Question for FR baseball fans

[bunkerhill7]

I like low scoring games with lotsa foul balls close to the foul lines so I can watch the ballgirls.

[Lancey Howard]

I prefer a compromise: Phillies 15, Opponents 0.

[Sam Clements]

I’ve been watching baseball since the mid fifties. IMHO the biggest change has been the upgrade in hitting skill brought on by better conditioned players, a bigger pool of hitters (Dominican, Latin America, etc..), and much better coaching. I know in the old days that there were high average players, but how many of those hits were late in the game against a tiring starter? Now a fresh reliever comes every inning after the fifth inning. Now we have set up men for set up men. Hitters are facing these relievers and much better defense and still managing to make the adjustment and come out ahead. Well pitched, low run games are rare because the batters are better than ever. Ironically, even with all of the above, pitching is still the most important part of the game,its still 90%.

[gunsequalfreedom]

I love it when my team, down by six runs in the bottom of the ninth, pulls off a rally and wins.

[Goldsborough]

As a former pitcher myself, I appreciate good pitching, but lots of people do not even know what they are looking at when they are watching a pitcher and think low scoring games are boring.

Being unable to hit a curve ball worth spit back in the day, I don't care to see professional pitchers "batting." There are only a precious few who actually look like they still know what they are doing at the plate.

Given that the Mariners are the only MLB team within 200 miles of me, I came to grips with the DH back in 1977 when I was 10.

[fporretto]

I used to pitch -- no, not major-league -- so I'm probably biased. But my ideal game would look like this.

(I might not sell my soul to attend that final game...but I'd take out a 30-year mortgage on it! Fixed-rate, of course.)

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Curmudgeon Emeritus of Eternity Road

[Joe Boucher]

Sandy Kofax
One to nothing game won on Maury Wills walk, two stolen bases and a sac fly.

[Canedawg]

pitching is still the most important part of the game,its still 90%.

Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.
-Y. Berra

[grame]

I agree, but one of the others mixed in occasionally is fun.

[dangus]

A high-scoring game used to be more exciting to me, back before the days of the juiced ball, and when “high-scoring” meant 7-5. It meant there were rallies, and home runs were rare and dramatic. Today, there are no more rallies; home runs are common, zapped of their drama. Third-string shortstops have .500 slugging percentages. Coming back from 4-1 was a rare and thrilling event.

A low-scoring game is much more exciting. The problem is you never know when a 2-1 game in the sixth is going to become a 12-7 blowout. Coming back from 4-1 is over as fast as a quick sneeze.

[dangus]

I didn’t say half of the things I said.
-Y. Berra

[buckalfa]

G.A.B. in my opinion comes off poorly compared to other ballparks built in the last 20 years. Like the Red's organization, the end result came off cheap in fit, finish, and atmosphere. Of course if the Red's were not a perennial doormat, perceptions might be different.

[se_ohio_young_conservative]

GABP is a wonderful place for baseball. I have had dreams about going to the World Series and standing out by the smoke stacks. I just wonder how long I am going to have to wait.

[buckalfa]

Crosley Field was my place of dreams. Big Klu, Wally Post, Frank Robinson for the home team. Mays, Clemente, Drysdale for the visitors. Maybe that is why GABP holds no magic for me, none of the heros of my youth have taken this field.

What county in SE Ohio do you hail from? You must be incredibly strong if you root for the current day Red's and Brown's. Even OSU is not due for another football NC until 2036.

[texsean]

Give me an old fashioned pitcher’s duel.

[BluesDuke]

Sandy Koufax One to nothing game won on Maury Wills walk, two stolen bases and a sac fly.

You're thinking of Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965, in which only one hit was recorded, period. The only run in the game scored in the fifth inning when Lou Johnson (who would get the game's only hit, dumping a quail into short right for a two-out double, only to be stranded on an inning-ending ground out in the seventh) on a walk to Johnson, a sacrifice bunt by Ron Fairly (on which Cub pitcher Bob Hendley might have gotten Johnson but for dropping the ball and having to go to first), a steal of third with Jim Lefebvre batting, and Johnson scoring when the throw to third sailed past Ron Santo on the steal. Lefebvre struck out and Wes Parker grounded out to Hendley to end the inning.

Had it not been for Johnson's seventh-inning double, Bob Hendley would have had a no-hitter of his own on the backside of Koufax's perfecto.

Trivia: One of the players in that game turned up in Field of Dreams, sort of---the famous baseball field in the corn field was designed by Chris Krug, a landscape architect whose professional life began as a Cub catcher. He was behind the plate for the Cubs the day Koufax (who'd thrown a no-hitter in each of the previous three seasons) proved practise makes perfect. (And how: he finished the game by striking out the last six men he faced---including ending the game by striking out the same man he dispatched to finish his 1963 no-no against the Giants, Harvey Kuenn.)

Arguably, Koufax v. Hendley that day was the single greatest pitched game on both sides in baseball's history.

[BluesDuke]

'Tis the season. ;D

Indeed. I'm enjoying the games and three new books: new biographies of Willie Mays and Joe Cronin; and, 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York.