Let’s say on your team-centric fan message board, someone opines that making a trade for Elvis Andrus would be a dream off-season scenario, and a possible one, to which you reply “Folks, again, we have Furcal, we’re not going big on a shortstop.” (And please note, editorially speaking in this particular blog, that both uses of ‘we’ are sic.)
So then someone goes ahead and shows how unlikely it is for a shortstop of Furcal’s age to be a productive shortstop, and how of the select few SSs who have been league-average or better at Furcal’s age or older, they have been well beyond Furcal’s skill set (Hall of Fame names like Ripken, Jeter, Rodriguez). That someone basically shows you that it’s impossible to assume Rafael Furcal can be a league-average SS in 2013, counter to your hey, no need to improve here, we (sic) got Furcal outlook. Then that person goes on to talk trade scenario:
I get ESPN The Magazine every….I don’t know, it just appears. It appears because it’s cheaper to subscribe to the magazine and get ESPN Insider for free with my subscription than it is to subscribe to ESPN Insider. I get to read John Hollinger on the NBA and Keith Law on baseball, and ESPN gets the illusion that four a few bucks less I’m being advertised to by the corporations who pay for space in their mag. In truth after I flip through the mag, confirm there’s nothing of interest, I take it to the gym and toss it on top of the pile of magazines in the cardio room, to be read by some guy on a recumbent bike under the illusion he’s working out. I get five bucks off on my Insider, ESPN gets to advertise colognes and shit to recumbent bike guy.
As long as there have been baseball games, there have been baseball fans. People have taken a rooting interest in players and teams since the first organized games were played. As the game grew, and popularity rose, there was a need for the results to be published in newspapers, which led to the birth of something new: the beat writer who covered a team and a sport for a newspaper. There was a market for first-hand observers to relate the story of that day’s game to a curious–and increasingly knowledgeable and opinionated–public.
I love a Cinderella story. Give me a dozen skinny 19 year-olds running through the pack in March Madness, knocking off guys they shouldn’t be knocking off, and I’m hooked. In baseball, I like it when a good and smart team outshines a good and wealthy team.
