Slow moving bat and ball games are in the news a bit right now with the opening of the baseball season and the World Cup of cricket, (Played in-between floods in Bangladesh) so I'm inspired to talk about those right now.
There's something to be said about a non-clocked, non-contact sport of individual duels, where every player by rule gets an opportunity to play the hero, where the playing field can be quite variable, where there is relatively little controversial officiating. But holy hell... how can there be 160+ games in 180 days? Are they crazy? Sure the players may not be so taxed physically, but doesn't that diminish the games too much? I guess it's a feature of the sport coming into its own before powerful players unions. (Much like hockey with its enormous schedule)
Baseball is painfully slow, but part of that is a feature of the contemplative nature of the sport where players aren't rushed or timed. Still, they should be able to speed it up a little as it certainly lasts longer than it did in its classic era, so something changed. If it's so important to let the catcher and pitcher walk over and chat, and let the batter leave the box when he feels like it, then maybe they could just drop an inning instead. Unfortunately, given the extended innings and check downs required to prevent base stealing; exciting offense actually makes the game longer, whereas defense makes it shorter.
The Toronto Blue Jays played their opening home games today at the Skydome. The home opener drew a capacity crowd of 47,000+ and even the follow-up pulled in about 27,000. It hasn't been THAT long since the Masoleumdome drew that many people to a regular season sporting event, but if it held up it would be a good sign for the previously free falling Blue Jays. (They also seem to hit a lot of home runs, which probably helps them draw crowds)
They played twice in quick succession against a team, (The Minnesota Twins) notable mostly for nearly moving from their home because of stadium problems until the state government decided to buy them a new stadium paid for by the residents of the twin cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul) who were not as enthused about paying to keep them, but didn't get a say.
On the other hand, this was their former home:
I don't see what the problem is. The Jays played in snow when they debuted.
Baseball nostalgia in the US usually brings forth images of 1900-1960; an old-timey turn of the century countryside pastime when men who grew up on farms played the games and wore hats, (See
The Natural) morphing into an urban post-war somewhat integrated sport.
While you may think its funny that baseball can be a nostalgic thing in Canada even though we've only had major league teams since 1976; it's not. I don't mean because our nostalgia lenses are colored by collector Coca-Cola cans from the first of two back-to-back World series, but rather that changing style have made the nineties and eighties seem very far away in the past indeed:
Check out that haircut. Don't see too many of those anymore.But I was actually a bit surprised to find out in my reading that Baseball actually had a long and vibrant history in Canada even prior to Major League expansion here. Rounders/Cricket had morphed into a 5 base, 11 man Canadian baseball game here in the mid 19h century which lost favor to American style rules.
Baseball's Toronto Maple Leafs were founded in 1896 predating the other Maple Leafs by decades. (Also, look at that date --this is as old as our hockey and football teams) Canada only had minor league teams for the first century of baseball, playing against southern neighbors unlike our football teams who crossed the country playing each other and are probably better remembered for being a 'lesser' pro league than minor league teams without their own distinct Canadian heritage.
There were actually a lot of baseball stadiums around where I live. There was an old stadium on the Toronto Islands called Hanlan's Point Stadium, another one called Maple Leaf Stadium near where the Tip-Top building is located, (A baseball diamond and park remain there today) the old Exhibition Stadium which was shared with the Argonauts was where BMO field is now;
AKA Exhibit 1 on why multipurpose stadiums aren't so great.
Which brings us to the Skydome which still stands not too much further from where I live. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that so many stadia were downtown in Toronto, or near exhibition grounds and tourist attractions... but I don't think this concentration would be the case in many other cities.
Because I like to feature terrible games; check out this attempt to replicate a famous moment in the 1988 World Series game one where a player nursing two injured legs bats the winning homerun. Seeing as how MLB doesn't like Youtube putting up clips of their copyrighted material, this was made using the 8-bit RBI game from Nintendo:
I think it may lose something in the translation.
