tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post6128825481018545262..comments2024-03-19T02:31:02.140-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: Baseball v. FootballUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-75198775413863331962009-10-17T14:02:03.245-07:002009-10-17T14:02:03.245-07:00Didn't that Carlin bloke beat you to it? Oh wa...Didn't that Carlin bloke beat you to it? Oh wait TGGP beat me to it... Damn.<br /><br />"But, among position players, one will still find men who aren't unusually tall, muscular, or fast. I suppose the paradigmic example among current players is Padres second baseman David Eckstein, who is reported to be about 5'6", 155 pounds.<br /><br />Eleven stone sounds pretty beefy for a athletic (as opposed to fat) man of that height.<br /><br />" wonder if Japanese love baseball because of their samurai tradition and also because the minimalist zen-aspect to the duel between the pitcher and the hitter. The ideal in a samurai duel is to strike the opponent with ONE PERFECT BLOW. European broad sword fighting is about brute strength and quantity--like football--, but the samurai duel--and certain more elegant European dueling--is about psyching oneself(and psyching out the opponent)for that single moment of truth when you fell the opponent with a movement which is at once ruthless and graceful. "<br /><br />You have just repeated several samurai worshipping myths that I do not have time to destroy. Suffice to say the sword you think is called a broadsword isn't. Are you are one of those irritating grown men who really likes Japanese cartoons? <br /><br />"Real Samurai weren't very good swordsman and didn't have very good swords."<br /><br />If my memory serves me well I believe Bushido can be roughly translated to mean 'way of the bow and the horse' and there true expertise lies in those areas, in addition to lazing about painting and mooching off terrified peasants.NeameShepherdnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-84453270222819691092009-10-17T06:11:48.602-07:002009-10-17T06:11:48.602-07:00In a democratic society, this is legal.
Not if t...<i>In a democratic society, this is legal. </i><br /><br />Not if they already signed contracts committing to play for x amount of seasons.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18455089768621062922009-10-16T11:14:36.513-07:002009-10-16T11:14:36.513-07:00A little off-topic, but if you choose to take up t...A little off-topic, but if you choose to take up the question of the Rush Limbaugh scandal, then consider the following list of names at the Patterson Belknap Sports Group, which led the efforts to plant the disinformation on Rush's Wikipedia page:<br /><br />Saul B. Shapiro, Litigation<br />Daniel S. Ruzumna, Investigations<br />Daniel C. Glazer, Transactional<br />etc<br /><br />Notice any pattern emerging?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-4055014595762277782009-10-16T08:42:58.738-07:002009-10-16T08:42:58.738-07:00"Speaking of Rush, I wonder what everyone thi..."Speaking of Rush, I wonder what everyone thinks about the the black supremacist Playa's Union preventing him from engaging in a legitimate private transaction. Thoughts."<br /><br />No black person "prevented" Rush from doing anything. A few players simply said that they would not play for him if he were made an owner. In a democratic society, this is legal. Subsequently, the group assembled to buy the franchise dropped him the ownership group. Again in a democratic society, this is legal.<br /><br />Now Rush, in his inherent cowardlyness has not said one word of criticism to his "ex" business partners for dropping him. He knows that making enemies with these rich white men would have had consequences down the road; he has instead continued with his own tired diatribes against "the lib-ur-al me-dee-ah" and blacks.Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-50149312014453387432009-10-16T00:12:14.328-07:002009-10-16T00:12:14.328-07:00"There are "baseball-like" games th..."There are "baseball-like" games throughout the world: Google British baseball, rounders, Finnish baseball (pesäpallo), brännboll, lapta, oina, etc. These kinds of asymmetrical bat and ball games are very ancient and widespread."<br /><br />A lot of those are just regional variants on the anglo-american game. "Pesapallo" is very obviously just the English word Finnicized.<br /><br />"Boys still like it. When my son was between 18 months and four-years-old, he couldn’t step five feet out of the house without immediately picking up a stick and then brandishing it menacingly throughout his walk around the block."<br /><br />Hm. Take a stick, say two and a half to four feet long, two to six pounds or so, and swing it around for a few minutes. Then tell me it's just <i>boys</i> who like doing that. I realized some time ago that my prediliction for swinging a stick around was completely innate and pretty universal among human males; there's just something fun about it.<br /><br />That's why most men secretly think swords are more excellent than guns, and feel it is an unforunate trick on the part of reality to make guns so much more useful. A lot of people, falsely, think swords and guns appeal to men as phallic symbols, but the gun is much more phallic than a sword in appearance and function...so why was Star Wars, i.e. the triumph of futuristic laser-swords over futuristic laser-guns, such a huge hit? Because swords, clubs, light-sabers or whatever all agree with our instinct for the proper way of killing people. A sword is swung, as God intended. A gun is just...triggered.<br /><br />"Anthropologists discovered that nomads who make their living hunting big game and attacking their neighbors don’t actually work that hard."<br /><br />I think modern anthropologists were scooped, just a little bit, by a fellow named Tacitus.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-44347784208574859152009-10-15T19:54:38.319-07:002009-10-15T19:54:38.319-07:00Before you draw all sorts of conclusions based on ...<i>Before you draw all sorts of conclusions based on Samurai lessons be sure you are talking about real Samurai not just those seen in movies.</i><br /><br />What does "real" got to do with it? All that matter is the myth.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-591539026658631302009-10-15T18:13:53.316-07:002009-10-15T18:13:53.316-07:00Whiskey's Scotch-Irishness is showing again. ...Whiskey's Scotch-Irishness is showing again. The Normans, umm, were Vikings, who settled in France. Norman=Norseman/Northman. It was the Sassenach (Saxons, i.e., English of Anglo-Saxon stock) who fought against the Vikings.<br /><br />By the time William the Bastard showed up (that whole 1066 thing), Harald Hardrede was dead, and the whole kibosh had been put to the Viking era.<br /><br />But hey. That's not something most Scotch-Irish know, right?Hunsdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05188706369004532171noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-34143037390223092902009-10-15T16:53:53.939-07:002009-10-15T16:53:53.939-07:00Speaking of Rush, I wonder what everyone thinks ab...Speaking of Rush, I wonder what everyone thinks about the the black supremacist Playa's Union preventing him from engaging in a legitimate private transaction. Thoughts? Has something like this ever happened before?Concerned Netizennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56939916329552347062009-10-15T15:32:03.713-07:002009-10-15T15:32:03.713-07:00"Real Samurai weren't very good swordsman..."Real Samurai weren't very good swordsman and didn't have very good swords."<br /><br />Well that's the first time I've ever read that, and I've practiced Zen for 15 years.Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-72164244077212356722009-10-15T13:16:41.114-07:002009-10-15T13:16:41.114-07:00My buddy is a baseball nut and I had him over to w...My buddy is a baseball nut and I had him over to watch a football game and there was some oddball penalty that takes five minutes to explain and he was basically of the 'wtf?' attitude.<br /><br />My reply was that football is a highly regulated game for a highly regulated society.Evil Sandmichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06094558583013380137noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-60120748513501413782009-10-15T12:54:19.668-07:002009-10-15T12:54:19.668-07:00"If goal size were doubled in soccer, it woul...<i>"If goal size were doubled in soccer, it would cease to be 'the most popular sport in the world' since Germany would beat Japan 20-2than 2-0. And Brazil would probably beat Mexico 30-3."</i><br /><br />It's not the size of the goal in soccer that makes the game low-scoring, anymore than it's the size of the goal in hockey; it's the impossibility of advancing the ball or puck from one end of the field/rink to the other unmolested. For an example of how easy it is to score in either sport when shooters are unmolested, see penalty kicks/shots, where the odds are awfully against the goalies (particularly in the case of soccer goalies).Frednoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-20714980837549021992009-10-15T11:29:07.119-07:002009-10-15T11:29:07.119-07:00The ideal in a samurai duel is to strike the oppon...<i>The ideal in a samurai duel is to strike the opponent with ONE PERFECT BLOW. European broad sword fighting is about brute strength and quantity--like football</i><br /><br />Gasp! More Samurai nonsense. Before you draw all sorts of conclusions based on Samurai lessons be sure you are talking about real Samurai not just those seen in movies.<br /><br />Real Samurai weren't very good swordsman and didn't have very good swords.<br /><br />The Japanese are a remarkable people. Both Iran and Turkey tried to model their governments on Japan - but it was the Meiji they admired not those silly Samurai.<br /><br />The cult of the sword was a Tokugawa method of gun control. That need ended with the arrival of the Black Ships. Get over it.albertosaurushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13209465319904999278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-33935937641668308992009-10-15T11:23:21.160-07:002009-10-15T11:23:21.160-07:00"The English led the world in the development..."The English led the world in the development of sports precisely because they were so domestically well-ordered. "<br /><br />The English also had an obsession with the Greeks and Romans in the 19th century whick culminated, in regards to sports, with the founding of the modern Olympic Games. Back then the Americans did whatever the English did and sports grew in importance from there.Robertnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-20723466102424849432009-10-15T10:06:39.528-07:002009-10-15T10:06:39.528-07:00I find it interesting that the culture around foot...I find it interesting that the culture around football and baseball are so opposed to the essence of the games.<br /><br />In football strategy and planning matter for much much more. Watch Peyton Manning pick apart a defense because he can guess correctly on what the defense is going to do. On most teams this role is played by coaches. They guess what the defense will play in a certain circumstance and call in a plan with a primary and back up options to be executed by the local commander.<br /><br />Baseball, on the other hand, has basically no strategy outside of the duel between pitcher and hitter which is (almost) entirely between the hitter and pitcher. Ichiro on the Mariners has a plan and an approach at the plate but no one else on his team is involved. It's an individual contest.<br /><br />The culture around the sports almost the exact opposite. Football writers talk about individual players making great plays when the reason for the great play is almost always misdirection that the whole team executed that caused the other side to pick a bad tactic. Baseball writers talk about team character and chemistry when success is almost perfectly predictable from individual performance.<br /><br />Baseball has the reputation as the more cerebral game while football's reputation is that it's for knuckle-dragging meatheads and screaming proles but football requires much much more planning and intelligence to be successful.Steve Johnsonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-53763856003108155402009-10-15T08:57:39.565-07:002009-10-15T08:57:39.565-07:00For anyone with a microgram of testosterone in the...For anyone with a microgram of testosterone in their veins, there is no more exciting moment in sport than when a running back breaks free from the line, out into the open, for a long touchdown run. There's nothing like it in baseball.<br /><br />(OK, I lied, a knockout punch is almost as good, as are some dunks ;-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-75837883391487993032009-10-15T08:32:00.705-07:002009-10-15T08:32:00.705-07:00My son's youth league days left me with a firm...My son's youth league days left me with a firm impression: a crowd at a Little League game looks like a PTA meeting, a crowd at a Pop Warner game looks like visitors day at San Quentin.Dutch Boyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02687679491743923216noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-33962980279945369792009-10-15T07:14:26.083-07:002009-10-15T07:14:26.083-07:00"I wonder if baseball is the only game as asy..."I wonder if baseball is the only game as asymmetrical as this."<br /><br />Cricket has been around a lot longer than baseball has. It is also "asymmetrical". <br /><br />Baseball/rounders in England is where we get our version of baseball from. Baseball's "invention" in the USA is a myth; Google "rounders schmounders" and check out a book called "Baseball before we knew it". Our baseball is not derived from the English game of rounders; it is derived from the English game of baseball (right down to the "three strikes" rule). <br /><br />There are "baseball-like" games throughout the world: Google British baseball, rounders, Finnish baseball (pesäpallo), brännboll, lapta, oina, etc. These kinds of asymmetrical bat and ball games are very ancient and widespread.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-78356954909125980822009-10-15T04:15:05.065-07:002009-10-15T04:15:05.065-07:00unwashed masses and working class plebians play fo...<i>unwashed masses and working class plebians play football, rugby, and hockey.</i><br /><br />Not any more. Rugby is a sport for elite prep school kids, and has been in the US for a long time. Hockey is also very popular among the WASP set, especially women's hockey. Harvard and Yale still have competitive men's hockey teams as well. In general lower class whites rarely participate in organized team sports any more - other than football to which they are usually recruited by coaches - they have other ways to stay entertained.Peter Anoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-47343879291786937452009-10-15T01:27:38.334-07:002009-10-15T01:27:38.334-07:00Football is more like big band Jazz, marching band...Football is more like big band Jazz, marching band music, or rap music. It's loud and in your face and very competitive. <br />Baseball is more like classical music, with the pitcher as the conductor. No wonder they played 'take me out to the ballgame' in NIGHT AT THE OPERA. <br /><br />The funny thing about baseball is the asymmetry. In football, it's about 11 guys vs 11 guys. In a typical inning in baseball, it's one guy from team A at the bat while everyone else on the field(unless there are men on bases)is from team B. Everyone else on team A is in the dugout. I wonder if baseball is the only game as asymmetrical as this. The lone batter faces the numerous enemy. It's almost like he's a cornered animal, especially given the dimensions of the field. One guy has to face the entire field of pitcher, basemen and outfielders. And just behind him is the catcher. Yet, he wields the club or bat. He possesses the mightiest weapon. Though the ball is thrown at the catcher, there is almost a primal sense that the pitcher is out to hit the batter who must fend off the missile with his bat. It's like a swordman deflecting an arrow. <br /><br />But baseball is essentially a pitcher's game. The quarterback is the most important player in football but he's the captain, not the maestro. The pitcher, perched high on the mound and setting the pace of the game, really is the maestro. <br /><br />I wonder if the pitcher represents an element of aristocracy. He's the conservative force trying to keep the field free of brutish upstarts at the bat. The batter, in contrast, represents the rebel, the prole, the maverick. He's out to disturb the stability of the field. He's out to challenge and destroy the masterful power of the maestro on the mount. His goal is to hit the ball and send it out of the field and land it among the people in the stands and bleachers--to return the trophy to THE PEOPLE(like Robin Hood). <br /><br />So, we root for the pitcher as the conservative aristocratic symbol and we root for the batter as the revolutionary proletarian hero. So, maybe baseball appeals to both our conservative and liberal side, to both elitism and proletarianism.Andreanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48858960077164850892009-10-15T01:18:07.462-07:002009-10-15T01:18:07.462-07:00Favorable? To T.O, and Vick, and Barry Bonds, and...Favorable? To T.O, and Vick, and Barry Bonds, and Mayweather, and Ochocinco, etc. etc.?Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-59581828537621727902009-10-14T23:13:10.751-07:002009-10-14T23:13:10.751-07:00Rush Limbaugh was right about the media being more...Rush Limbaugh was right about the media being more favorable to black athletes. See article below:<br /><br />http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDA5NmMyZDlmZTg3ODg5Nzk1YzBlZGYyYjAxYjY1YTA=Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18535215692034658702009-10-14T22:31:36.586-07:002009-10-14T22:31:36.586-07:00@RF Interference:
Check out advancednflstats.com ...@RF Interference:<br /><br />Check out advancednflstats.com for in game probabilities of teams winning. Makes gambling in game on the live markets at, say, Matchbook.com, quite fun. <br /><br />I have read/followed/breathed football outsiders's work for years and find it innovative and thought provoking - what correlates to a successful season is very interesting (like %age of third downs made the previous year and number of fumbles recovered). But Steve is basically right - 10 years ago, this stuff never existed for the lay fan. If the NFL teams have done work on it, it has remained "on the inside".DCThrowbackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02595347138052680931noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-11995831216574202702009-10-14T22:05:53.825-07:002009-10-14T22:05:53.825-07:00Steve: For statistical analysis of the NFL see foo...Steve: For statistical analysis of the NFL see footballoutsiders.com.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-77147812935849585122009-10-14T22:02:30.232-07:002009-10-14T22:02:30.232-07:00I’ve long lamented the relative lack of big money ...<i>I’ve long lamented the relative lack of big money college football in New York City and Washington D.C.</i><br /><br />College football is blessedly free of the two main reasons I hate baseball -- Yankees and foreigners. Can't you let us poor plebs have something to call our own?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56947703903817995572009-10-14T21:31:27.315-07:002009-10-14T21:31:27.315-07:00FYI
All and more of this ground is covered in &qu...FYI<br /><br />All and more of this ground is covered in "The Joy of Sports" by Michael Novak, amazon link: http://bit.ly/26TQEy<br /><br />Worth a read.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com