1965? i don't know what you watched, but i swore it was a WWII newsreel. this must've been some alternate universe thing. think swish found the bsg wormhole again.

swishnicholson wrote:On this day in 1965, the Astrodome hosted its first official mlb game vs. the Phillies. chris Short pitched a shutout as the Phils won 2-0 and Tony Taylor notched the first hit and Dick Allen the first homer.

That first scoreboard was quite the "mechanical marvel" :

yeah, but who was the emcee for the opening ceremony

Bucky wrote:

swishnicholson wrote:On this day in 1965, the Astrodome hosted its first official mlb game vs. the Phillies. chris Short pitched a shutout as the Phils won 2-0 and Tony Taylor notched the first hit and Dick Allen the first homer.

That first scoreboard was quite the "mechanical marvel" :

yeah, but who was the emcee for the opening ceremony

HK?

Titlehungry wrote:The Orioles might win 30 games with that realignment haha

The question is, 30 games out of how many?

azrider wrote:1965? i don't know what you watched, but i swore it was a WWII newsreel. this must've been some alternate universe thing. think swish found the bsg wormhole again.

The guy doing the voice over in the video swish posted is Ed Herlihy. He did many of the World War II newsreels.

SCPhillyPhan wrote:

azrider wrote:1965? i don't know what you watched, but i swore it was a WWII newsreel. this must've been some alternate universe thing. think swish found the bsg wormhole again.

The guy doing the voice over in the video swish posted is Ed Herlihy. He did many of the World War II newsreels.

Neat. I bet if we could get someone intoning like he did about Covid 19 people would pay attention. The sight of hundreds in masks descending on Wegman's to strip them of paper towels certainly deserves the treatment.

PhillyPhan wrote:

Rockinghorse wrote:Wonder why everyone is hellbent on spring training sites. The heat in Arizona (plus dust storms!) and the heat/rain/lightning in Florida would cancel tons of games. Play in your home facility where you can pay your home employees!

Play early in Florida, before the afternoon thunderstorms hit in the afternoon.

I was thinking about this the other day. I think they should play in the regular home stadiums, but with radical alterations. I don't have it fully fleshed out, but here's what I have:

Keep the divisions as is. Play only division opponents for two months. Commit to that no matter the situation in the country. If fans would be allowed in before the end of the two months, side benefit. All five division teams go to the home stadium of one of the division teams for a ten day stretch in 'round one'. IE: The Braves, Nats, Mets and Fish all come to Philly for ten days. Each team plays ten games in ten days. Each team gets one day off in that ten day stretch. Each team plays one team doubleheader in that ten day stretch(different opponent). Schedule can be manipulated so that teams have their off day during the week. A team(different each day) plays their doubleheader on a weedend. Divisional tripleheaders every weekend day/night. Weekdays(one exception) have divisional doubleheaders. Teams can be scheduled to play any of the other four on any particular day. No need for two teams to play a 'series' of games. Although two game/two day 'series' could be scheduled. Divisional doubleheaders would have 3PM and 7PM local time scheduled starts. Divisional tripleheaders would have 12PM, 4PM and 8PM local time scheduled starts. After the 'round', these teams get two days off. Rinse and repeat for 'rounds' 2, 3, 4 and 5 in a different city. Each divisional team gets one 'round' as host team/city.] 50 team games in 58 days.

**Divisional rounds could be staggered at the start so we never have days without baseball. (NLE on MAY 15, NLC on May 16 etc)
**Assuming start dates of May 15th, 16th and the 17th for the six divisions, you could schedule four days off at the end of these five 'rounds'. That would allow a mostly traditional All Star game date of Thursday July 17th. Albeit with quite a bit of a shortened first 'half'. I'd envision an awesome celebration of baseball that weekend. ASG on Thursday with some of the teams resuming play immediately on Friday and the rest on Saturday in a more traditional sense. IE: Normal schedule. Hopefully.
**This schedule gets in .862 games per day for each team. Regular season this year would have been .871 games per day for each team. They could reduce it to one travel day between rounds 3 and 4 to increase the games per day to .877.
**MLB could have TV quadrupleheaders every Saturday and Sunday. (EDT starts of 12, 4, 8 and midnight, 9AM, 1, 5, 9 PDT)
**The rest of the year's schedule can hopefully be worked out during these two months.
**Travel costs reduced.
**Host team personnel presumably stay at personal homes.
**Accommodation costs increased.
**I'm sure in these times you could find hotels willing to commit to putting up 200 players/team personnel in a private, exclusive, quarantined fashion for a reduced contracted price, reducing some of the increased accommodation costs.
**I fleshed it out more as I was writing.

Sample schedule of the first "rotation":

At CBP
DAY 1 (Friday May 15):
NY V PHI
WAS V ATL
MIA OFF
DAY 2(S):
MIA V NY
PHI V WAS
ATL V MIA
DAY 3(SU):
PHI V NY
ATL V WAS
MIA V PHI
DAY 4(M):
NY V ATL
WAS V MIA
PHI OFF
DAY 5(T):
ATL V PHI
NY V MIA
WAS OFF
DAY 6(W):
MIA V ATL
WAS V NY
PHI V ATL
DAY 7(TH):
WAS V PHI
NY V MIA
ATL OFF
DAY 8(F):
PHI V WAS
MIA V ATL
NY OFF
DAY 9(S):
NY V WAS
PHI V MIA
ATL V NY
DAY 10(SU):
MIA V WAS
ATL V NY
WAS V PHI

5 'Road' games each.
5 'Away' games each.

Stripes wrote:

Bucky wrote:

swishnicholson wrote:On this day in 1965, the Astrodome hosted its first official mlb game vs. the Phillies. chris Short pitched a shutout as the Phils won 2-0 and Tony Taylor notched the first hit and Dick Allen the first homer.

That first scoreboard was quite the "mechanical marvel" :

yeah, but who was the emcee for the opening ceremony

HK?

bingo

11 years HK has been gone now

Ace Rothstein wrote:11 years HK has been gone now

WELL NOW I FEEL BETTER ON THIS GRAY MONDAY MORNING

CFP wrote:I think part of the NBA "popularity", in terms of beating out MLB here in the last decade or so now in the Finals vs. World Series matchup would maybe be the villain aspect. A lot of repeat guys there in Curry, LeBron, etc. that you're seeing over and over again. Seems like baseball has had a ton of fluctuation in teams making it to the Series. We've been everywhere from Phillies-Rays to the Yankees being around the next year to the Royals and Mets and Cardinals and Dodgers and Red Sox and Cubs and Indians and Astros and so on. No dynasties there really, whereas you're seeing some of those same figures in the NBA.

Agree with this. There is more national interest when there's someone and/or a team to collectively dislike (Bonds, A-Rod, the Yankees for many years, etc.). Haven't been many villains in the post-Steroid era and the Yankees have been mostly harmless.

The Astros appear to be sliding into that space for this season, interested to see if that helps interest - I am sure it will if there are some early season "fireworks."

I was also thinking about how much baseball could have used Kyler Murray to have chosen that path.

I'm not sure if it's villains as much as being able to put on a game and feel like there's some actual narrative to the game being played beyond just two teams playing a baseball game. Like I get annoyed when ESPN does their schtick every Sixers game about whether Embiid and Simmons are a fit but at least it gives the audience something to watch for. Effectively framing the game seems pretty important to rope in a national audience.

Steroid era hurt a lot of things but one of them was making the homerun record basically impossible to approach.

MoBettle wrote:
Steroid era hurt a lot of things but one of them was making the homerun record basically impossible to approach.

I'm totally with you on your major points, but meh on this. Maybe it's the era I started following baseball, which began in the late 60s. It took 30 years for anyone to take a serious run at the home run run record, and baseball managed to do fine. Certainly records help give it a boost, but if you count on people pursuing them every year you're going to be mostly disappointed (one of the things that drives me crazy about track and field coverage, among many). And the landmarks still matter, even when they fall short of records. I can remember a big buzz locally about Ryan Howard reaching 50 even though that mark was well short, or Stanton almost reaching 60 (well that would have been a buzz if it hadn't been in Miami where they probably just thought it was a large palmetto bug flapping its wings)

Ace Rothstein wrote:11 years HK has been gone now

It was Easter Monday that year too.

MoBettle wrote:I'm not sure if it's villains as much as being able to put on a game and feel like there's some actual narrative to the game being played beyond just two teams playing a baseball game. Like I get annoyed when ESPN does their schtick every Sixers game about whether Embiid and Simmons are a fit but at least it gives the audience something to watch for. Effectively framing the game seems pretty important to rope in a national audience.

Steroid era hurt a lot of things but one of them was making the homerun record basically impossible to approach.

This is definitely true. The NBA embraces personality and drama and beef and debate and all of that. I know that turns some people off but it's clearly working overall and really does drive those storylines that national / global audiences can catch up on during these national brodcasts.

MLB...idk there's the Astros but what else? Even crazier, most of the game's biggest stars are (now) in the biggest markets - Trout Betts Vlad Jr and Ohtani in LA, Bryant in Chicago, Harper in Philly, a few Yankees as always, Altuve Correa & Cole in Houston, Acuna and Freeman in Atlanta, etc.

It just feels like a cultural thing right now where these guys are all just...pretty boring, besides Harper.

so if they call pull off anything at all and this season is just scrapped

do the contracts all just get pushed back a year? Or is it just lost money for the player??

They agreed to a deal that pays them a small amount of money but the service time counts

Hank Steinbrenner passed away at 63 after a long battle with an undisclosed illness.