Are you readyyyy for some football ?

[Andy Nguyen]

@Sunny,
Are you a Yao Ming fan ? And by proxy, a fan of Houston Rockets ?

Hat off to him. He brought tremendous international exposure to the NBA. On the other hand, Wang Zhizhi, even though the first Chinese player in NBA, is such a flop.

 

[woody]

Botafogo Futebol!

Sunny, do you know baseball? Football is easy to learn (the basics) and so is easy to root for. Baseball can be pretty difficult to explain to people who've never seen it.

 

[bob]

Since you hail from Atlanta, is there any merit to the excuse that dog fighting a sport down South ?

No.

If you ever doubted that Stephon Marbury was a thug, those comments pretty well cleared it up.

 

[bob]

Sunny, do you know baseball? Football is easy to learn (the basics) and so is easy to root for. Baseball can be pretty difficult to explain to people who've never seen it.

I suppose that's true. I'd much rather explain football to a newbie than baseball; about the most complicated basic ingredient is the forward pass.

Surprisingly, though--especially for a sport that has the reputation of being played by meatheads--football is incredibly complex, from the standpoint of both strategy and tactics. The action is great, and there are a lot of football fans who just watch the ball and love seeing the sport that way. But for geeks like me, the real fun of the game is its depth: Most of what matters in a football game happens away from the ball, or before it's even snapped.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Most of what matters in a football game happens away from the ball, or before it's even snapped.

Like on the booths upstairs, or in some back room in Las Vegas ?
What ??????, you mean the mob runs the games ? :-k
Sorry, Bob, I can't resist. :D

I have friends who are small-time bookies and gambling friends who loses money week in, week out trying to beat the spread, under/over setups. They just feed my conspiracy fun endlessly.
I don't know the history of the games and if the mobs are involved but I'm not surprised if they are hopelessly entangled (like Sylvain Raynes put it).
Remember Tim Donaghy

 

[Sunny]

@Sunny,
Are you a Yao Ming fan ? And by proxy, a fan of Houston Rockets ?

Hat off to him. He brought tremendous international exposure to the NBA. On the other hand, Wang Zhizhi, even though the first Chinese player in NBA, is such a flop.

Not really...I used to support the basketball team in my home town, but he played in the opponent team...but now I watch his games whenever I got a chance to. Yeah, he's great, and much much better than Wang Zhizhi...

 

[Sunny]

Botafogo Futebol!

Sunny, do you know baseball? Football is easy to learn (the basics) and so is easy to root for. Baseball can be pretty difficult to explain to people who've never seen it.

Though I know neither of them, but it seems to me that football is easier to understand to. I remember I watched part of the Super Bowl last year and at least I knew when one side scored...:D But for baseball, I just have no idea what's going on in the game. Too bad the "baseball outing" organized by Dan in the summer was canceled, otherwise I might have already know a lot about it...:P

 

[Yuriy]

I went to a baseball game once, but never been to a football game

The problem I have with baseball is that its just too long. One guy throws a ball, and another tries to hit it. If successful, he runs around as much as he can before the ball is brought back. This action only lasts 30 seconds, and then there is a pause of like 5 minutes. This never happens in soccer, hockey, or basketball

 

[alain]

I went to a baseball game once, but never been to a football game

The problem I have with baseball is that its just too long. One guy throws a ball, and another tries to hit it. If successful, he runs around as much as he can before the ball is brought back. This action only lasts 30 seconds, and then there is a pause of like 5 minutes. This never happens in soccer, hockey, or basketball

If you are a mathematician or a statistician, baseball is a fertile ground to play with numbers. The main issue with baseball is that you will get bored if you don't understand the rules and strategies behind the game.

 

[alain]

I suppose that's true. I'd much rather explain football to a newbie than baseball; about the most complicated basic ingredient is the forward pass.

The most complicated thing about football is the pass interference rule. I have no idea how that works unless it is really obvious.

 

[alain]

Andy, we have people from all over the world here In Russia, Soccer is #1, Hockey #2, Basketball #3 and I like them in that order

In Cuba, Baseball is #1, #2 and #3

 

[Chris]

Yuriy,

Just to tell you. Hitting a baseball is one of the most difficult feats in the sports. Batting (baseball) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the MLB, a batter has to decide in less than a second on whether or not to swing at a pitch. For myself I didn't appreciate baseball until I started playing. Its a tough game but getting a solid base hit is a great feeling. When you watch baseball if you take this factor into account, the game becomes much more entertaining.

And this is just one facet of the game =)

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Yuriy]

If you are a mathematician or a statistician, baseball is a fertile ground to play with numbers. The main issue with baseball is that you will get bored if you don't understand the rules and strategies behind the game.

That is most likely my case I don't think I know any of the rules except for my personal observations mentioned above. Maybe one day, just like Andy said, someone will sit next to me and translate the entire game for me

 

[fledglingQuant]

NC Easy <=> Eagles

The Eagles are the team to beat in the NFC East- anything else is just trash talk.

 

[Yuriy]

Yuriy,
Just to tell you. Hitting a baseball is one of the most difficult feats in the sports. Batting (baseball) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is probably one of the major differences between baseball and soccer. In baseball, a player demonstrates his skill by hitting the ball a large percentage of times, or hitting it as far as he can. In soccer, it is the individual skill of handling the ball or hitting the target or even passing that matters. Players like Zidane, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho are the ones who have achieved perfection and it is always pleasure to watch them playing.

 

[alain]

quick things about baseball:

• You don't have to be an athlete to be good at it
• You can be successful only 30% of the time and you are considered very very good. If you are successful more that 35% of the time consistently, you are not part of this world.
• it is really really hard to hit a ball that is coming at you at 90+ mph with a round stick
• it is even harder to try to hit a ball that is coming at ~80 mph with spin after you just watched a 90+ mph ball coming at you

 

[alain]

The other thing about baseball is its history... there is a long long history behind it and a lot of quirky things have happened. Also, there are numbers about every single detail of the game going back to the 1800s.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

The Eagles are the team to beat in the NFC East- anything else is just trash talk.

I like how you fire the first show. Typical Eagles fan tone, isn't it ? :D
I give you that they are on to of the NFC East every year for far too long and I certainly look forward to the Giants beating up on them to get past the playoff hump.

There isn't any TO around to make jokes about them anymore, right

 

[Andy Nguyen]

quick things about baseball:

• it is really really hard to hit a ball that is coming at you at 90+ mph with a round stick
• it is even harder to try to hit a ball that is coming at ~80 mph with spin after you just watched a 90+ mph ball coming at you

• it's really hard to avoid a ball that is coming at you at 90mph. Dang it, the pitcher is aiming at you on purpose.

 

[alain]

In baseball, hitting is mostly an art... either you have it or you don't have it.

Pitching is more of a science, brain and tools... you don't have to throw extremely hard to be a good pitcher. [wikipedia]Greg Maddux[/wikipedia] is considered one of the best pitchers in the history of the game and he rarely throws over 90 miles.... but he is deadly accurate.

Other pitchers take different routes... like throwing at you (although this is not as common as in the past). [wikipedia]Bob Gibson[/wikipedia], another great pitcher used to throw inside of the batter or at the batter for intimidation purposes. This is an anecdote from Wikipedia about Bob Gibson

Gibson was known for pitching inside to batters. Dusty Baker received the following advice from Hank Aaron about facing Gibson:
"'Don't dig in against Bob Gibson, he'll knock you down. He'd knock down his own grandmother if she dared to challenge him. Don't stare at him, don't smile at him, don't talk to him. He doesn't like it. If you happen to hit a home run, don't run too slow, don't run too fast. If you happen to want to celebrate, get in the tunnel first. And if he hits you, don't charge the mound, because he's a Gold Glove boxer.' I'm like, 'Damn, what about my 17-game hitting streak?' That was the night it ended."

and then, there is [WIKIPEDIA]Gaylord Perry[/WIKIPEDIA]...