FanNation - The Republic of Sport

Great Work. I don't think I've heard it better anywhere else. Too bad you're not a Dodgers fan.

Gary Jules would be proud.

Got to agree that baseball is indeed a strange sport. One season you are the World Series champs and the next season you can't even smell the postseason.

Thanks, Hawkdriver.

No other sport provides the ups, downs, disappointments and heartbreaks, because no other sport is as vulnerable to dumb luck as baseball.

Now we didn't need Dane Cook to tell us that, did we?

You trying to get Rick Reilly's job? Well written, it shows that whatever you do for a living, you should write on at least a part-time basis.

Thanks, PK, you've found me out. I'm in advertising.

Enjoyed this thorougly. Maybe I can send this to some of my football fanatic friends that think the NFL was handed down from the gods. (I love the NFL to, but the MLB pwns)

I think the game is so damn nearly perfect that it withstands assaults from mad-dog owners, superstar divas, drug-abusers, blind commissioners, and just about everyone else. It just keeps going and going.

I watched "Field of Dreams" with my 8-yr. old son (pictured left!) the other night. There's a line near the end about how throughout our modern history, the one constant has been baseball. There's something to that.

Excellent work. I agree...you should be doing this and getting money for it. I love football, but at the moment, I feel like we're heading for an anti-climactic playoff run by either the Colts or the Pats and they'll thrash whatever the NFC offers up as its sacrificial lamb. In baseball, I may be crazy and just bitter that the Red Sox are in the series, but I really think the Rockies have a chance to pull this thing off.

This was great fun to read. You were perfect on everything. And I agree. How can't you? Love your blogs, man.

Kind words, all. Very much appreciated.

It's just a wonder to me that baseball works exactly the same way now as it did 100 years ago, and all the king's horses and all the king's men can't do a damn thing about it.

Last stat:
Top batting average in 1875: .367
Top batting average in 2000: .372

I mean, you just can't make this stuff up.

Great stuff,
I think the only real difference though is the sheer # of games played, but I think that plays into the magic of the game itself. Being a former college FB player I would think it is completely possible to have a play-off system for college FB that would include all confrences, and that may give that sport some greater parity, but then again it just comes down to the number of games played. No way a ny person could live through 160+ games of football in a year and ever walk upright. Hence, since your talking of a different beast, I think you hit the nail on the head for BB, but not so much for the improvement of parity for FB. All in All a fantastic arguement and I only wish my pt. load would've been down some this week so I could've read it sooner!!!

Hey, kbrin.

The number of games is a factor. But look at basketball, which plays an 80+ game regular season, and still has teams that win more than 75% of their games. No baseball team has ever done anything close to that. It's the nature of the game; it just resists every genius who thinks he's got it figured.

And with regard to football, I agree that a 16-game season is a small sample, and that's why a team can win 90% of more of their games. But there are multiple rounds of playoffs, and the wild card teams just don't get through them. There is a much greater difference in quality across the NFL than in baseball. Again, it's the nature of the game.

You can load up a football or basketball team and greatly increase your odds of winning. But do what you will with a baseball team, and the gods will be laughing at you all summer.

OK...ONE more stat to prove my point.

The 1961 and 1998 Yankees both won about 70% of their regular season games, the highest winning percentages in 125 years of recorded professional baseball.

But in the last 40 years, five NBA teams have won over 80% (including a ridiculous .878 95-96 Bulls team), and many more have won more than 70% of their regular season games. That's an 80-game season, not a short NFL schedule.

She's a slippery and elusive little minx, she is.

Good Blog

Thanks, Stumpy.