Arena The Major League Baseball Thread

If it's possible to hate Smoltz any more than I already do, he's in the booth calling the Yankees/Sox game tonight on Fox and in the middle of everything is talking about Atlanta's comeback win against the Mets the other day.

Yeah, we know John; it's probably tough to talk about the Yankees in a positive light, considering your history against them.

 

Pssst, don't look now, but the Oakland A's have a five game winning streak.

 

No one would show up, even if they cared.

Especially, if they cared.

 

Like I say for Tampa Bay, if a tree falls in the forest, does it really make a sound?

 

But, there, at least, the roof caves in.

 

I remember when the metrodome caved in because of all the snow. The Vikes had to play at the Gopher's stadium for awhile.

 

That was awesome.

 

Lol.

 

So now ESPN is showing their mighty power by turning on the mic with Trevino while the Yankees are in the field right now. Ugh, have to look forward to this again next week at Fenway.

 

mute button.

 

Occasionally, I'll click on the MLB free game of the day, and I love clicking the different audio feeds. Get different slants on the same call from different announcer teams. Also great to turn off the annoying voices without losing the game.

 

"well Suzyn, I thank you"

 

Gelyber Torres is needed but this crud is so worthy of a benching

 

Brayan Bello pitched great. He's got good potential, rare to see that with Red Sox homegrown minor league pitching these days.

 

Fun fact, but Oakland holds the record for attendance at a Wild Card Game. Set in 2019, at 54,005.

Since then the fans have had to endure the Pandemic, followed by the systemic demolition of that contending team, a continued decay of their home stadium, and a continued rise in prices to attend baseball games in Oakland.

But, yes, let's continue the false narrative that Oakland has no or bad baseball fans and no or limited interest in baseball and ignore the fact that ownership is literally acting out the plot of Major League. Let's ignore the fact that - rightly so - the fans in Oakland are voting with their wallets that they don't want to watch the Atlanta Braves farm system play while wondering if concrete is going to fall on them while at the stadium, and instead joke about how bad the fan base is.

How many of you out there have seen a team stolen from your city and relocated because of ownership greed? I've seen it done once and failed another time. And it's always the fans fault ... if you listen to the case being made by the obscenely rich owner/operators of the clubs in question.

 

Well LA took the Dodgers away from Brooklyn only a couple years removed from their World Series Championship; but of course that was way before my time.

 

Also, the A's drew 2 million fans as recently as 2014, which was the last of three straight playoff appearances (before a teardown). In 2019, when they made their second straight postseason appearance, they drew 1.6 million. If not for the pandemic, there's every reason to think they'd have been close to, if not over 2 million again in 2020, which was another postseason year.

Amazing.

 

There are very few combinations as iconic as LA and stealing other cities sports teams.

 

When someone gets mad at LA for stealing their sports team:

 

My father, who grew up in Brooklyn, was never a Dodgers fan but of course he'd gone to plenty of games at Ebbets Field with my grandfather and uncles. Sure he also went to games at the big ballpark in the Bronx, but Ebbets Field was just in the neighborhood. And at the time, many of the players actually lived in that neighborhood. I can't say too many parks have that attachment to the fans nowadays as they once did.

Do you think if the Rays ever leave town, anyone would miss the Trop?

 

I know their tenure in Minneapolis was much shorter than the Dodgers in Brooklyn, but still it fascinates me that the Lakers have received nowhere the same historical grief about moving out here as the Dodgers have.