Journey to Distant, Wild, Baseball-less Countries
I shall be away from baseball for the next three weeks, I'm afraid. I haven't exactly been tossing off posts every hour at home, but I'm flying to europe tomorrow for that great, mysterious sporting event of theirs, the World Cup.
If anyone here has any interest in that, I'll endeavor to write something (though it may need to wait until I get back). If people think soccer is for losers, then I won't spoil the fine-tuned, focused, analytical marvel that is Mariners Morsels.
In the meantime, someone needs to get down to Tacoma and see what's wrong with Bobby Livingston. As Jeff at Lookout Landing pointed out, it's starting to get worrying. I'm sure he'll get back into the groove, but for those among us (and I'm including myself here) who've always been suspicious about how much promotions/demotions/layoffs affect a pitcher, or how something as ineffable and pop-psychology as 'confidence' matters (how can you be in AAA without confidence?), we're starting to find out the answer: these things matter *a lot*.
posted by marc w. @ 1:56 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Meh. As my high school PE teacher used to drone:
"Soccer is a COMMUNIST Sport!"
j/k
I've actually been pondering a trip to Europe myself, seeing as it's been darn near twenty years since I've been there.
Gotta get some use outta that German Degree at some point before mein deutsch wird rostig! (case in point -- I even had to Babelfish that one!).
If you do happen upon Germany, drink a good Bock for me will ya? Or some good wine, if you prefer.
Yeah, I'll try and get to Cheney before 1) Cruceta gets called up and 2) B-Liv falls off the planet vis-a-vis Rett Johnson. I know I wasn't missing much, but I did miss out on the Kevin Appier Experiment, and am a bit disappointed in that.
Lucky. I just would like to take a vacation period. I barely have 1 week's worth of leave.
Yeah, I'm going to have to LWOP some of this, but I figure I've gotta do it.
Interestingly, soccer is the most free market sport going, and even as an ardent marketeer, I'm not sure how I feel about that.
They have no restrictions on:
-Payroll
-Roster size
-Revenue
and the higher you finish in the league, the more money you get.
Many feel this could lead to an institutionalized stranglehold on the league by a couple of teams, and, in england and scotland at least, that's pretty much what you've got.
They view American sports as hopelessly socialistic with all this revenue sharing and reverse-order-of-finish draft and salary caps. They're kind of right, of course, but at the same time, I'm really glad I'm not a fan of, oh, I don't know, Charlton Athletic when you know from day 1 that you have zero chance to win the league, a 3% chance to qualify for europe and a 33% chance of being relegated.
Sorry, soccer rants; I'm getting warmed up over here...
Yeah but don't the soccer teams change leagues and get promoted and demoted based on performance? Kinda like, well, this year, the Rainiers might get promoted to MLB while the Mariners got demoted down to AAA. At least I'm pretty sure some of that league/level changing stuff happens with the European soccer leagues (I'm trying to remember back to the days of Sports Economics in grad school...)
Totally with you on the Livingston thing. It's gotta mess with your head big time.
Paul: you didn't miss much with the Appier experiment. Trust us on this. (not that I have hard proof in the form of a scorebook anymore...)
Marc: enjoy.
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