A message to the liberal purist that hate professional sporting events

Please just keep it too yourself. Yeah MLB can be a crock of shit sometimes, but watching athletics is one of the few things that keep me from commiting violent acts. Now there are some "Non-Sports" that take up the time of sports broacast. Like figureskating for instance, figureskating is no more a sport than Art is. That's what figure skating is because the way you score is completly up to someone else's judgement. And it takes up important Winter Olympic television space that can be better used on showing hockey games or speed skating. You can hate on figueskating all you want and you'll be doing me a favor as well just leave the real sports alone.

I mean Sports an politcs aren't really aligned

I've never gotten into any sports, but I knew I wasn't into any sports before I knew much about where I stood politically. I don't generally bash people who do like sports, though; I just stay out of those threads. I only bash sports fans if they act like there's something wrong with people who don't care about sports. I'm reactionary like that. :-)

So sue me

But the Buckeyes usually balance it out though.

Don't sweat it.

but I do not hate sports, merely the way we fiscally over-value sports and the way sporting contests often seem to be won by the biggest thugs and bullies. Also, MLB is boring as hell and the NBA seems to lack pizazz, plus I am disgusted by so many golf tourneys and races on TV when I would rather watch something like SG1 or a Gunsmoke re-run.

but if it makes you feel better to believe that, who am I to stand in the way of a nice self-delusion?

And I've already been to one of them.
John
They've won two and lost one. Guess which one I attended?

:shrug:

7-2. And they looked bad doing it.
John
As if you can look good losing 7-2. You can't and they didn't.

and sports really do bring people together well.

As I said in another thread, baseball (yes, I root for the Yankees and I am damned tired of defending them AND calling myself a Liberal) is one of the ONLY THINGS KEEPING ME SANE.
Let me enjoy my drama and sweet, sweet Derek Jeter :D

all of our open-minded DU compatriots who like to call us Freepers for liking a specific baseball team? Just goes to show you that not everyone here is as pure as snow as they like to make themselves out.

That said, I'll be at the Stadium tomorrow.

:shrug: Never seen it myself.

Including you! ;) :hi:

Baseball is organized procrastination. Group loitering. Or any valid description of occupying time and space without threat of activity or accomplishment.

My goal is not to view a single pitch all season. Quite a feat, since I frequent Las Vegas sportsbooks all day including my job. But I'm confident I can pull it off. Pitches that are already in progress don't count, BTW. Like when I switch to Sportscenter and don't know what they're showing. It's absolutely gruesome when it's baseball and I have to click elsewhere. My previous channel button gets worn out.

I've gotten to the point I don't have any idea of the standings, who is playoff bound and who sucks. I used to exile to Europe every summer to avoid hideous baseball, but now I comfortably ignore it regardless.

in fact was pretty good a b-ball in school. I just hate the way it's all about the money.Why should you have to play sports to get into a good college if you are smart enough to get a good test score? Sports has their place and for those of us who don't like them, it's tuff, they pre-empt tv,(what is espn for?) and they are everywhere. My daughter was a dancer but that was not considered a sport either, do you know how hard to do some of those moves? IMO nobody is worth that kind of money just because they can hit a ball or throw a ball, or drive a car,etc. :rant:

edited to say this is the first sports rant-bash I've ever committed

The appeal of seeing a bunch of overpayed, glorified, uneducated (excepting a few, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who is a bloody genius) jocks throwing a ball around a court/gridiron/diamond was lost on me when I was 5.

BTW, I'm far more impressed with the grace of a figure-skater than the animus of a football player.

Except that I do enjoy watching football. It's a beautiful sport in its own way.

But, thank God, my self-esteem isn't tied to any particular team or to how someone else plays.

Figure-skaters are amazing. I wish I had the coordination to flow smoothly on ice, backwards and forwards. heck, I'm amazed at people who can ice skate (or roller skate) without wobbling. I wobble. Always have.

I can't stand the NBA...but could watch college basketball nonstop for days. (The only real "professional" sport i love is football...and i think the salary cap helps that one out a bit)...

:D

As in the NY Jets.

At least, when they come back into existance in 2007.

wih hundreds of posts.

I love most sports, as do most of my liberal friends. :shrug:

Let's face it, the only reasons Americans have rioted in the past decade or so have been over sporting events.

Stolen election? Yawn. Illegal war? Yawn. Losing civil liberties? Double yawn. OUR TEAM LOSING THE BIG GAME? TRASH THE MAIN STREET!

on fire!"

NY! B-)

especially boston and detroit and LA and etc. etc. etc.

NYers are much more civilized and too intelligent to riot and destroy their own home because of a sports win.

NYers go and destroy the hometown of the losing team.

That's how it's fucking done!

I always prefered NY's old motto: "Our City can kick your city's ass!"

They never let me down. Music is far better, but sometimes a baseball game on the radio late at night is poetry and music, given the right game with the right announcer.

Politics? Feh. We "lost our civil liberties" (if we ever had them) long before we were born. Being into sports hasn't taken away any perceived effort to get them back. Life is big enough to see the big picture AND the box scores. It's a false dichotomy, and promulgated by the Chomskyite wing. (I love Noam, but sometimes he is a dick).

All these marchers hitting the streets and writing cranky letters to Congress and the newspaper haven't stopped the war or the killing. Score one for the sports junkies who don't suffer any self-delusions about changing the world.

And 99.9% of American sports fans don't riot or go nuts when their team loses. That slim minority makes good headlines.

The Europeans and soccer, on the other hand... :nuke:

(Which is interesting to point out, since some people say they want to go to Europe to escape America's various fixations).

Hell, one of my best buddies in high school was a communist, and he loved NFL football. So much for the political angle on sports fans.

It's AWESOME. One of my favorite acts to de-stress :hi:

Except when it's Dave Niehaus. DAMN I miss his announcing. Although he is weaker on TV because he lapses into nostalgia mode, lol. :D

Nation announcers-any of the guys on ESPN- suck. I mute them.
I had the experience of listening to Niehaus for many years while in Eugene, OR. He was a very intelligent announcer who didn't try to dumb down the game of baseball.

Niehaus is 'old school'. Not to lord my age over you, lol, but Niehaus is like they USED to be, especially on the radio. A lot of those guys are dead or retired - Vin Scully, Mel Allen, Red Barber, et al... pure announcers, who like you said, didn't dumb it down.

Back when I lived overseas in the 70's, it was the only way I could get baseball for 3 years... on AM radio late late at night, or Armed Forces radio.

I miss the announcers that would talk to you as if you already knew baseball- instead of trying to turn it into a football game ;)
Which is why I enjoy listening to jazz or classical while watching the games now; it relaxes me (Baseball is reassuring. It makes me feel as if the world is not going to blow up. ~Sharon Olds). It's really the only thing I can say for sure that will always be there, every spring.

As I said... it never lets me down.

(Well, there was that debacle in 1994 with the strike, but we won't speak of that.) :-)

Back in NJ when the strike broke out. I was so disapointed when I was told we weren't going because they were on strike :cry:

...we have left in this country. You know, everybody work together for the good of all! Imagine that.....

Like someone who is obsessed with fiction books, music, films, video games, whatever. It's an escape, and a socially acceptable one.

Anyway, figure skating is certainly a sport as much as anything else, and it is not wholly subjective in its scoring. If you fuck up your double axle, no amount of subjectivity is going to save you--there are objective standards.

it's for people who have to live vicariously through others, and can only find their identity in the people they choose to be "fans of".

Not all sports people are that way, but, by God, I could never begin to count the number of sports fan people who ARE that way.

And it's goddamn sad.

But my loving obscure okayish-at-best bands like the Dovers seems to me a lot like knowing all the stats of all the players of a sports team--there's not really any good reason to do it, and one's time would probably be better spent elsewhere. :D

but the arts, to me, seems much more human and relevant and, in the grand scheme of things, far, far, far more important than any sports bullshit.

Think about Greece - which had a fond and huge love of sports. We don't know any of the sportsman. But we know the writers, the philosophers, and the story-tellers. And, if they'd had recorded music and/or any kind of transcribed music, we would have lots of that, too.

Art is important.

Sports is mere entertainment for the moment.

And, every now and again, sports hits the level of art - think of that african guy who ran in the Berlin Olympics. Or Nadia the gymnast from Russia. Muhammed Ali. Tiger Woods. And, I'm sure, there are a few others like Joe DiMaggio or whatever, from baseball and football and basketball and whatnot who went beyond mere sports idiots, and entered the realm of artists. But, in terms of the totality of sports people, the number of actual artists is pretty damned low.

I'm waaay too biased to make a judgment on whether the arts beat out sports for cultural/whateveral value.

That man was an artist. Until Tarver knocked him out.

I love all sports, particularly baseball. I don't need any of them to justify my being, but I enjoy the hell out of them. Why the need to intimate that sports fans are weak people who don't like their own lives?

I think it's an emotional substitute for active behavior. The guy who has all the golden glove winners memorized isn't probably the one you want to show you a night on the town, for example.

These are very stereotyped descriptions that really aren't true.
I'm a stat freak and I can show ANYONE a night on the town...

:evilgrin:

Jeez, I'm not a loser :eyes:

}(

I could and probably should be doing something much more interesting. But I'm lazy and interested in doing nothing of value for a while, so I'm here. The only difference is I don't mind admitting it.

"nothing of value"

You are placing a value judgement on various activities. That's all there is to it.

You think enjoying something passively has no value. I think people who think that are closed-minded. Carry on.

But I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels. It's probably a little better for me than watching paint dry, but y'know...

:)

I'm sure we won't be bothering each other too much in the future

:toast:

My only point is:

1) Obsessing about passive activities isn't a good idea.
2) This obsession probably is a replacement for something lacking elsewhere.

Somehow I think you've changed that into "all sports fans have no life and are therefore dumber/less interesting than me." I don't see where I wrote that. Of course these are both opinions of mine, but I think I understand the mechanism because I see it in myself.

"The guy who has all the golden glove winners memorized isn't probably the one you want to show you a night on the town, for example."

What could these two things possibly have to do with each other? If that's not judging, I don't know what is...

But that's another opinion.

knowing baseball statistics, golden gloves included, is not an obsession. You wouldn't even know unless they told you.

Because I've done the same sorts of things. Instead of watching TV for an hour, I could have written a song, gone for a walk, &c. The value of any activity is subjective, and it's my view that the watching TV isn't as valuable as the other two activities. To me, agonizing over baseball statistics is a lot like watching TV. Was it the best usage of my time to know all the details of a band's history, or to have read all an artist's interviews? Probably not.

I don't sit around and memorize them, for godsake. I've just watched and enjoyed enough baseball over the years to know them. That's all. It's really not a big deal. And anyway, I still don't really udnerstand what that has to do with my value as someone to have fun with...

People can be enjoyable no matter what they've spent their time doing. Not being productive or doing things without much point/value doesn't degrade one's worth as a person. That's a lot of crap, and I was wrong to say/imply it.

I do think, though, that a lot of time spent on these passive activities could be better spent elsewhere. That's what I intended to imply--to point out someone who has spent hours on baseball statistics or pop culture minutiae has probably missed out on other things as a result.

I admit there are times I wish I could sustitute a few biochem mechanisms or somesuch into my brain for a few tidbits on the 1968 Tigers.

Anyway, this has actually been a very interesting discussion...thanks.

:dunce:

I apologize. Reading back on my posts it seems I was acting like a dick for the pure hell of it. This is something I've put a lot of thought into recently, and I'd say this is a reflection of my being frustrated with myself. This won't have been the first time I've made an ass of myself on DU.

n/t

You really weren't that bad at all...

We all make kind of snarky comments behind the anonymous veil of the internet...

Maybe your active behavior is a substitute for inactive behavior.

:eyes:

just has a larger brain capacity than most people you know...

Honestly, your opinion is really odd. Enjoying reading, for instance, is an "emotional substitute for active behavior?" Or enjoying fine music? Or film?

It seems to me that these are simply all facets of a well-rounded person. I happen to have a very good memory and a rather deep knowledge of baseball and its history. Has this stunted my social development? Of course not. Anyway, I'm going to get back to the Padres game.

Enjoying them in moderation is a totally different story.

Obsessing about nearly anything is bad for you. Knowing baseball stats is *not* an obsession--it's a hobby. Sorry, you're just on the wrong side of this one...

:shrug:

we'll just have to agree to disagree. I hope you don't have any close friends/sports fans you look down your nose at.

I'm just saying it's not the healthiest behavior to gorge on passive enjoyment. I do it myself, so it's not like I'm coming from some holier-than-thou position on this. I'm obsessed with music, and when I see people obsessed with sports I just see a similar mechanism, that's all--I can't pass judgment on those people without judging myself at the same time.

I'm a big fan of both, though I see neither at all as unhealthy. Quite the opposite, in fact.

If hunting and fishing are sports, figure skating most certainly is a sport as well. Well, more of an athletic event, as I can hardly call a 300 pound tub of lard lineman an "athlete." Figure skaters and gymnastst are more athletic than most professional athletes on TV. Don't get me started on NASCAR. And it has nothing to do with being a purist or a liberal, that is just bizarre.

It's dancing on Ice and it's up to someone else's interpretation of what is good or not good. You see in a sport like baseball it's who scores the most runs and you don't get points on who has the prettiest uniforms. And those 300+lbs NFL lineman are more athletic than you thank. If you've never seen a Sumo wrestler train then you'd never understand what time and effort a modern NFL lineman puts into his training. Now NASCAR you're right about them not being athletes, but I do give them points on being daredevils though.

ever ice skated?

but let me guess, you think ice hockey, which is infinitely easier, IS a sport? yes?

edit; let me throw some other judge rated sports in here for you to consider, none of which are done on razor thin blades on a slippery surface: the trick portions of skateboarding, snowboarding, skiing, rollerblading (on a half pipe) and bmx biking, as opposed to the racing part, which also has a component in ice skating as well.

what about olympic diving? sport? no?
what about men's gymnastics?

(by the way, ice skating is gymnastics on ice)

p.s. all of the above sports are done for a fraction of the time that skaters have to stay on the ice.

I know how many attempts it takes for them to learn to land even a single jump, not to mention a double or triple.

I remained vertical. That took all my focus and all the strength I had in my calves and ankles. The only thing I have ever had to devote that much concentration to is downhilling in mountain biking.

You have to be able to anticipate the moves of the player trying to get by you, there's more to it than just being able to physically overpower your opponent. Besides, when they get through and try for a sack, they have to be quick about it so the QB can't get the ball away.

My younger sister played both offensive and defensive line when she was younger (and earned the opportunity to play in the women's pro league a few years ago, but decided to persue other interests) so I know for a fact linemen have to be athletic, because I saw the weight melt off of her every year when training camp started.

This is satire - right?:shrug:

not anymore.

in another thread that made a lighthearted wish that baseball would go on strike.

===

Millions of people enjoy baseball. I am one. Tens of thousands of people are employed and make their livelihoods through baseball, beyond the players. The reporters, groundskeepers, vendors, ushers, barkeeps, waiters, waitresses, and the guys who operate the sausage carts at all the parks across the country rely on baseball to make their daily bread.

I know this is just a funny rant you've posted, and I'm not inclined to take it terribly seriously seriously. That having been said, do consider what you're wishing for. The price of your desire to to not hear about baseball because of a strike falls on the heads of a lot of people who need the work. Just sayin'.

Hockey isn't as big a sport around the country as it is here in Boston and the other Original Six cities, but the NHL lockout has actually hurt a lot of small businesses.

Besides all that, the thing a lot of people like about baseball is beyond individual games or stats or players. This country reinvents itself about every 20 years. Baseball is a constant; it has been basically the same game for 150 years, and has been a part of life through all the peaks and valleys of our history.

Cut open the history of baseball and you can count the rings like on a tree. At this ring, Ted Williams left the game to go fight in WWII. At this one, the women's league was formed to keep baseball alive during the war. At this one, the groundwork laid by hundreds and hundreds of Negro League ballplayers led to the integration of the majors, and I don't care what anyone says, that was a huge moment in the civil rights struggle.

Is a lot of it bullshit? Sure. The recent steroids scandal is an embarrassment, the fact that people like Alex Rodrigues get a quarter of a billion dollars to play a game while schools go begging for money is an absolute disgrace, and the fact that Americans would be far more involved in the public life and health of the country without the distraction of professional sports is axiomatic.

But entertainment is not a bad thing, and if baseball has become more ridiculous over the years, that is mostly because the country itself has gotten more ridiculous over the years. It is an interesting mirror of the culture, exposing our celebrity worship, our misplaced economic principles, and our easy ability to become distracted. But it is also essentially the same game that was being played when TR was president, and a little constancy is not so bad a thing.

I've always felt that baseball is one of the only constants in my life. If that makes it some sort of emotional teddy bear, more power to it.

made the unforgivable mistake of posting a sports illustrated link in LBN about the Pistons/ Pacers brawl right after it happened.

I was quite stung by the snarky remarks and the folks who said stuff like "get a life" and "sports is stupid" and made me feel like a neanderthal dor daring to post in LBN about the worst brawl in the history of that sport.

oh well.

that's a serious no-no around here.

you get to see up close what happens when you don't take care of your body, so I guess it's a logical combination.

Thanks!

I didn't post this as some kind of a call-out, btw. Seemed germain to the discussion.

But if baseball were absent, it would just be something else. Sports aren't the problem, they're more of a symptom, I think.

rather than inviting comments from the general DU public?
I bet that would solve your problems.

This is the first sport thread I've ever opened, and I only bother because it assails people who don't like sports. I find sports boring. Sue me.

There are lots of threads in the Lounge that could easily go into one of the groups. All the cats threads, of instance, which I find inane, could very nicely go into the pets group. But you see, I just hide those threads and carry on. Not everyone has to like what everyone else likes, but you don't have to rain on other peoples' parade either.

This thread doesn't criticize people who don't like sports--it criticizes people who criticize people who like sports--that's a big difference.

and I won't. You deliberately provoked responses by the rest of us.
And you know it. I could care less about what you and the rest of this testosterone crazed culture do with their your time. Your cries of persecution are absurd. You addressed your thread to non-sports fans, so those are the answers you got. Big surprise. Go get your beer, sit in front of the TV, and leave the rest of us alone.

Which you would have realized if you took half a second to compare my name to that of the original poster's. I never accused you or anyone else of persecuting me.

I couldn't care less about what you think of my hobbies. The fact that you think all sports fans are beer swilling couch potatoes says a lot more about you than it does about me. You should try being less narrow-minded, which, after all, is the definition of a *liberal*

You suggested that all sports posts go in a DU group--I pointed out why that's ridiculous. Perhaps instead of getting defensive and attacking me, you could actually consider my point. Why did you post at all, otherwise?

If you don't want the general population to participate in such discussions, put them in the sports areas of DU. If you post them in general discussion areas, GD or the Lounge, you will get comments from people who have the audacity to think differently on the subject. So if you want to segregate speech, segregate the threads. Pretty simple.

And you're right, I didn't look as to who posted the original thread. Frankly I could care less. The point remains the same. The idea that I have to like sports to be considered a "liberal" is absurd. First off all, I'm not a liberal. I don't support the fetish of free market capitalism, which is what liberalism entails. Obviously sports fans do or they wouldn't promote billion dollar industries. All of that, however, is aside from the point. What you do in your spare time and how you choose to spend your money is entirely you business. I could care less. But if you put threads in general areas, you will encounter ideas not sanctioned by the NFL or NBA. So either keep the threads in the sports section or be prepared for the fact you will encounter different points of view.

First of all, and I mean this entirely as an aside, the phrase is "I couldn't care less." Saying "I could care less" doesn't make any sense. I really don't mean that as a criticism--just letting you know.

I also don't care about who posts what where. And I never said that liberals have to like sports. What I did say, and what is true, is that being a liberal means being open-minded and not criticizing other people's interests and hobbies just because you're not interested in them. You essentially called me an alcoholic boor with no intellectual capability, simply because I am a sports fan. Forgetting the fact that this was probably a DU rules violation on your part, it was also incredibly arrogant and ignorant. You know nothing about me, my intellectual background, or my drinking habits.

Different points of view are terrific--it is posters like you, who make ridiculous and broad generalizations about entire groups of people who don't agree with them, that ought to be ashamed of themselves.

In all seriousness, since you clearly have a very high opinion of yourself relative to me and other free-market fetishists, why don't you go back and read our exchange and see if perhaps there isn't a kernel of truth in what I've said.

I just don't find them interesting in the least. I'd rather pull off my toenails.

But I don't really give a shit if other people like them. Have at it, knock yourself out, who gives a shit?

Thanks, Bouncy Ball!

But thanks.

It just seems awfully strange to me that anyone who calls themselves a liberal would care about someone else's harmless hobby.

I think the players and owners and shit are all bastards, but do I care if you watch it? HELL NO.

Mr. Bouncy doesn't give a shit about sports, either. But he also doesn't give a shit if people want to watch it.

Guess you've never hung out around artists. Or musicians--that's Art, ain't it? Lots of competition. Thrill of victory. Agony of defeat. And too many boring games that go nowhere....

I'm not much of a sports fan but have no problem with those who are. Whenever a Houston team is doing well, I'll get on the bandwagon. But I've had my heart broken too often.

Perhaps the complainers don't have control of the remote; their parents or roommates or significant other FORCE them to watch sports. Or perhaps they're feeling neglected by the jock in their life.

While you waste time with sports, I'll waste time reading stuff emptied out of Tolkien's trash can. Or ordering weird dishes off E-bay. Or torturing my cats with dreadful guitar strumming. Or posting on DU....

I view art the same way Robin Williams' character did in the Dead Poets Society.

and I try to be as active in Democratic/progressive politics as much as I can...and I'm addicted to sports. Football, baseball, hockey, golf...you name it. I love 'em all. I love sports bars, tailgating, going to the ballpark...huge fan of all of it. :D

I love going to a sporting event.

so does that mean I don't have to keep it to myself?

i'm not into most sports myself but it has nothing to do with politics. just a personal preference .

I don't see what sports has to do with politics. Like films or TV, it's another form of entertainment. There is also the thrill of competition, the rivalries, the personalities, and yes, even politics in sports (obviously not the same sense as the politics we all talk about here).

I enjoy basketball and hockey (damn the strike!), but I don't mind baseball and football, though my city's team sucks in the latter two!

can we still hate NASCAR - some call it a sport!

Can't you handle opinions that differ from your own?

Are some of the ONLY things left that you can halfway believe in. Nothing is perfect but with sports it is about as close as you can get.

What the hell does being liberal have to do with sports?

The final fights from the "Ultimate Fighter" competition will be on SpikeTV tonight at 9pm! Also, Ken Shamrock will fight Rich Franklin. If you have never watched MMA, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It absolutely blows boxing away!