Be Honest With Yourself
Reading a lot of nonsense lately on social media about all these baseball fans who are quitting baseball over this latest blunder by the sport. Stop. No you aren’t. You like Summer don’t you? Everyone remember Summer? There is no Summer without baseball. Not for real baseball fans. I don’t care how much the game has change or how disillusioned you’ve gotten from the pompous billionaires fighting it out with the out of touch millionaires. When the weather gets warm and you’re driving around with the top down listening to the slow drawl of Jon Miller in the background and you drive by the ladies swooning to your knowing dude head nod, come on…..don’t tell me you’re giving that up.
Don’t tell me you’re giving up checking out box scores or hitting leaders in the morning paper.
Don’t tell me you aren’t belting out a “Fuck yeah!” and likely jumping off the couch after Yaz blasts a rocket into McCovey Cove.
Don’t tell me you’re giving up ballpark food. Not in the Summer time. There’s no victory in saying you didn’t eat a dog and some garlic fries in the Winter. But see how long you last in the Summer giving that shit up cold turkey.
This is like all the people who said they were quitting the NFL over players kneeling. LOL, no you didn’t. NFL ratings broke records this year.
Look, i get it. It’s not the same game we grew up with.
But you aren’t quitting it.
You just aren’t.
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
well said.
Speaking of Wilmet…would Giants benefit by signing a power hitting DH like Schwarber or do they already have enough of them (Flores Ruf)? Outside of Suzuki, what RH bat best fits what Kap likes to do with platooney lineup?
I don’t know about giving it up completely. But definitely not gonna be spending money. This got me thinking about alternatives, there are a couple of independent league teams around. And there’s also college. I love baseball, but MLB isn’t the only game in town.
Noticed couple Baffert trained horses (ineligible for Derby points) running in San Felipe tomorrow. One is ridden by Flavien Prat the other by John Velasquez, and Juan Hernandez has early favorite.
cbs story said there were 4 owners who voted against their own proposed $220 mil CBT, which was rejected by players. What? any agreement that eventually gets reached can be nullified if 8 of them vote against it. yikes
Can’t get away from Manfred’s Frankenstein, even at the minor league level. So, I guess I’ll just have to adjust to all the changes. Still, Manfred/Selig and the franchise owners have pissed me off in a huge way, but yeah you right Flav, hard to give up the game itself.
Financially, emotionally and historically, I’ve been very heavily invested into the Giants, but lately Charles Johnson is making me rethink that dedication. Yep, I’ve been thinking I should root for some different laundry
.
A majority of the owner’s politics are opposite from mine (Charles Johnson is at the top of that list), but in vetting them I found 4 team owners that politically might be closer to my own way of voting. the Orioles, Twins, Nationals and Brewers.
The Orioles? Baltimore is 5 1/2-6 hours away, I like the city and it’s a nice ballpark, the team’s colors are orange and black. After 110 loss season I’m sure they could use some fans Still, I think Angelos is a dickhead and I really don’t like Cal Ripken.
The Twins? Never been to a game there but the few times I’ve been in Minneapolis, both for playing music or for work, I’ve had a great time. The roast beef sandwich at Mayslack’s polka lounge is good eats and I hear helicopters are fair game for skeet shooting.
The Nationals? Like Baltimore is relatively close by and we go to DC a few times a year as it is. Mainly been to ball games when the Giants are in town, but I like the ballpark and have hit a few other games (including opening day). My neighbors are all Nats fans, and they are considered my local team, so the games are broadcast on regular TV. Goodbye MLBTV subscription.
The Brewers? Quite the switch from Selig to Attanasio ownership wise. Never been to the stadium but had a blast whenever I played in the city. Their low A team, the Mudcats, are in Zebulon NC just 2 1/2 hours from me (no shit, Zebulon). I pass it when I go up to the Duke medical center in Durham (been meaning to check out a Bulls game sometime when I’m in Durham).
I don’t know if I’ll pull the trigger on this and not sure I could root against the Giants. Hmm, maybe just rooting for individual players would be the way for me to go although right now they’d mostly be Giants. I don’t know, I imagine it would be a long process if I do go through with it.
Sorry for the long post, almost didn’t post it, but it is something that has been bubbling in my mind lately so here it is.
It honestly is pretty fucking funny that the owners are gonna lock the doors rather than concede anything.
I suppose being a cutthroat assclown got them where they are. But hey, if baseball goes away, there’s plenty of other shit to do. Maybe not in St Looie or Milwaukee, but that ain’t my problem.
The fact that Manfred can stand up in front of people and cry poverty for the owners is absolutely ludicrous. He should get an academy award for best actor in a comedy because they don’t release their numbers, they aren’t in baseball for nothing other than a big fat write-off. They hold cities hostage for stadiums, screw the fans on merch, tickets, and concessions, and they could give a rat’s ass about the game.
Fuck ’em all. I’m kinda hoping they screw the pooch and the game disappears. Ol’ Charlie can stop bothering with the pretense he’s not a card-carrying authoritarian-supporting greed-head asshole.
That’s the fighting spirit Flavor! Great Post!
If your all sick and tired of the greedy owners and players, I recommend a simpler time of baseball in a movie called “Glorious Basterds of Baseball” on Netflix maybe others.A story of a former TV actor named Bing Russell ( who u might know his son more Kurt Russell, Tombstone) who ends up purchasing a independent baseball(Portland Renegades?) team up in Oregon in the late 70’s for cheap scratch.Fellow Owners hated him same with MLB and even his hometown fans thought he was nuts and just a publicity hound from Hollywood, but he loved the game growing up and had the fire in his belly after his acting days were winding down.
Kurt Russell was even on the team for a year, and Jim Bouton(Ball Four) pitched for the team to try an reclaim his past big league success.Highly 2 Flaps under the armpits rating to enjoy 😉from a guy who bucked the system back in the days..
I thought it was a fun movie.
Baseball is still the greatest game on the planet IMO. I am just not as invested as I used to be and probably never will be again. I had planned to go to a few Emerald’s games up here and never made it to any. I am an unofficial caregiver to a family member and couldn’t seem to get away for the 5/6 hours it would have taken. Hopefully this year I get some help with that. I did keep up with em online and we had some pretty good prospects come through up here. As long as the games are played I will be interested. Not a gambler so that doesn’t affect me.
Baseball is a beautiful game, always will be. Profiteering is ugly, always will be with us. When the Magowan-led investors saved the Giants for SF in 92, they invested for profit. The other owners had just staged a corporate coup, installed Selig as CEO, and launched a new approach to profiteering. Small-time owner Lurie had been unable to get a ballpark built; the new group of high-octane billionaires (including originally Fisher — remember the GAP signs on the OF fence? — who now rakes it in as skinflint owner of the a’s) knew that they could get a ballpark built. The result was resurgence: a “great franchise,” once again, and cetera and cetera. And didn’t we enjoy it?
And you know it’s always been this way — the beautiful game with the ugly flip side. Everyone celebrates the integration of mlb with 42 day; no one much considers the fact that mlb’s calculated predation put the Negro Leagues out of business. Soaring homers and dazzling shutouts allow us to ignore the ugly side for a while. I’m sure I’ll watch every game this year, and I plan to hop on the ferry at Jack London Square and take in a few day games at the park, too. But I won’t forget who’s taking my money.
My daughter took this the other day in Shalamar Gardens in Lahore:
https://tinyurl.com/3s9ervjs
Nice finish on that swing.
Wow…
Prat might be next. He runs the show down there but I heard he’s sick of 6 horse fields. If it’s not him i bet another major name jumps ship. So Cal racing is going down the tubes
I don’t know how GGF stays in business…
i’ve said this many times before, you walk outside of GGF and you see the most beautiful sights in the world. The land has to be worth 1 billion dollars alone
I attended a youth basketball game recently. It was terrible. Players hurling up brick after brick from beyond the three-point line. My thought after the game was that basketball has been officially ruined.
Lots of great posts on the Flap today, starting with BF’s main post.
I miss the Spring Training games. I like watching some of those from around the league. Hearing all the broadcasters wax eloquent and hopeful about their team’s chances this season. That was always a fun lead-up to the regular season.
The season preview magazines are out now, but I haven’t gotten any yet. I’m just not enthused about reading those yet.
The NFL saying they’re “done with Covid” could be a disaster if Covid isn’t done with THEM.
As of right now, Covid is still killing 2,000 people a day in the U.S., which means a 9/11 death-count every day and a half. In a few weeks the Covid death-count total in the U.S. will reach one million.
Still a lot of unvaxxed people out there.