Sports Talk

Re: Cricket reminds me of Tommy Lasorda's post game tirade...
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Posted By: BigPapasan
...when the Dodgers lost a game because they were swinging at bad pitches throughout the game.  He was particularly mad at Steve Garvey and said: "Garvey needed a fucking oar to hit the fucking ball today, that's how fucking bad he was!!  I'll tell ya, he'd have made a fucking great fucking cricket player, hitting them on one fucking bounce!!"
I do love Tommy Lasorda, but how can you not? All sports would be better for characters such as him.

The link between cricket and baseball is indeed a very interesting one - in fact cricket was my avenue to getting into baseball in the first place. Once you recognise that the sports are very similar with just some slight rule changes, the mystique of the sport you are unfamiliar with of the two evaporates quite quickly. For example, my dad (who prior to that point had not seen a game of baseball in his life) and I saw the Mets play in Shea before they tore it down against the Rockies - he had everything down by the bottom of the 2nd once he could relate the rules back to cricket.  

Much more than mechanically though, they share the same spaces among sports fans when it comes to both history and mathematics; cricket is the only sport that I can think of the shares the same historical longevity as baseball, along with the reverence amongst fans of 'the good old days'. In much the same way that the dead ball era and the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig are referenced today, cricket does the same in regards to the Bodyline tours and Don Bradman and Fred Trueman. There has been now for some time a movement towards advanced metrics in cricket, mirroring in many ways the Moneyball/sabermetric movement in baseball.  

In fact the only part where the two sports diverge particularly is in their willingness to accept modern technology. You know the Hawkeye system they use now in tennis games to establish if a ball is in or out? That began life as a development for cricket; to determine if a ball that hits a batsman's pads was likely to go on to hit the stumps, had said batsman not been there.

Schadenfreude (/ˈʃɑːdənfrɔɪdə/; German: [ˈʃaːdn̩ˌfʁɔʏdə]) is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
Now if ever there were a more apt topic when it comes to sports I don't what it is. I've no doubt we've all been guilty of this at one point or another, whether it be while watching our sport of choice or indeed reading about some scandal concerning a player we just can't stand - so I want to hear about yours!

I have a couple of moments that I'd like to share with you, the first being the 2008 Champions League final, and this picture will speak a thousand words for me - https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/ad_147682237-e1412236859147.jpg . I can't stand John Terry, either as a person or a player, and seeing him bawl his eyes out in the rain in Moscow after missing his penalty had me laughing harder than is probably appropriate. Raucous belly laughter. I have a grin on my face as I write this thinking about it, man do I hate John Terry :D .

The next one is a lot less malicious and is due to a quirk of one of my favourite sports to watch - cricket. Cricket is unique among sports in that it often requires players to do things they simply are not good enough to do. Unlike in baseball where even the worst hitting pitchers can get a bunt down every now and then and contribute, the life of a bowler in cricket once he has a bat in his hands is often quite a different proposition. The link below is a video of New Zealand's Chris Martin (the cricketer, not the singer from Coldplay!) demonstrating that point far better than I could ever hope to. Poor guy!

Word to the wise regarding the link - no cricket knowledge required! Guy with the bat is trying to stop the ball hitting the pieces of wood in the ground, all you need to know!

...when the Dodgers lost a game because they were swinging at bad pitches throughout the game.  He was particularly mad at Steve Garvey and said: "Garvey needed a fucking oar to hit the fucking ball today, that's how fucking bad he was!!  I'll tell ya, he'd have made a fucking great fucking cricket player, hitting them on one fucking bounce!!"

Posted By: BigPapasan
...when the Dodgers lost a game because they were swinging at bad pitches throughout the game.  He was particularly mad at Steve Garvey and said: "Garvey needed a fucking oar to hit the fucking ball today, that's how fucking bad he was!!  I'll tell ya, he'd have made a fucking great fucking cricket player, hitting them on one fucking bounce!!"
I do love Tommy Lasorda, but how can you not? All sports would be better for characters such as him.

The link between cricket and baseball is indeed a very interesting one - in fact cricket was my avenue to getting into baseball in the first place. Once you recognise that the sports are very similar with just some slight rule changes, the mystique of the sport you are unfamiliar with of the two evaporates quite quickly. For example, my dad (who prior to that point had not seen a game of baseball in his life) and I saw the Mets play in Shea before they tore it down against the Rockies - he had everything down by the bottom of the 2nd once he could relate the rules back to cricket.  

Much more than mechanically though, they share the same spaces among sports fans when it comes to both history and mathematics; cricket is the only sport that I can think of the shares the same historical longevity as baseball, along with the reverence amongst fans of 'the good old days'. In much the same way that the dead ball era and the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig are referenced today, cricket does the same in regards to the Bodyline tours and Don Bradman and Fred Trueman. There has been now for some time a movement towards advanced metrics in cricket, mirroring in many ways the Moneyball/sabermetric movement in baseball.  

In fact the only part where the two sports diverge particularly is in their willingness to accept modern technology. You know the Hawkeye system they use now in tennis games to establish if a ball is in or out? That began life as a development for cricket; to determine if a ball that hits a batsman's pads was likely to go on to hit the stumps, had said batsman not been there.

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