/c they season is too long.

Since they don't practice this during the season games, they get to the playoffs and forget that this is how you play baseball and extra bases happen on errors b/c people aren't hustling b/c they aren't used to it.

Hustling isn't a foolish argument. You don't hustle in any other sport and you get taken out b/c it looks like you don't want to play.
They get paid a lot of money in baseball with their stupid arse 10 year guaranteed contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Hustle every game.

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and what is it for football...11 minutes

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I've never heard of anyone complain about the length of a football game outside of the commercials.

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This may be true, but again you dont' have to tune in for every one of them. That actually one of the things i really like about the very long season. You don't have to live and die on a knifes edge for every game a la college football

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That's teh exact reason why people dont' care as much about baseball.

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You say that like there's been a history of folks like ripken and only now are we getting away from that. C'mon.

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It's not hard to play the majority of the games. If the season weren't so long, maybe more would suck it up. It's just aggravating seeing someone sit out two weeks b/c of they are scared somethign might happen b/c they felt the slightest twitch in their hammy or somethign.


American star power is the reason people don't care about baseball right now if you ask me.
I thought Trout and Harper would do somethign about that, and they may have a little, but they just need more of that.

If it makes you feel better, I can't wait for my two sons to get older so i can take the train up the river and go to a Cardinals game, then go up to a Cubs game and fly back.

I was listening to svp and rusillo one day and they said that they did a survey on what people wanted them to focus less time talking about. The overwhelming majority was baseball, and it was February and they hadn't even talked about it once that month. Their show has a younger demographic majority that isn't as into baseball and the same interest may not apply to older demographics, but that can't be a good sign.

Personally, I love baseball. In our modern internet instant gratification culture, people are becoming less able to sit back and relax, and baseball is impossible to enjoy for people who are unable to do that.