WORLD SERIES

Who do you think will win ? SF or KC ?

6 Comments

???????

by IAN MC - 2014-10-21 04:10:50

What is the World Series ? Is it some American thing or do all the countries represented in the Pacemaker Club take part ??

Ian

Sparrow

by Grateful Heart - 2014-10-21 08:10:33


Yes, baseball. Tonight is the first game.

Grateful Heart

SF will win the first game...

by Griddlebone - 2014-10-22 11:10:11

I can predict this with certainty because I have 20-20 hindsight.

The "World Series" is the most jingoist misnamed sports event ever. Long live the TORONTO Blue Jays, who won the World Series twice in the early 90s.

Oh, and I'm from the San Francisco area, so gotta cheer for the home boys.

Thanks Griddlebone

by IAN MC - 2014-10-22 11:10:24

Your comments have given me a slightly greater understanding .

Here in the UK I play golf every Sunday morning with 2 guys from the next village . As from next Sunday , we will start calling it the " World Series "

Cheers

Ian

I love San Francisco by the way ( despite having an earthquake strong enough to scare me 2 hours after flying in there a few years ago )

Interesting opening....

by donr - 2014-10-23 10:10:58

...comment by IAN on World Series.

Made me do a bit of Googling around.

Baseball, as played today, is an American development, probably based on a couple of rather uniquely British games. Its current form has traveled to at least 16 different countries around the Globe & has reasonably uniform rules of play. It started out in the mid-1800's & is credited to one Abner Doubleday. That, apparently is pure myth; but it is good enough myth for two baseball fields to be named after him - Cooperstown, New York, where the Baseball Hall of Fame is located & the US Military Academy at West Point, NY, where Doubleday attended college. Apparently another American named Cartwright in New York City created the modern game shortly before the American Civil war. He wrote a set of rules that very closely approximates the current baseball rules. Professional baseball started in the US in the 1870's, & developed into two competing leagues (National & American) by the first decade of the 20th Century. They held their first championship competition in 1907 & since there was no other PROFESSIONAL organized baseball world-wide, rightfully called it the "World Series."

Not that baseball wasn't played elsewhere, it was. Traveling Americans visited Japan, Korea & Australia during the late 1800's and introduced the game. it caught on rapidly at club level & university level & flourished - but it struggled to become a professional sport anywhere else.

Is it an international sport? You BETCHA! It has infiltrated the entire Caribbean basin like banana plants. A very significant number of professional baseball players in the US are from these countries. Were it not for them, American professional baseball would not support 30 plus teams. At least not at the quality level the game is played today.

Japan & Korea have flourishing pro teams, also - and Australia is struggling to get a pro league up & running.

Let's go back to the "World Series." It is played in the US yearly, following a 6 month season from 1 April to 30 September. The pro teams play 164 games in that period - a grueling pace, when you consider the wear & tear of traveling from New York to California to play games back to back. That is a 3 hour time difference for the players - they have been known to finish one game late at night in California, board a plane & fly to NY to play another game the next night.

American Major League Baseball (MLB) has been trying to get a true "World Series" organized - not unlike the Soccer "World Cup" - played every 4 yrs or so, but has not been completely successful. The baseball playing nations are not adverse to the idea & they are working it out - albeit slowly. Cultural differences are making the progress slow. Baseball was played as an Olympic sport for several series of games, but never caught on well enough for the IOC to make it permanent - too limited a following among nations.

Who dominates the sport in international play? It's NOT the US, by any stretch. It's the Japanese & the Caribbean nations, small though they may be.

But how "Jingoistic " is American MLB? When you consider the make up of the various teams, MLB is quite international, thank you. Come international play years, significant numbers of MLB players are playing AGAINST their teammates from the American season. There are in the US MLB Japanese, Korean, Australian, DomRep, Cuban, Mexican, Venezuelan, Aruban, Puerto Rican, ewtc. players. Looks pretty international to me - & BTW - there are no limits on how many non-US citizens may play on any given team.

So, till the true "World Series" gets its act together, the US may continue to use the term for its ANNUAL interleague championship series.

Donr





I predict that...

by donr - 2014-10-23 12:10:47

...KC will win the second game by a score of 7-2.

Donr

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