Arseface

So, if there's a popup, the runners hang around near their base, because it's likely that it'll get caught, and they'll need to tag up before they can do anything else. So, when there were runners on first and second, and a popup was hit, fielders would deliberately drop an easy popup. Then they could pick up the ball and get an easy double play, because the runners on second and first still had to run most of the way to the next base.

It was a... anti-gamesmanship rule, I guess you'd call it. The rule made it so the fielding team couldn't get an easy extra out.

(I'm back to getting caught by the character limit. Which is pathetic.)

EDIT: Want an unfair argument? You claimed that baseball was only taken up by countries lacking a stick-and-ball game. Not true. Lacrosse preceded baseball in the US, and baseball took over. Because lacrosse sucks.

So, the whole world, then? At least we're a equal-opportunity rapist. But I somehow don't think that baseball is popular worldwide, hmm? (But seriously, there's no need to make personal attacks on my country.)

Cricket is no more widespread, because it's all descended from the same empire-- NO ONE who wasn't ruled by the British (and, uh, then there's the Dutch, probably transferred back from South Africa) plays the game. And most of it is just a few countries scattered along the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Baseball is popular OUTSIDE the US. The countries that play cricket were all at one point part of the country that originated the sport, or at least owned by it. That's not true of baseball-playing countries, who were at most occupied for a few years.

Look, nobody plays football. There're a few teams in Germany, the UK, Italy, and Japan, and that's about it. Nobody watches them and they make barely enough money to stay afloat. Our economy and our media especially still dominate.

Yes, and do you know what that simple truth is? ****, this game is boring, it's been five days, why hasn't this ended.

Which, unless I'm mistaken, baseball already does by virtue of the way the game is designed.

So, here's how it works in baseball: if there are runners on first and second, and the batter gets a hit, then they have to run. The guy on second can be gotten out by getting the ball to third ahead of him, the guy on first by beating him to second, and the batter by beating him to first. That is a force out. Under those circumstance, the runners HAVE to advance.

But, if the ball is caught in the air, then the batter is out. If the baserunners have left the bases they started on, and the ball is caught in the air, the fielders can get them out by throwing to the base they left before they get back.

http://forums.projectego.net/original-guitar-piece-25912/#post413448

Here you go buddy.

No, now I'm saying that they're all Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi. And I STARTED saying that when you started saying that all baseball fans were us Estadounidense. Now I'm kind of stuck, because even though I said something else like, two posts ago, it is a somewhat valid point that cricket is such a localized sport.

Okay, so why isn't EVERYONE playing baseball? And why isn't ANYONE* playing American football, when that's our single biggest spectator sport. *I realize that people do play it, but my impression is that it's a tiny little niche market, like indoor football and soccer in the US, or pro softball and pro lacrosse.

No, it doesn't. Cricket is literally "hit the ball, run if you think you can make it." Back and forth over the same stretch of ground for a completely ridiculous number of runs. Baseball, there's a lot more direct competition. Will they manage to tag out that runner, or will he slide in. ****! That guy is stealing. Will the pitcher try to get him, and if he does, will he succeed? It's not anymore complex than "can I make it? Yes, run," but it IS more interesting. In cricket, all you have to worry about is them throwing the ball back to one guy, who slaps a little wooden contraption that looks like some kid was playing with blocks or something.

At least the infield fly rule makes sense. The powerplay rule is probably the stupidest rule I can think of. One team is allowed to force the other to place their defensive players badly, because apparently the way the game is normally set up it's too hard to score or some ****, even though cricket games already have absurd numbers of runs scored? WTF.

I just like, play around on the frets. If something doesn't sound good, I just slide up till it does, to make it seem like I don't mess up. ;]

Anywho, I'll add you, mine is alexis1337@hotmail.com. It's a typo, so...

Not any more than baseball being popular in the US gives cricket any more merit.

On the other hand, as I've said before, baseball is more sidespread, beyond just the in-house setup of commonwealth countries playing cricket. And the fact that the most populous countries, and the most obsessed, are India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh by a HUGE margin... it doesn't give baseball more merit, but it does emphasize the fact that baseball is less concentrated.

What the hell is the NRL? National Rugby League? That would probably count as an international league, but I have to admit that yeah, as far as anyone else is concerned the difference between New Zealand and Australia... yeah, it's like a teen TV show. Everyone is sitting over here going, damn, will those two just get it over with an make out? Sure, it's kind of a kissing cousins kinda deal, but when they ever cared about that?

That metaphor went somewhere horrible. But yeah, Australia and NZ are waaaay closer than the US and Canada.

Um... honesty compels me to point out that I had to say that because Duke and Maryland have a bit of a rivalry. And I go to Maryland. So, yeah, I'm biased.

What can be? You mean the way points work in football?

AH-HA! Then it IS a perfect example. Because your cricket power plays made balls-out, absolute zero, not a lick of sense (I exaggerate, but only in degree). Only you understand both of those rules, DAMNIT. Or maybe it does count, because infield fly rule makes a lot of sense to me, when I think about it, and the cricket power plays didn't.

Oh jeez no. I've got a little music theory, like uh, the formulas for modes and stuff. I can hardly remember it though. I've also been trying to write an original song.

I wanted to take German, but they don't have it at the highschool I'm going to, sadly.

I get hooked on those rollercoaster tycoon games. :O

Do you have like, an msn or anything? It'd be so more convenient than checking this every hour or so.. Lol, I don't really check this very often.

Ooh, fun! I'm actually trying to get into Jazz Ensemble at highschool. Guess what electives I got though? Audio Engineering and French.

Holy ****, I went over 2000 characters. I'm proud.

Even that probably doesn't work, because you know "gridiron" too well. But even though baseball is only second-best these days, I, at least, still imbibed the game with mother's milk. Seriously, it is HUGE in its cultural effect, same as cricket over there. I can't come up with a confusing-but-simple concept. MAYBE the dropped ball third strike, which IS brain-dead simple to me, or the infield fly rule,, which I don't really think is brain-dead simple, but is, kinda sorta.

Really? Says who? Is soccer popular BECAUSE of whoever the **** invented it? Hockey is big business in the US, and most of the broadcasting and publicizing is done in/by the US. Lots of the best players come from Eastern Europe. Is it popular because of Canada or because of the US, and is the question even relevant?

And cricket is baseball's retarded, inbred cousin, so that works out well, doesn't it? ... (I'M SORRY THAT WAS UNCALLED FOR BUT HOLY **** IT WAS TOO GOOD TO PASS UP.)

Was one of the teams based in Dubai and called, I don't know, the Abu Dhabi Duck****ers?

Good luck with that. Remember, Maryland rocks, Duke sucks balls.

But not as much action as baseball. Bowl ball, hit ball, catch ball, throw ball at sticks/wicketkeeper doesn't match the action of baseball-- throw ball, hit ball, catch ball, get ball to appropriate base or to player in best defensive position relevant to players on base, throw ball back to pitcher, deal with attempt to steal, if relevant, repeat. The added factor of baserunning adds a LOT to the game.

I'm sure it's simple if you're used to it, like... (hard time coming up with an example, because I can't come up with something that I'd think of as complex for you that's simple to be me...) points in football, I suppose. Y'see, if you get a touchdown that's worth six points, and if you take a kick afterwards you get an extra point. But if instead of kicking, you run a play that ends up with the ball passed to a guy in the end zone or run in, you get two extra points. If you kick a field goal without scoring a touchdown, you get three points, and if you get tackled in your own end zone (or run out the back) it's a safety, and the opposing team gets two points.

Hello there! Jeez, your profile is so dark. Anyways, how is stuff going?

But only because of India, and only in Commonwealth countries. Which can't help but make me raise a question here from an old argument-- why put it in the Olympics? Aren't the Commonwealth Games for things like that?

Not paranoid, just curious. Well, just a little paranoid.

Yes you can. And I do. And MLB isn't domestic. The Blue Jays haven't folded yet. So, HA!

I see. No money again?

I would disagree on that. Strategy is less interesting than action.

No, it's not.

Incidentally, something else occurred to me about the difference between fielding in cricket and in baseball. In baseball you need to have guys covering the bags. Cricket has no such requirement, meaning that they have a lot more freedom to stick their fielders in random-ass places.

That's kinda what balances the fact that cricket has more field open to play. More ground to cover, but more players are free to cover it.

How? What? I'm not excluding them. I'm saying that the situation is the same. Bangladesh and Pakistan have as much population as the US, and both have closely related cultures. Your claim that only the US plays baseball out of those baseball-playing countries can be countered by "only Pakistan and Bangladesh play cricket" even if India is excluded.

Where are you going with this? It depends on the level, I think. You're a lot more likely to get a ****ty popup foul ball at the lower levels... but then on the other hand, a fourteen-year-old ballplayer is more likely to drop the ball than a pro.

Why? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_English_amateur_cricket
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_sports#Cricket Seriously. Sure, we had amateur players only in our international games, but cricket had this ****ed-up class system instead. So you guys (Brits mostly, I admit) combined the two. Let the lines blur while basing the concept of "amateur" or "professional" on BS class distinctions.

Offputting about what? I'm sorry, I'm losing track of what you're replying to.

I don't really know, but the famous one is Juilliard. In Maryland, the Peabody... thingy as part of Johns Hopkins is pretty well-known, nationally too, I think. The University of Maryland offers a music major, and I know they have some pretty damn impressive facilities for music, theater, dance, all that stuff, but I have no idea how well respected they are or anything.

But I've never really been all that into music, so I don't actually know. I'm not sure why I've heard of the first two, but they are well-known-- they have to be with me, because otherwise I'd've never heard of it.

Just because baseball is popular in the US, doesn't mean that's the only place it's popular. You're right. By excluding Costa Rica and Nicaragua (and China, because... yeah, they're iffy) from the most recent list I could find, baseball only beat cricket by 15 million. But even then, Arse, the two most populous cricket countries-- Bangladesh and Pakistan-- have a larger combined population than the US and are both derived from the same Brit-dominated Indian colony. And that also defeats your argument. You claim that the US vastly outnumbers other baseball fans, but without India, you STILL have one group that outnumbers other fans to roughly the same or somewhat more than the US does other baseball fans.

That's the catcher, and yes. That'd be a foul ball, and if a foul ball is caught the batter is out.

Because, for years the level of play in international play was much lower than it was in the domestic Major League Baseball. Which is more fun to watch, a bunch of college and high school players, or the pros? It's catching on slowly, but it has to make up for years of we-don't-give-a-crap-ism.

I'm sorry, what shows you how much behind cricket it is as a world game?

Um... have you SEEN some of the softball players? I haven't seen the women's baseball team, but some of the softball players are ridiculously attractive. I just spent a week feeling like a pervert watching my sister's team play. The national teams AND the young'uns look good. Admittedly, some of them are really bull-dykey or straight ugly, but you get that everywhere.

Also, speaking of fastpitch, you know what was entertaining? My sister's team just played a team from Quebec, who they actually saw a couple weeks ago in Hagerstown, too. The Quebecois kicked the Marylander's collective ass.

Which is pretty funny, because I have been carefully avoiding any mention of the Canadians as players of baseball or softball because they're really not that into it as a spectator sport, but they really are pretty damn good at them.

Edit: I'm not actually editing, but you want to knoiw what I want to watch? Women's Baseball World Cup. It's fairly new, and I've never seen it, but it's this year. Starts August 12th. It'll be interesting. I'm afraid that most of the women who'd make up a really good women's baseball team end up playing fastpitch softball, though.

A better question is thus: why is one country only popular in India, and the other around the world? We've been over this. Proportionally more cricket fans are Indian than baseball fans are US.

Not really. Cuba is kind of in a class of their own (they've won 25 out of 71 Baseball World Cups), but Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Japan, the Dominican Republic, South Korea and the US are also very good. So is Canada, some, and a few others. "Chinese Taipei," for instance, is pretty good. China is so-so. (Though it actually sounds like Japan won both World Baseball classics so far. Make of that what you will.) Cuba came second at the first WBC, didn't place in the top three in the second. The US came third in the second, and wasn't in the top three in the first.

Part of it was that until recently the World Cup of Baseball was strictly a amateur event (high school and college players). Until 1998, and even then MLB players didn't play until 2006.

Want to know something kind of interesting? Well, look for yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Baseball_World_Cup Lots of cricket-playing countries played at the Baseball World Cup, too. Not neccesarily very good, but there. Doesn't really mean anything, but it's interesting, especially since so few of those countries that showed up for baseball showed up for cricket.

Yeah, St. Louis Cardinals. Haven't seen it. Sister's softball team went to a Cleveland Indians-New York Yankees game last night (we're at a tournament in Akron) but unless I catch a game on TV sounds like the next game I'll be watching is the Washington Nationals August 15th. Or a Bowie Baysox minor league game sometime in the next few weeks.

Uh-huh.

No. Just that you guys have a preference for cricket. Unlike most of the rest of the world-- the ones who aren't former British possessions.

No, it's not. It IS a cultural difference. We HAVE big international games, we just don't have anyone who cares to watch them. Because everyone cares about MLB. Same way that soccer HAS major league teams but no one cares about them, because everyone cares aout international play.

Though I have to say that the Softball World Cup is a disgrace. A bunch of teams withdrew from playing when the ****ing IOC pulled baseball from the Olympics. So it's Canada, Japan, USA, and "USA Futures." Entertainingly, the US has lost to both of the opposing teams. Last night apparently Canada made an incredible comeback to win 5-4. 5 runs in one inning. (Which is really impressive for baseball and kind of even more so for softball.)

But is that really "moved out of the house?" Is it "moved out of the house" if your parents went old and senile and you bought the place and shipped them off to a little old folks home but still continued to go through all the motions of, say, bedtime at 7:00 and no smoking?

Why? Isn't that more a testament to the fact that the American media and domination is completely irrelevant to what sports people play? I mean, hell, lacrosse is balls-out stupid and it's still fairly large here in Maryland (well, I'm in Ohio at the moment, but "down there in Maryland" would sound funny).

Sorry, which point? The point that you've now lost because it applies more to cricket-playing countries than baseball.

Um... what? It's just what is. Like in soccer they usually wear shorts and in baseball they wear pants. It's just something that IS not actually a qualitative difference unless you really get off on athlete's legs.

As much as I hate to admit it, that made me laugh (the edit, not the initial comment, which was unfunny in every way). Ima gonna go give you rep somewheres.