Just Because You're Old Doesn't Mean You Can Write Ridiculous Stuff

I wrote this a while back on Baseball Fever in response to a Furman Bisher article I thought was stupid. I'm re-printing it here.

Baseball used to be a game played with nine men to a side, two managers, four umpires

No it didn't. At least not always. For quite a while there were only two umpires. Sometimes even just one. But then they changed it to four, and it's been that way ever since. Except sometimes in the playoffs, when there are six. And it's still never more than nine on each team at once (well, kind of... the DH could be interpreted as a tenth player, but you never have more than nine in the lineup and nine in the field). And why are you mentioning the managers?

...and the major-league season always opened in Cincinnati. Come to think of it now, that would be sort of like “Gone With the Wind” opening in Valdosta.

Never having seen or read Gone With the Wind, I'm not sure what this means. I did a Wikipedia search on both the book and the movie, and the word "Valdosta" never appeared in either. So color me confused.

EDIT: I see that Valdosta is a town in Georgia. But there's still nothing about Gone With the Wind in the Wikipedia page on Valdosta, Georgia.

EDIT 2: SamtheBravesFan tells me that the opening of Gone With the Wind takes place in Atlanta. Which allows me to say this: Gone With the Wind opens in Atlanta because that's the way the author made it. If Gone With the Wind opened anywhere but Atlanta, it would be wrong. Because it's a book. Books don't change. Major League Baseball does. Simple as that.

But Cincinnati had a deal, see.

Was it an official deal? In writing? If not, then you come across as the whiny snitch in an old gangster movie. And nobody likes those guys.

The first “major league” baseball game was played in Cincinnati on June 1, 1869.

That is not true. The Cincinnati Red Stockings were the first all-professional team, but they did not play in an organized league. Therefore, calling their game the "first "major league" baseball game" is wrong. The first organized league began in 1871, not 1869. And Cincinnati didn't have a team.

The locals, the Red Stockings, eked out a 48-14 victory over Mansfield, whoever Mansfield was. So, several years ago — even the league office isn’t sure when — it became a custom that every major-league season opened in Cincinnati.

Maybe that's just because it was never an official policy.

Nobody played before the Red Stockings, now shortened to Reds.

EdTarbusz pointed it out earlier, but I'll repeat it. That is simply not true. Several years, there were teams playing before the Reds.

It just gets into a habit it likes and stays there.

So do drug addicts.

Well, not any longer. Money can change any habit.

Or lack thereof.

Eight springs ago the Mets and Cubs opened the season, not in Cincinnati.

As EdTarbusz pointed out, fifty-one springs ago, the Orioles and Senators opened the season, not in Cincinnati.

Guess where? Tokyo. That Tokyo, the guys who gave us Pearl Harbor. Some people don’t like you to bring that up, trade with Japan is so hot. But I’ve got a long memory. I saw what a few bombs can do to our property.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Furman Bisher, you are officially a xenophobic idiot. If I were Japanese, I could say something along the lines of "米国から、東京ドームはボストン・レッドソックスとオークランドAのものの間のゲームのサイトで した。 その米国、私たちに原子爆弾をくれた男たち． 何人かの人があなたがそれを持ち出すのを好きではなくて、米国との貿易がとてもホットです。 しかし私は長い記憶を持っています。 私は、数個の爆弾が何を私たちのプロパティ〔地所〕に与えることができるか見ました"

Or, in English, "The Tokyo Dome was the site of a game between the Boston Red Sox and Oakland A's, from the US. That US, the guys who gave us the atomic bomb. Some people don't like you to bring that up, trade with the US is so hot. But I've got a long memory. I saw what a few bombs can do to our property."

Oh, well, ‘scuse me. It’s just tough to get away from it when you turn on your TV in the morning there are the Boston Red Sox playing the Oakland A’s in the Tokyo Dome.

It's really not all that tough. Just don't turn on your TV if you don't want to watch what's on it.

Not only that, but the Red Sox pitcher is Daisuke Matsuzaka, who didn’t grow up in Wampole.

I'm assuming you mean Walpole, MA, a suburb of sorts of Boston. And you know who else didn't grow up there, or even in the state of Massachusetts? Anybody currently playing for the Red Sox except for Manny Delcarmen.

Yomiuri is not exactly the Chicago Tribune of Japanese baseball. Yomiuri owns several teams.

American teams did that too, when your fancy little pseudo-tradition of starting the season in Cincinnati supposedly originated.

The Tribune owns only one team, and that team hasn’t been in a World Series since World War II. (Sorry to have to bring that up again.)

Yeah, because MLB has a rule against it. And what does this have to do with anything? Apologising for it doesn't make it fit anywhere in the article.

Yomiuri’s team has been the Yankees of Japan, and I’m not sure, but I think they call themselves the Giants.

That's a really, really lame dig at Japanese baseball. The "I'm not sure" and "they call themselves" show your ignorance of global baseball, and hints at xenophobia.

They no longer play a Hall of Fame game in Cooperstown.

It seems like the only time people care about it is when it's about to go. 2007: Who is Oscar Salazar, and why is he playing in the Hall of Fame Game? Heck, why do we even have this thing anyway? It's turned into a joke. 2008: There won't be a Hall of Fame Game? BLASPHEMOUS! Tradition is ruined! Bud Selig is awful!

Am I the only one who's noticing this?

The All-Star Game ends when the commissioner says it’s time to go home, even if the score is tied.

That happened once. Six years ago. And this is about the stupidest reason why people don't like Bud Selig there is. 1) Both teams ran out of pitchers. That is why the game ended. 2) The game is an EXHIBITION! Using pitchers for more than their usual amount (and thereby risking injury/overuse) for the sake of continuing the game would be far less preferable to what really matters -- the MLB season. What would you prefer: Option A) Freddy Garcia pitches for the AL until the game ends, potentially a very long time, which would then cause him to miss his turn in the rotation, possibly messing up the Mariners' rotation, or Option B) The game (which means nothing) ends after 11 innings, and nothing that matters is upset. I'll take Option B every day. And what is the point of the All-Star game anyway? To see which league is "superior"? The Orioles beat the Yankees once or twice last season, and I'd be willing to bet they'd do the same sometime in this season. Then they'd be "superior", right?

World Series games start about my bedtime.

Dude, you go to bed waaaaaaaay too early. But to play along with your game, when would you prefer? 1 PM ET? What if you're in LA? Then the game starts at 10 AM PT, and you'd be lucky to watch it. Heck, if I'm not in school, I'm rarely awake by 10 AM. 4 PM ET? Yeah, because everyone can watch it then. Maybe 7 PM ET? People on the West Coast would have trouble seeing it. 8 PM ET is about the earliest it can be on the West Coast, and the latest on the East Coast. Simple as that.

The schedule is so jacked around that the Braves open the season with a one-game “series” in Washington, where a new ball park is being opened.

So? If the Braves don't mind, why do you?

It would be my guess that in Japan, emperors don’t throw out first balls, or even have any kind of presence at such a sweaty game.

Japan is not the US. Don't expect them to follow the same traditions. Again, this is showing hints of xenophobia.

I saw a game in the Tokyo Dome once, but it was more dome-shaped then. It now appears to have gone oblong to oblige the new long-ball society.

"Dome-shaped". Is that even a shape? Domes can be oblong, can't they? But home runs are bad, because that's not how Mickey Mantle did it. Oh, wait...

Managers are interchangeable, it seems. Bobby Valentine is still managing a team in Japan, and Trey Hillman, who managed five seasons in Japan, is now managing the Kansas City Royals, which, on the surface, appears to be a demotion.

HAHAHAHAHAH you're not funny. What is the point of this line?

So that’s where major-league baseball stands today, geographically. Not here in the USA, not in Cincinnati, not even in Kauai, but on the other side of the International Dateline.

Or the same side of the International Date Line (not the NBC show that's on four nights a week), if you're going east.

Heaven only knows where it’s headed next.

I'd imagine Bud Selig has a pretty good idea, too.

They tell me they’re building a state of the Soviet stadium in Vladivostok,

Do you even know where Vladivostok is? I do. Not exactly optimal location for a baseball league. And again, referring to Russians as Soviets shows hints of xenophobia.

...complete with a video screen as high as the sky, and beer sales. Oh, I forgot tell you this about Cincinnati’s sin. The Red Stockings were expelled from the league in 1880 for selling beer at the park. Think of that!

I thought about it. That's an interesting fact, but how does it prove your point? If anything, it's against your point.