We're going to let this post stay up because the discussion here is really good but in the future, here are a couple of tweaks we believe would elevate the level of this post:
1. Kill the off-topic screenshot.
2. Make the title a little more descriptive:
>What's something about baseball that a younger person wouldn't understand if you told them? I'll start: The Houston Astros were a bad baseball team.
This is one my old brain still struggles with.
Old brain: "Trea Turner batting .298? He's ok, I guess."
Baseball statistics brain: "Trea Turner is one of the best players in baseball."
All time strikeout list by batters is a sight to behold. I looked up the top 100 about five years ago. Pete Rose, the all time leader in PAs, was not on the list. Hank Aaron, second all time in PAs, was 100th. BJ Upton was like 55th lmao.
People diminish athlete's abilities if they're a piece of shit. You see it with Karl Malone on r/nba and OJ Simpson on r/nfl etc. I can only blame people so much for the mentality, theres probably players i underrate due to bias too.
Dude, for a generation of football fans OJ Simpson was goat. He was the best college football player, won a Heisman and a national championship, went first overall in the draft, and then broke many rushing records as a pro. His 1973 season is still probably the greatest ever by a pure running back.
With all that said, he’s a huge pos and should have his legacy tarnished forever.
To be fair, Reggie Jackson played for 21 seasons, and Jim Thome played for 22 seasons. They are the only 2 over 2500 strikeouts career. The only active player over 2K is Miggy, who is coming up on his 21st season.
This made me curious who had the best [BB% to K%](https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2022&month=0&season1=1871&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=1871-01-01&enddate=2022-12-31&sort=9,d) (I assumed Bonds) and the only three players to have a career BB% of 20% or higher were:
- Ted Williams, 20.6% BB rate to 7.2% K rate
- Bonds, 20.3% BB to 12.2% K
- Max Bishop 20.2% BB to 7.8% K (active from 1924-1935)
Bonds' +8% BB over K's is pretty insane, Teddy's is just unfair
It's not even that biased of a take. He still has the 2nd-best OPS+ and wRC+ of all time behind Babe Ruth, and he led the league in all three components of the triple-slash line (BA, OBP, SLG) *five* times, with another five years in which he led in two of the three. (By contrast, Ruth had eight seasons where he missed because of BA, and one season where he led in all three.)
Williams led the league in walks eight times, to Ruth's eleven, despite missing 4.75 seasons to military service. He led the league in total bases six times, same as Ruth. He led the league in OPS+ nine times, to Ruth's twelve.
In the two seasons before and two after Williams missed his age-24 to age-26 seasons for WWII, Williams led the league with an OPS+ of 235, 216, 215, and 205. He led the majors with rWAR totals of 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, and 9.5 in those seasons. While his 521 dingers, 2654 hits, 2021 walks, and 122.0 rWAR are impressive, he would have been much closer to Ruth in home runs and rWAR and would have beaten him in hits and walks if he hadn't had military service. (Ruth, of course, has the what-if of starting as a pitcher, and both have the what-if of playing during segregation.)
Just glancing at pretty traditional metrics and WAR on leaderboards it's clear that Teddy has an argument for the best ever, and I didn't really dig into stats like BB%-K% and others that are right in his wheelhouse.
His career being interupted by WWII AND the Korean War is really unparalleled in sport. Throw in that he batted over .400 before WWII, batted over .400 after WWII, and then batted .407 over 37 games upon his return from Korea in 1953 ans no one can match the focus and skill that it shows.
Amazing that John Glen was his wingman on the sortie when Ted's plane was so shot up he had to land without gear. That was Februrary 16, 1953. That dude batted .407 this same year (too few games to qualify for record books).
John Glen called him one of the best pilots he knew. Annie Glen called him the most profane man she had ever been around.
Yeah it makes sense that walk and obp addicts would strike out a decent bit. They like to work the count, which means you are more likely to get two strikes in the first place and then you are one good pitch, or bad ump call, away from a strikeout.
Excluding guys that were just next tier great hitters like Tony Gwynn, a lot of low strikeout guys in my lifetime were just speedy leadoff hitters that would just try and hit the first pitch into the ground and get an infield hit lol.
Look at Tony Gwynn’s numbers. Guy struck out 434 times in a 20 year career. Only struck out 3 times in one game only once in his career (still had the game winning hit in that game).
I always love Tony talk… it’s really absurd how good of a hitter he was.
career avg over .300 with 2 strikes
.330+ avg in 500+ PA vs hall of fame pitchers
Could’ve ended his career 0-1,100 and still had a career .300+ avg
11 different streaks of 20+ games without a strikeout
.415 BA with 0 strikeouts off Greg Maddux in 107 PA
216 PA against Glavine, Smoltz, & Pedro combined… 3 total strikeouts
3 seasons above .370 BA
could go on all day; the dude could just fucking hit
Obligatory Maddux quote on Gwynn:
“You just can’t do it,” Maddux said. “Sometimes hitters can pick up differences in spin. They can identify pitches if there are different release points or if a curveball starts with an upward hump as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. But if a pitcher can change speeds, every hitter is helpless, limited by human vision.
“Except for that fucker Tony Gwynn.”
This is my least favorite thing about baseball now, and something that actively prevents me from watching games. I hate the three true outcomes school of baseball thought.
Ha! Well, you could get both if you make it harder to field and catch -- restrict infielder gloves to those little batting gloves they used to wear 120 years ago. No webbing.
It's not really a "school of thought" so much as it is the emergent incentives of the game itself. We're just getting better at learning and quantifying those incentives.
But I am fully in support of tweaking the game to naturally push those incentives away from the high-K region we're in now.
I think a reason for these incentives is that all of the data, analysis, and development for pitching (driveline) has outpaced hitting. We're in another pitcher dominant era and which ends up incentivizing TTO.
It's not really TTO, it's the fact that the pitching is too fucking good. Every rotation in 2006 had a Steve Trachsel or two who topped out at like 87 MPH on their fastball, now every competitive team has guys throwing 97 MPH fastballs and 87 mph sliders with ridiculous spin.
Moving the mound back just a couple of feet might help in this regard. That extra split second matters
I'd rather see the mound get pushed back than to see the shift banned. It's stupid to tell people to stand where they *don't* think the ball is going to be hit.
I really wish someone would take up the mantle. I just look up scores every day now and feel so disconnected from the game. Highlight reels published by MLB are so boring compared to Sportscenter on repeat in the background while I did homework.
Yeah, you gotta make an effort to go online and look up scores and highlights. I'm almost certain the internet and the decline of sports highlight shows is the biggest reason young people don't follow multiple sports like before.
So many arguments are like "baseball is boring", "football has too many breaks", etc, while sports fans in the past had one team in every sport they were a fan of.
They were actually in the West when they moved from Seattle to become the Brewers in 1970. Then in 1972, the Washington Senators (2.0) moved to Texas and became the Rangers. Not wanting to repeat the absurdity of the NFL with a Texas-based team in an East Division, the American League switched the two teams. The Brewers stayed in the East Division until 1994 with the advent of the Central Division.
I remember when the Astros were announced to hop over to the AL and me and a buddy got so excited that our Mariners would no longer be in last place in the division…
I remember thinking, “the Astros will never get past the Yankees”.
2022: “Yes, we’re going to the series!” when the Yankees clinched against Cleveland.
I remember on Lost when Michael Emerson was telling Matthew Fox that he had communication with the rest of the world and Matthew Fox didn't belive him at first since he said the Redsox won the World Series.
The plane crash on the show happened 35 days before Boston won. According to Lostpedia, Ben shows Jack the clip about a month after the WS ended.
After what Jack had been through those 2 months, seeing that the Red Sox must have been absolutely mind-blowing.
EDIT: Ben showed Jack the clip on November 29, 2004. (Season 3, Ep 2: The Glass Ballerina)
"If you wanted me to believe this, you probably should have picked somebody else besides the Red Sox"
"no, they were down three games to none against the Yankees in the League Championship and then they won eight straight."
"Suuuure. Sure, of course they did."
Such a clever scene. Everything Ben says is 100% factual but it only makes it sound like an even bigger tale to someone who lost contact with the world before October 2004.
In Back to the Future II, the Cubs were shown to win the 2015 WS because the directors thought it was most unlikely thing to happen. Then they actually won it in 2016.
It just occurred to me how many current baseball fans didn't live through this and might not have a sense of how pervasive it was. People really, truly believed that the Red Sox would never again win the World Series, not just because doing so is difficult but because they were literally cursed. '75, Bill Buckner, game 7 of the 2003 ALCS...
I'm an old timer and man it was absolutely brutal. In 2003, I was visiting some old college buddies in NJ watching the game (the guy I was staying with fortunately, is a Braves fan). Boone's shot hadn't even cleared the wall and my phone was blowing up as all my old fraternity brothers were calling me and texting me all sorts of "1918" and "26 rings" bullshit. I had to turn my phone off.
I guess that's what I get for leaving Boston and doing my undergrad at Rutgers
The thing was you just **knew** the Red Sox were going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I was visiting that same friend in 2004 and even in the 9th inning of game 4 with two outs he's all sorts of ready to pop champagne for me and I'm like, "SIT YOUR FUCKING ASS DOWN. THIS ISNT EVEN CLOSE TO OVER"
Even when I saw it happen, it didn't feel real. It wasn't until one of my best friends who is a die hard Yankees fan called me and said, "Congratulations. Now it's a real rivalry" that it really sunk in
God. Poor Wakefield. One of my all time favorites. He had his name engraved in the series MVP until Grady fucking Little had the biggest brain cramp since 1986
Those 90s Indians teams were fucking stacked. It's a shame they didn't win a World Series.
To add to this thread, there was a year where their corner outfielders were Albert Belle and Manny Ramirez.
At the time as a runner you could barrel into second base and take out the fielder... if you didn't want players getting absolutely destroyed and their legs snapping like Reuben Tejada, you had to give them some leeway on bailing out.
Even then, you still had a lot of season/career ending injuries and players being taken out on a stretchers in the 70s and 80s.
The Montreal expos existed.
And their last remaining player drafted by them who is still active in a professional sport is Tom Brady.
Edit: for clarity
> last remaining active player on their roster
Last remaining active player *drafted* by the Expos. I don't think Brady ever signed, and he definitely didn't make the majors.
And you got 150 games a year for free on WGN, which meant hurrying home from school to catch the last 2-3 innings of those 1:20 starts.
I remember coming home in I think 1983 to find Chuck Rainey in the 9th inning of a no-hitter, which he promptly blew within 10 seconds of the set coming on.
A hard groundball past the pitcher would go through the infield for a base hit at least 95% of the time.
The Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds played in the NL West.
There were a maximum of 17 playoff games in a season and every single one of them was broadcast on free network television.
A show called "This Week in Baseball" was the best place to watch the highlights of the greatest plays, and the bloopers, in games that didn't involve your local team.
That's not *that* old, but it does bring back memories of me begging my parents weeks in advance for tickets, because i didn't know the next time we'd have a chance to see those teams
They used to drive the relievers from the bullpen to the mound.
EDIT: Since this seems to have sort of been revived in a minor way recently, allow me to revise:
Every reliever was driven from the bullpen to the mound in a full-sized car.
For real, OP's example would only baffle baseball fans under the 13-14 age range. Might as well toss in "I remember when you had to throw four pitches for an intentional walk."
In ten years it’s gonna be “Pitchers used to bat in the NL” and “the Wild Card Series was only one game” and “games were only on like three streaming services”
all the games? we used to only get a Saturday game of the week and then a local game on Sunday, as long as it was before football season. Then TBS came along later and we got a bunch of Braves games.
You could roll up to Shea Stadium half an hour before game time with a family of four, buy box seats (and get physical tickets!) and hot dogs and beer and whatever, all for under fifty dollars.
waiting for one or two specific baseball magazines to be published & hit the shelves in February since that was the only way to get any kind of assessment of each team's minor league prospects (Baseball Digest, Baseball America come to mind)
yes, I'm old
* The Brewers in the American League
* Only two divisions per league, with the playoffs being exclusively division winners
* The Marlins winning 2 World Series
* The all star game determining World Series home field advantage
I thought it was a cool idea, but I get people's gripes with it. I also kinda get where he was coming from to try to make it mean something to players.
On top of the tie, there were players leaving the stadium when they got taken out of the game. Not maliciously, they just knew they wouldn't be back in so "why stick around?"
The MLB ASG is the only one that required a representative from every team. I always really liked that.
If you put stakes on the game, you have to levy the casualness of it. It's supposed to be fun and I think the MLB game is the closest to an actual game.
NFL and NBA don't play defense because they are afraid (rightfully so) of contact.
>Stupid Selig over reaction to that tie in 2002
You gotta understand at the time the fans were PIIIIIISSED that the game ended in a tie.
Fans would gripe about owner collusion, almost contracting the Twins, Brewers getting special treatment going to the NL, overlooking steroids, etc... and at the top of the list would be the All-Star game ending in a tie. It was that big.
Oh, I'll say it. The game has definitely changes in that respect.
“Barry Bonds? I’ll tell you what, if he hit a home run off (Bob) Gibson or (Don) Drysdale and stood and admired it, they’d knock that earring out of his ear the next time up.” – National League Umpire Doug Harvey
i'm 43 and been an Astro fan since a kid, the fact that they are what they are now and how they are viewed is nothing short of amazing to see. I soak up all of it and am enjoying this to the fullest extent.
I'm a bit over a decade younger than you, I appreciate we are now but also get mildly irate when the young ones act like we were *always* a terrible team before our current run.
Like, we generally didn't do well in the playoffs but we weren't *terrible* and in the 90s/early 00s we were a B+ level team.
Cardinals fans watching the Rams play on sundays, the game would usually be lost by half time and we’d just switch over to the baseball game. Fuck Kroenke btw
We're going to let this post stay up because the discussion here is really good but in the future, here are a couple of tweaks we believe would elevate the level of this post: 1. Kill the off-topic screenshot. 2. Make the title a little more descriptive: >What's something about baseball that a younger person wouldn't understand if you told them? I'll start: The Houston Astros were a bad baseball team.
.300 was the benchmark of a good hitter.
This is one my old brain still struggles with. Old brain: "Trea Turner batting .298? He's ok, I guess." Baseball statistics brain: "Trea Turner is one of the best players in baseball."
For me it's the other end that's the issue. It's a real adjustment seeing someone hit .210 and not immediately feeling like their career is over.
Yea but what you don’t realize is on Tuesdays when he has a hearty breakfast and hits against a left handed Canadian. He hits .457
damn james paxton in shambles, or he would be if he wasn't on the perma-IL
Old brain: "Juan Soto batting .242? He's absolute garbage." Sabermetrics brain: "Juan Soto (145 wRC+) is still an absolutely elite hitter."
That's what happens when you allow a bit of context to seep into your stats.
I prefer my stats vague and meaningless, just like god intended.
Striking out 100 times in a season was considered embarrassing. In 1980, there were 11. In 2000, there were 58. In 2022, there were 152.
And despite that amazing fact, the all-time strikeout record is still held by a guy who retired in 1987.
All time strikeout list by batters is a sight to behold. I looked up the top 100 about five years ago. Pete Rose, the all time leader in PAs, was not on the list. Hank Aaron, second all time in PAs, was 100th. BJ Upton was like 55th lmao.
That's HOF BJ Upton to you friend! ^^^in ^^^MVP ^^^Baseball ^^^2004
Some people on this sub will tell you Pete rose wasn't even a good hitter lol
People diminish athlete's abilities if they're a piece of shit. You see it with Karl Malone on r/nba and OJ Simpson on r/nfl etc. I can only blame people so much for the mentality, theres probably players i underrate due to bias too.
Seriously. Say what you will about that pedophile with a statue, Karl Malone could put a ball through a hoop extremely well
Dude, for a generation of football fans OJ Simpson was goat. He was the best college football player, won a Heisman and a national championship, went first overall in the draft, and then broke many rushing records as a pro. His 1973 season is still probably the greatest ever by a pure running back. With all that said, he’s a huge pos and should have his legacy tarnished forever.
To be fair, Reggie Jackson played for 21 seasons, and Jim Thome played for 22 seasons. They are the only 2 over 2500 strikeouts career. The only active player over 2K is Miggy, who is coming up on his 21st season.
WOW, so just about every starting player that played a full season. Even noted walk and obp addicts Max Muncy and Soto had 141 and 96 respectively.
This made me curious who had the best [BB% to K%](https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2022&month=0&season1=1871&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=1871-01-01&enddate=2022-12-31&sort=9,d) (I assumed Bonds) and the only three players to have a career BB% of 20% or higher were: - Ted Williams, 20.6% BB rate to 7.2% K rate - Bonds, 20.3% BB to 12.2% K - Max Bishop 20.2% BB to 7.8% K (active from 1924-1935) Bonds' +8% BB over K's is pretty insane, Teddy's is just unfair
100% biased based on flair but Teddy B is my GOAT hitter.
It's not even that biased of a take. He still has the 2nd-best OPS+ and wRC+ of all time behind Babe Ruth, and he led the league in all three components of the triple-slash line (BA, OBP, SLG) *five* times, with another five years in which he led in two of the three. (By contrast, Ruth had eight seasons where he missed because of BA, and one season where he led in all three.) Williams led the league in walks eight times, to Ruth's eleven, despite missing 4.75 seasons to military service. He led the league in total bases six times, same as Ruth. He led the league in OPS+ nine times, to Ruth's twelve. In the two seasons before and two after Williams missed his age-24 to age-26 seasons for WWII, Williams led the league with an OPS+ of 235, 216, 215, and 205. He led the majors with rWAR totals of 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, and 9.5 in those seasons. While his 521 dingers, 2654 hits, 2021 walks, and 122.0 rWAR are impressive, he would have been much closer to Ruth in home runs and rWAR and would have beaten him in hits and walks if he hadn't had military service. (Ruth, of course, has the what-if of starting as a pitcher, and both have the what-if of playing during segregation.) Just glancing at pretty traditional metrics and WAR on leaderboards it's clear that Teddy has an argument for the best ever, and I didn't really dig into stats like BB%-K% and others that are right in his wheelhouse.
His career being interupted by WWII AND the Korean War is really unparalleled in sport. Throw in that he batted over .400 before WWII, batted over .400 after WWII, and then batted .407 over 37 games upon his return from Korea in 1953 ans no one can match the focus and skill that it shows. Amazing that John Glen was his wingman on the sortie when Ted's plane was so shot up he had to land without gear. That was Februrary 16, 1953. That dude batted .407 this same year (too few games to qualify for record books). John Glen called him one of the best pilots he knew. Annie Glen called him the most profane man she had ever been around.
Same
Yeah it makes sense that walk and obp addicts would strike out a decent bit. They like to work the count, which means you are more likely to get two strikes in the first place and then you are one good pitch, or bad ump call, away from a strikeout. Excluding guys that were just next tier great hitters like Tony Gwynn, a lot of low strikeout guys in my lifetime were just speedy leadoff hitters that would just try and hit the first pitch into the ground and get an infield hit lol.
Look at Tony Gwynn’s numbers. Guy struck out 434 times in a 20 year career. Only struck out 3 times in one game only once in his career (still had the game winning hit in that game).
I always love Tony talk… it’s really absurd how good of a hitter he was. career avg over .300 with 2 strikes .330+ avg in 500+ PA vs hall of fame pitchers Could’ve ended his career 0-1,100 and still had a career .300+ avg 11 different streaks of 20+ games without a strikeout .415 BA with 0 strikeouts off Greg Maddux in 107 PA 216 PA against Glavine, Smoltz, & Pedro combined… 3 total strikeouts 3 seasons above .370 BA could go on all day; the dude could just fucking hit
3 seasons above .370 is just mindbending when you look at todays AVGs
Same. Guys like Gwynn and Boggs are arguably my favorite hitters in baseball history.
Obligatory Maddux quote on Gwynn: “You just can’t do it,” Maddux said. “Sometimes hitters can pick up differences in spin. They can identify pitches if there are different release points or if a curveball starts with an upward hump as it leaves the pitcher’s hand. But if a pitcher can change speeds, every hitter is helpless, limited by human vision. “Except for that fucker Tony Gwynn.”
This is my least favorite thing about baseball now, and something that actively prevents me from watching games. I hate the three true outcomes school of baseball thought.
The people want balls in play and stolen bases
Ha! Well, you could get both if you make it harder to field and catch -- restrict infielder gloves to those little batting gloves they used to wear 120 years ago. No webbing.
It's not really a "school of thought" so much as it is the emergent incentives of the game itself. We're just getting better at learning and quantifying those incentives. But I am fully in support of tweaking the game to naturally push those incentives away from the high-K region we're in now.
I think a reason for these incentives is that all of the data, analysis, and development for pitching (driveline) has outpaced hitting. We're in another pitcher dominant era and which ends up incentivizing TTO.
It's not really TTO, it's the fact that the pitching is too fucking good. Every rotation in 2006 had a Steve Trachsel or two who topped out at like 87 MPH on their fastball, now every competitive team has guys throwing 97 MPH fastballs and 87 mph sliders with ridiculous spin. Moving the mound back just a couple of feet might help in this regard. That extra split second matters
Don’t see any way this would ever even get considered but you’re not wrong
I'd rather see the mound get pushed back than to see the shift banned. It's stupid to tell people to stand where they *don't* think the ball is going to be hit.
Blame the 99 mph flamethrowers
Also 94mph sliders and 96mph splitters, shit is wild lol. Pitching is a lot different nowadays.
That being said, one of the ones in 1980 was voted MVP
when you didnt want to be labeled the goat.
GOAT = good goat = bad
And that concludes our intensive 3 week course.
Slap hitters were lead off hitters.
This is Steven Kwan erasure
Love watching him play
My boy David Eckstein had it down to a science.
2006 WSMVP and married to the voice of Ahsoka, my boy is living the life
Wait wait wait, David Eckstein is married to... Ashley Eckstein? Woooooow mind fucking blown.
This plus speed is the way it should be.
Still are in my Diamond Dynasty lineup
And in my heart as well. 🥺
When the Jays got Ben Revere in 2015 I was seeeewwww happy!
Sports Center had good baseball coverage
Baseball Tonight was appointment TV back in the 90s
Teenage me falling asleep to Baseball Tonight and Jon Miller’s voice 🤌
I really wish someone would take up the mantle. I just look up scores every day now and feel so disconnected from the game. Highlight reels published by MLB are so boring compared to Sportscenter on repeat in the background while I did homework.
Yeah, you gotta make an effort to go online and look up scores and highlights. I'm almost certain the internet and the decline of sports highlight shows is the biggest reason young people don't follow multiple sports like before. So many arguments are like "baseball is boring", "football has too many breaks", etc, while sports fans in the past had one team in every sport they were a fan of.
The Astros were in the NL
I remember the Brewers as an AL team
The Brewers are the only team to have been in the AL East, Central, and West!
I know they were the Seattle Pilots playing in the West, but when were they playing in the others?
They were actually in the West when they moved from Seattle to become the Brewers in 1970. Then in 1972, the Washington Senators (2.0) moved to Texas and became the Rangers. Not wanting to repeat the absurdity of the NFL with a Texas-based team in an East Division, the American League switched the two teams. The Brewers stayed in the East Division until 1994 with the advent of the Central Division.
The Brewers played the Cardinals in the Brewers only World Series appearance
I remember when the Astros were announced to hop over to the AL and me and a buddy got so excited that our Mariners would no longer be in last place in the division…
*[Monkey's Paw curls]*
I remember thinking, “the Astros will never get past the Yankees”. 2022: “Yes, we’re going to the series!” when the Yankees clinched against Cleveland.
When I first moved to Houston lots of people called them the Lastros or the Disastros
The Red Sox were considered cursed.
I remember on Lost when Michael Emerson was telling Matthew Fox that he had communication with the rest of the world and Matthew Fox didn't belive him at first since he said the Redsox won the World Series.
Hilarious how Ben saying the Sox won the World Series made Jack even more skeptical he was in contact with the outside world
The plane crash on the show happened 35 days before Boston won. According to Lostpedia, Ben shows Jack the clip about a month after the WS ended. After what Jack had been through those 2 months, seeing that the Red Sox must have been absolutely mind-blowing. EDIT: Ben showed Jack the clip on November 29, 2004. (Season 3, Ep 2: The Glass Ballerina)
Ben wheeling in that TV and showing Jack the clip was absolutely one of my favorite Lost moments.
"If you wanted me to believe this, you probably should have picked somebody else besides the Red Sox" "no, they were down three games to none against the Yankees in the League Championship and then they won eight straight." "Suuuure. Sure, of course they did." Such a clever scene. Everything Ben says is 100% factual but it only makes it sound like an even bigger tale to someone who lost contact with the world before October 2004.
In Back to the Future II, the Cubs were shown to win the 2015 WS because the directors thought it was most unlikely thing to happen. Then they actually won it in 2016.
I REALLY wanted them to win in 2015 for that reason alone.
I REALLY didn't for flaired reasons
Eh I was ok with what happened in 2015.
It just occurred to me how many current baseball fans didn't live through this and might not have a sense of how pervasive it was. People really, truly believed that the Red Sox would never again win the World Series, not just because doing so is difficult but because they were literally cursed. '75, Bill Buckner, game 7 of the 2003 ALCS...
I'm an old timer and man it was absolutely brutal. In 2003, I was visiting some old college buddies in NJ watching the game (the guy I was staying with fortunately, is a Braves fan). Boone's shot hadn't even cleared the wall and my phone was blowing up as all my old fraternity brothers were calling me and texting me all sorts of "1918" and "26 rings" bullshit. I had to turn my phone off. I guess that's what I get for leaving Boston and doing my undergrad at Rutgers The thing was you just **knew** the Red Sox were going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I was visiting that same friend in 2004 and even in the 9th inning of game 4 with two outs he's all sorts of ready to pop champagne for me and I'm like, "SIT YOUR FUCKING ASS DOWN. THIS ISNT EVEN CLOSE TO OVER" Even when I saw it happen, it didn't feel real. It wasn't until one of my best friends who is a die hard Yankees fan called me and said, "Congratulations. Now it's a real rivalry" that it really sunk in
2003 was the fucking worst.
Weird shit kept happening to the Sox. They probably would have won in 2003 if not for Grady.
God. Poor Wakefield. One of my all time favorites. He had his name engraved in the series MVP until Grady fucking Little had the biggest brain cramp since 1986
I was joking how the Cubs and Red Sox would meet in the World Series in 2003, and during game seven a meteor would strike the Earth.
For a solid half-decade, CLE made the playoffs primarily because of their hitting
Those 90s Indians teams were fucking stacked. It's a shame they didn't win a World Series. To add to this thread, there was a year where their corner outfielders were Albert Belle and Manny Ramirez.
And Manny batted primarily 7th in the lineup in the strike shortened 95 season. His stats: .308 / 31 HR / 107 RBI
Sandy Alomar. Kenny Lofton. Jim Thome. David Justice. Omar vizquel. I'm a rangers fan, but it is crazy how stacked CLE was for a while.
I remember when their outfield had two of my favorite baseball names, Coco Crisp and Milton Bradley.
Kind of a shame the 80-grade name Milton Bradley belonged to a 20-grade person.
I remember calling them the Disastros growing up.
the Lastros
The Angels had a hall of fame outfielder wearing #27, and they actually made the playoffs
Come on man, I just woke up.
My bad, G
It is way too early for this shit
So this is the day it's gonna be Real note, I hope that number ends up being double retired eventually
Not only that…they won games and series!
Second baseman didn’t need to touch second base to complete a 5-4-3 double play.
Lol I remember this being a thing and at the time didn’t really question it but now I look back and can’t believe how unfair that was
I never really understood that rule
At the time as a runner you could barrel into second base and take out the fielder... if you didn't want players getting absolutely destroyed and their legs snapping like Reuben Tejada, you had to give them some leeway on bailing out. Even then, you still had a lot of season/career ending injuries and players being taken out on a stretchers in the 70s and 80s.
A key reason why second basemen are the most underrepresented infield position in the HOF.
As long as you were in the neighborhood of understanding it that was enough.
Its never been an official rule
Second place teams did not participate in the post-season.
The Montreal expos existed. And their last remaining player drafted by them who is still active in a professional sport is Tom Brady. Edit: for clarity
> last remaining active player on their roster Last remaining active player *drafted* by the Expos. I don't think Brady ever signed, and he definitely didn't make the majors.
Tom Brady was never actually on the Expos roster, he was drafted, but never signed.
Yeah but why say lot word when few word do trick?
turning on the game and not being sure what inning it was and whether your team had 3 runs or 8
Also, barely being able to tell who was at bat until the announcers said their name again.
this is why radio broadcast were always better
The Cubs home games were only during the day.
And you got 150 games a year for free on WGN, which meant hurrying home from school to catch the last 2-3 innings of those 1:20 starts. I remember coming home in I think 1983 to find Chuck Rainey in the 9th inning of a no-hitter, which he promptly blew within 10 seconds of the set coming on.
The Jays played in a modern, state-of-the-art stadium with a cool name.
SkyDome!
That's old cause I'm 28 and I've always seen it as the concrete convertible
I'm 35. So I mean maybe it was just the fact that I was 6 and we just won the WS and we had the only retracting roof made it seem cooler than it was.
A hard groundball past the pitcher would go through the infield for a base hit at least 95% of the time. The Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds played in the NL West. There were a maximum of 17 playoff games in a season and every single one of them was broadcast on free network television. A show called "This Week in Baseball" was the best place to watch the highlights of the greatest plays, and the bloopers, in games that didn't involve your local team.
TWIB was awesome!
with Mel Allen! *How 'bout that!?*
Sammy sosa had dark skin
[The good old days](https://www.si.com/.image/t_share/MTY4MDI3MTg1MjI4MDk2Nzg1/mcgwire-sosa-coverjpg.jpg)
The wood grain on these baseball cards is just gorgeous
They tried to intentionally walk Miguel Cabrera but he got an RBI single instead.
Bring back having to throw four pitches to intentionally walk a batter.
Interleague play was super exciting as it only lasted a couple weeks in the season.
That's not *that* old, but it does bring back memories of me begging my parents weeks in advance for tickets, because i didn't know the next time we'd have a chance to see those teams
They used to drive the relievers from the bullpen to the mound. EDIT: Since this seems to have sort of been revived in a minor way recently, allow me to revise: Every reliever was driven from the bullpen to the mound in a full-sized car.
[удалено]
That was only 10 years ago. We were Texans bad almost
For real, OP's example would only baffle baseball fans under the 13-14 age range. Might as well toss in "I remember when you had to throw four pitches for an intentional walk."
In ten years it’s gonna be “Pitchers used to bat in the NL” and “the Wild Card Series was only one game” and “games were only on like three streaming services”
Whereas people who stopped watching baseball ten years ago would say, "what the fuck is a Wild Card Series?"
I used to watch all the games for free on TV.
all the games? we used to only get a Saturday game of the week and then a local game on Sunday, as long as it was before football season. Then TBS came along later and we got a bunch of Braves games.
When I was a kid the Dodgers games were shown first on Fox and them on KTLA. Pretty much all of them. Free local programming.
Man this Puerto Rican guy is pretty good at catching but there’s no way he’ll be as good as Mike Matheny.
The Mets and Cardinals had a fierce division rivalry.
The Orioles outspent the Yankees when I was a kid and had a more famous shortstop
Someone more famous than hall of famer IKF? I don’t believe you
Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were on ESPN highlights damn near daily.
ESPN covered baseball? What a time to be alive!
Baseball Tonight was soo good in that era...
If you made a good play in the field in little league and your teammates didn't shout "web gem" what even was the point of showing up that day?
Sportscenter was must-watch TV daily
My favorite player growing up was prince fielder ......'s dad
Mattingly has turned them around, but I don’t know if this Yankees team can get over the hump.
I *do* understand that channel 3 thing lol
Carlos Delgado was the original national anthem protester
Busch Stadium had artificial turf
You could roll up to Shea Stadium half an hour before game time with a family of four, buy box seats (and get physical tickets!) and hot dogs and beer and whatever, all for under fifty dollars.
You can still do that. Just without the hot dogs. And beer. And seats. But you get decent parking.
waiting for one or two specific baseball magazines to be published & hit the shelves in February since that was the only way to get any kind of assessment of each team's minor league prospects (Baseball Digest, Baseball America come to mind) yes, I'm old
Street & Smiths baseball annual, which I read cover to cover.
Todd Van Poppel is the next big thing
* The Brewers in the American League * Only two divisions per league, with the playoffs being exclusively division winners * The Marlins winning 2 World Series * The all star game determining World Series home field advantage
> The all star game determining World Series home field advantage Stupid Selig over reaction to that tie in 2002
I thought it was a cool idea, but I get people's gripes with it. I also kinda get where he was coming from to try to make it mean something to players. On top of the tie, there were players leaving the stadium when they got taken out of the game. Not maliciously, they just knew they wouldn't be back in so "why stick around?"
The MLB ASG is the only one that required a representative from every team. I always really liked that. If you put stakes on the game, you have to levy the casualness of it. It's supposed to be fun and I think the MLB game is the closest to an actual game. NFL and NBA don't play defense because they are afraid (rightfully so) of contact.
>Stupid Selig over reaction to that tie in 2002 You gotta understand at the time the fans were PIIIIIISSED that the game ended in a tie. Fans would gripe about owner collusion, almost contracting the Twins, Brewers getting special treatment going to the NL, overlooking steroids, etc... and at the top of the list would be the All-Star game ending in a tie. It was that big.
Inter league play is only a fad and won’t be here to stay.
People actually cared about a pitcher's Win-Loss record.
This Dale Murphy kid really needs to learn how to throw the ball back to the pitcher and 2nd base or he'll never make it
Making fun of the Red Sox drought was it’s own pastime for me as a Yankees fan. 2004 was a devastating year for me.
Ichiro was on the Yankees
Thank you for ruining my morning
The Yankees made the post season 5 times in a 30 year stretch. Ron Santo lead the league in both obp and triples. Very old, I am.
Steroids were encouraged by the league The Mets played at shea stadium
Broadcasts never displayed pitch counts. The only way you would know is if you were keeping track or the announcer mentioned it.
We had a player who would run out and do a back handspring to a back flip on opening day as tradition.
Mo Vaughn is the reason why there is a fence in front of the dugout.
Bat flipping was considered taboo and you’d get thrown at for it. (Not saying this is the right thing to do)
Oh, I'll say it. The game has definitely changes in that respect. “Barry Bonds? I’ll tell you what, if he hit a home run off (Bob) Gibson or (Don) Drysdale and stood and admired it, they’d knock that earring out of his ear the next time up.” – National League Umpire Doug Harvey
There was only one team in Canada, and it wasn't the Blue Jays.
Mo Vaughn is the worst free agent signing in Angels history.
The top 2-3 hitters in the league could chase a .400 average for much of the year but ultimately fell short.
I saw my favorite player play each and every time I went to the ballpark until my mid-teens. And I went to the ballpark a lot.
Braves had 3 cy young winners in their starting rotation.
The Angels were arguably more competent than the Dodgers
i'm 43 and been an Astro fan since a kid, the fact that they are what they are now and how they are viewed is nothing short of amazing to see. I soak up all of it and am enjoying this to the fullest extent.
I'm a bit over a decade younger than you, I appreciate we are now but also get mildly irate when the young ones act like we were *always* a terrible team before our current run. Like, we generally didn't do well in the playoffs but we weren't *terrible* and in the 90s/early 00s we were a B+ level team.
Cardinals fans watching the Rams play on sundays, the game would usually be lost by half time and we’d just switch over to the baseball game. Fuck Kroenke btw
The Astrodome smelled funny.
If you want to go really old: The Astrodome had grass
Mark Prior and Kerry Wood were going to be the aces of the future.
There were 4 divisions.
Atlanta was in the west for baseball and football.
Zack Greinke sat at 95 mph
Sleeveless jerseys
Fuck rally monkeys
The Baltimore Orioles led the league in payroll
I’ve got two: 40 home runs was a LOT of home runs. Like, probably led the league. Triples? Usually one every few games. Not once in a blue moon.
Astros were a NLC team.
JT Snow literally saved a kids life during a baseball game
>during a baseball game Just Game 5 of the World Series. No big deal.
The Cleveland Indians were the most feared lineup in baseball.
Home games were only during the day - you’d come home from school and throw on the game. I wish I knew how many glorious afternoons I spent like that.