Centerfield

"...I call on Joe Lieberman to respect the will of the voters and step aside," Richardson said.

He has no choice but to do so. He can't run as a Democrat. If he loses in the general, he will again have to respect the will of the voters by leaving the senate. End of story.

Baseball: I call summer Relationship Season
Iraq: No
Football: Mmmmm football, it's FAAAAAN-tastic. Or something like that. But you should definitely take Lamont Jordan if you aren't in the top 3 of your draft, he's poised to have a monster year.
Abortion: See Hall of Fame
Weather: It's currently 102 with 35% humidity here. Nuff said.
Hall of Fame: See Abortion. Beware of recursive, infinite loop.
My Fur: Is prettier than the other cats.

I need three fingers of Macallan in the worst way.

Scotch, my wife really likes baseball, so there's no problem for me. Fantasy football? I'm about to induct "why fantasy football is boring while fantasy baseball is entertaining" into my hall of fame."

Besides, didn't you know that baseball is for scotch drinkers while beer is for football fans? Not that there's anything wrong with that. But baseball is to sipping as football is to guzzling.

Now you're just trying to stir things up. The only way baseball is watchable is at the stadium, scoring along, with beer in hand.

The simplicity of baseball lends itself perfectly to the basic beer. The complexities and scheming of football reminds me of a good scotch, on the surface one thing while completely different underneath.

I love the complexity and teamwork involved in football, plus how can you get excited about game number 132 in a 162 game season? I watch baseball in October because it's exciting. Everything else is fluff. ;-)

You must be a big fan of the last 2 minutes of a basketball game.

You know, Bill, I really have a hard time imagining that Joe Lieberman has much interest in what Democrats think about his decision to run as an independent, given the tepid support given during the primary, and given the existence of support for Lamont...Democrats are simply not taking seriously the threat that if they do not close ranks against this kind of interloper, the Kos Cancer will consume their party. Which on some levels is just fine with me, but I really worry that the lack of an effective opposition is unhealthy. One party dominance never goes well.

Baseball simple while football is complex...that's funny. I can't wait to taste some John Riggins Scotch. I hope I can stand the complexity.

I won't bother to dispute your point about watchability, I'll simply point out that watchability is an extraordinarily NARROW way to conceive of appreciation of and enjoyment derived from a game. You can fully enjoy a ballgame while listening and doing something else as well, or you can read oine of the many great baseball books out there. Football blows on radio, and the books on it are scarce and without poetry.

FWIW, another game every day is one of the things I like BEST about baseball. Football has only what, 13-16 games a week for 17 weeks? The resulting ratio of actual content to blabbitity-blab is unbearable. One of the other things I like about it is the sorts of people who don't enjoy it. It's fantasic that such folk mostly aren't around bothering me while I'm busy enjoying it. By contrast, football fanship is jammed with know-nothings eager to hold forth.

But I wouldn't ever suggest that one is better than the other. I truly enjoy both, in very different ways.

Kos cancer? Simon, recent polls suggest that 60% of Americans are negative on the war. Care to venture a guess as to what percent of Americans even know who Kos is? Even granting him a generous 5%, how do you connect the 5% to the 60%? At what point do you hypothesize that there MUST be other factors, such as the fact that things don't seem to be going so swell over there. See my first link by someone who seems to have at least at one time been popular amongst conservatives. Is this guy just a heretic now?

Baseball simple while football is complex...that's funny. I can't wait to taste some John Riggins Scotch. I hope I can stand the complexity.

Yeah, John Kruk is really a much more complex fellow. Pointing to a single player on the most teamlike of all sports shows a fairly naive understanding of the game, IMHO.

There have been books written on baseball precisely because it's easier to write about and analyze, not to mention the fact it was the American Pastime for quite awhile. But in the end, it mostly comes down to the pitcher versus the hitter which is why stats on it are so much better. It's damn near impossible to distill the work of individual players in football because of the fact that it takes all 11 players to have any success. You can say Larry Johnson is a stud but really he's a stud playing in KC, running behind the KC line, with Trent Green selling the fake to get him more room as Tony Gonzalez runs the safety and linebacker off.

There's lots of good innovative work being done on football right, Football Outsiders and KC Joyner just to name a couple, both of which have written books on the subject.

I disagree that football on radio blows, you should listen to Marv Albert and Boomer Esiason do the Monday night games. They are a pleasure to listen too and in the early years of Michaels and Madden, they were a substantial improvement over their TV counterparts.

WHQ: Me? Hell no, I hate the last two minutes of a basketball game as it's currently played. Who likes to watch 14 TV timeouts and 24 free throws? That's the opposite of exciting. And after the Mavs ripped out my heart and stomped on it this year, I'm pretty down on basketball right now.

God, I'm starting to write BK type comments. I really do need that scotch. :-D

What's baseball? What's football? ;-) (That drives my son crazy...)

If more really good moderates would run as independents, I'd register as an independent in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any that I can vote for.

I now understand the real meaning of "Great Plains." So far, we have driven through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and are currently in Calgary, Alberta. We spent a night in Goodland, Kansas and stopped in Colby, Kansas right after they had the tornado go through. We actually stopped at the Burger King right next to the Comfort Inn mentioned in the news, but obviously couldn't get anything to eat. Too close for MY comfort!

Yeah, once you clear the Smoky Hill Valley it does get a wee bit of much sameness for the next millenia of driving.

Goodland? Shoulda pushed on to Limon. Better motels.

They need to put a pitch timer in baseball, ban stepping out of the batter's box, and have a limited number of timeouts that can be called for conferences. I've read that baseball games used to be alot faster, and I'm sure they were a ton more interesting that way. Maybe they want to maximize the drama? But 150 drama sessions is a yawner. As it is, I only find the last couple of innings worth watching.

The Longhorns have a great football radio announcing team, much better than the TV announcers. Some games I've turned the TV sound off and the radio on.

I love that simile between scotch and football, Scotch. Seems right to me.

And, for me, good football gets even better in person than good baseball.

I wonder if Lamont is a centrist. I've been paying zero attention. But remember what I said about Kos learning about coalitions? I DO know that Kos got close here in Texas precisely by backing a centrist, in opposition to his landslide losses backing far-lefties earlier.

Unfortunately, beer and baseball puts me in mind of going to a Seals game with my uncle . . . who, it turns out, was alcoholic. And got soaked.

Sure, I should have insisted on driving home instead. On the other hand, he was the chief of police of one of the cities across the Bay, and I was only 12 (I'd been driving farm equipment by then, of course, but still). One of the scariest rides I've ever taken, for all that we got home in one piece. And it definitely put me off beer and baseball forever.

Well, it's Sunday night and we are sitting in a top floor room in the Delta Regina. Spent Friday and Saturday visiting dinosaurs and snow fields (Drumheller and Banff).

I can now truly appreciate phrases like "Great Plains" and "America's (or Canada's) breadbasket." Driving through Kansas, some of Montana, Alberta and Saskatchewan has made it difficult to keep our eyes open!

There have been books written on baseball precisely because it's easier to write about and analyze, not to mention the fact it was the American Pastime for quite awhile. But in the end, it mostly comes down to the pitcher versus the hitter which is why stats on it are so much better. It's damn near impossible to distill the work of individual players in football because of the fact that it takes all 11 players to have any success.

Right. So baseball is more like a hard science such as physics, whereas football is more like a soft science such as psychology or sociology, or a pseudoscience, such as astrology. I guess this suggests that baseball is for the intelligent and the data-driven, while football is for mushy, over-emotional excitable liberals. Notice how football has turned you into an advocate of the holistic gestalt: -)

That baseball is more complex is self-evident. If this were not so, then why can one satisfactorily explain football to a foreign uninitiate in a matter of minutes(we're trying to move the ball to the left, they're trying to move it to the right), yet baseball eludes their understanding much longer?

This idea is best transmitted in the movie Blast from the Past when Brendan Fraser stands up while watching his first real ballgame and says "Ohhh, because he MUST! I finally get it, You really have to see it to understand it.

And this of course means that I win the debate, because in the friday thread, proof by movie quote can't be defeated. :-)

About radio? It's not really that football is incapable of being enjoyably rendered, but rather that baseball is infinitely more renderable without the aid of visuals. This is so for all the reasons of discreteness and analyzability that you bring up.

First of all, by quoting any thing from a Brendan Fraser movie, you automatically have lost kharma points in the grand scheme of the universe.

Second of all, given that I'm a psych major, telling me that football is like psychology doesn't really hurt as much as you think it might. Also given that real battle is a great deal psychological, I think that might actually be "Backhanded Compliment of the Week".

Thirdly, way to ignore the John Kruk come back. :-P

Lastly, any one who thinks baseball is self-evidently more complex than footall is clearly suffering from some sort of heat induced delusional state brought on by long repressed sins of the father combined with the behavioral reaction to being last picked kid for the neighborhood flag football team. Therefore, given that shock therapy is the only way to cure such afflictions, I suggest you march right down to Boston General and sign up in the psych ward. Trust me, you'll be much better off.

I think baseball is so good on radio because it's so bloody simple as to be easily described by a 10 year old. :-D Any single play is a series of discrete events between two players whereas with football, any single play is the result of the effort of all 11 men on the field.

Scotch, thanks for giving me the opening to post again in response to the kruk comment, since I only belatedly realized that it was your weakest point.

Now, of course, this would have been a devastating riposte for you if only they were comparable figures. However, as you MUST know the are held in very different regard by the faithful among each sport.

John Riggin is no less than an icon in football. He is the epitome of smashmouth football, whose adherents are legion. Football fans revere Riggins. Kruk, on the other hand is to true baseball fans the comic relief provided to hold the interest of those in the cheap seats. At best. He exists only to please the unknowing rabble, much like a placing a Moe, Larry, or Curly style character finto Shakespeare. Which as we know, he usually did, but maybe not because he liked it.

Any single play is a series of discrete events between two players whereas with football, any single play is the result of the effort of all 11 men on the field.

22, but who's counting? Actually, now you're just repeating my point. Baseball is better on radio because verbal descriptions of its actions allow you to make a much better picture in your head than football does. My point here is not about the merits of the game, simply about how it translates to non-visual mediums. You seem to be conceding this.

BTW, I was a psych major too, even did some pysch studying as poart of my post-grad. So I know that the point about soft science is not dismissable by the rational. The fact is that while a physicist may talk out his rectum 1/4 the time or an economist 1/2 the time, psychologists do it WAY more often on average.

I do concede that baseball is better on radio than football because of its simplicity. You appear to be conceding this. Your original point was that football sucked in general both on the radio and in print. My original point was that perhaps you weren't listening to and reading from the right sources.

Other than that, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Granted Kruk may not have performed at the same level of Riggins, the point was that the complexity of the sport is not best represented by a single player. I could have said Babe Ruth and it has the same meaning.

Baseball is definitely more poetic than football but I'll take the messiness and chaos of football any day.

That has to be the most intellectual debate about sports that I've ever beheld! :-D

It kinda reminds me of the arguments between the political extremes. There are times when you just can't change a person's point of view...

No, your argument is that describable= simple, which is not a supportable argument. This is why you didn't support it, you just declared it. Proof by declaration, the domain of a football fan.

It's really quite straight-forward:
- Football is best watched on TV. Possibly because it helps to be able to look at something again and see another angle or part of the field.
- Basketball has to be watched in person. No way you can see everything on a TV screen.
- Baseball is the perfect radio game: there's always the chance of something happening, of course, but mostly you can be doing something else while you wait. I used to figure one engineering problem between each action of interest; for a lot of engineering classes done during baseball season.

Football is best watched on TV.

Absolutely! It's notable and telling that football was considered a "minor" pro sport before television came along. I'd even go so far as to say that football is much better watched on TV than in person. Especially with the new screen graphics technology.

Basketball has to be watched in person.

It's certainly best in person, but if you're a fan, TV is acceptable. Radio basketball is completely pointless, IMHO.

Baseball is the perfect radio game...

Very true, but it's still best in person. :-) And TV baseball is tedious.

That baseball is more complex is self-evident

So that's not proof by declaration? Heh. I haven't run into too many of those furriners you speak of, understanding football in mere moments while baseball, with it's analogies to cricket, is damn near unpossible to comprehend.

Baseball without a doubt is best watched in person. There's something about the atmosphere of the ballpark, the smell of hot dogs, the kids hoping to catch a foul ball. All that makes baseball very watchable in person. I love going to the Rough Riders games just for the small town feel of Double A ball.

Good fun all around, happy to see a non-political, cat herding thread stick around for a couple of days.

I will go to amateur league baseball games before I'll go to pro football games. I love football, but the games in person are either sedate major bummers (you're losing) or deafening tribal screams where you can't see what's going on at all because no one will sit down. Only in a private box do you have a chance to enjoy it as a game instead of a rally.

Now for a truly egregious mismatch of sports and technology, nothing beats golf and radio....

Well, radio and tennis, maybe. ;-)

If I watch sports, I watch them at home. Shorter lines for the ladies' room. No gum underfoot. And no fear of anyone spilling beer in your lap.

I readily concede that radio tennis is right up there with radio golf for snooze factor. :-)

The way to watch baseball is from the outfield hill, sitting at the picnic table, with the beer cooler and grill handy. You don't get that in the majors! (I do love living up the street from the college field here...)

The one drawback to watching football on TV is that they often provide too narrow a frame. On TV, you seldom notice stuff like "the guy running the post pattern has been wide open all day" or "I wonder why the tight end keeps running that weird route, I smell a trick play."

With the advent of much larger TVs, this may change. I look forward to someday being able to choose my own views for watching a game. This would be great, becuade I'd never have to watch a whole play of a basketball game from the end zone floor level camera again.

I generally like to listen to a baseball game while doing something else, and then watching the last few innings. I agree that baseball on TV can be tedious if you think you're supposed to sit their and watch a 4-hour game with your undivided attention. That's why I like to pursue this subject, to bring out the notion of how different sports may require different aesthetic sensibilities for appreciation.

Notice of course, that if your baseball team is good, the game is far less tedious. The stakes sure impact the level of interest. If I lived in Kansas City, I wonder how much baseball I could stand to watch, the Royals recent sweep of the Red Sox notwithstanding.

Yeah, my KC fan-friends have a tough row to hoe there. Why I like the college team up the road. Where they let me bring my own cooler and grill.

wj foolishly offers:
> > Football is best watched on TV.

Tully thoughlessly replies:
> Absolutely! It's notable and telling that football was considered a
> "minor" pro sport before television came along. I'd even go so far
> as to say that football is much better watched on TV than in
> person. Especially with the new screen graphics technology.

Clearly, neither've you actually attended a good football game.

I mean, just for openers, a whole half of the game (D) suddenly becomes interesting. Secondly, you're freed from the monolinear constraints of the camera, and can watch alot more. Third, the crowd is in it for the WHOLE GAME, not just a few selected seconds of four hours ;-).

Just because football is massively adaptable to TV doesn't mean that's the best format.

The Profesora says that if you're not a football fan, in person is best, because of the energy and traditions of the crowd (it helps to be winning... ;-) )

I played football all through junior high and high school, and had access to decent season tickets for two seasons at Mile High Stadium in the '80's, Jon. Somewhere in there I'm pretty sure Elway and the Broncos had a few good games, including this one that I travelled to. Yeah, it's fun. If you like bleeding money and being deafened and crowded and get into that whole tribal primal scream thing. And yeah, you can see more of the overall field play, but you can never really see much detail unless they're in front of you. To me the drawbacks outweigh the benefits.

You do get a much better view of defensive backfield play in person--if you stay on your feet to see over the screaming crowds. That's the major advantage IMHO. And if you have a mid-field box with a bar and a TV and some wide-feild low-power binoculars, it can't be beat. Best of both worlds! For those of us who aren't rich, bigscreen at home is better. Once again, IMHO. Maybe one day we'll get split-screen multi-feeds so we can see it better at home.

Inside story from that game linked above: when the Broncos first huddled up in the end zone to start the drive, two of the players FELL DOWN on the field, and the Broncos had to call a time-out to not get backed up half the distance for delay of game. What happened: When they huddled in the end zone, facing 98 yards to go and five minutes to play, trailing by 7, Elway looked around the circle and said, "Well, boys, we've got 'em right where we want 'em!" And the players fell down laughing....

I'd also add, knowing where you and the Professora are, you're speaking of college ball, right? Different story. College games of any kind are always better in person, as long as you give a hoot about one of the teams.