Baseball

rileydog22 wrote: Garion81 wrote: Billingsley was the rock for the staff this year even if his record doesn't show it.  He kept the Dodgers in many games while they struggled offensively.  I swear this is not the same team who started the season.  Can you imagine a bench that has Jeff Kent and Nomar?  How about Greg Maddox coming out the bullpen last night?  Torre has a lot of weapons at his disposal with Furcal and Saito back.    I could have told you coming into the year that Nomar wouldn't play very much .  Kent is interesting; you know that at some point he's gonna start showing signs of degrading, but he seems to manage to keep pushing it back.  As far as Maddux goes, I hate to say it but I think he's about done.  I love the guy, and IMO he's the best pitcher since the dead ball era, but you just get to a point where an 84 MPH heater doesn't get the job done.

Is Chad brilliant or is Chad brilliant?  I love this guy. 

I hate baseball, but I like the Yankees and Barry Bonds because they're winners.  I don't understand why nobody likes Bonds, when he is totally in the spirit of human progress.  Throughout history, humans have overcome their lack of adaptations by using ingenuity and creating something.  We didn't have warm fur so we made clothes.  We didn't have any natural defenses so we made spears for hunting.  We couldn't run everywhere we needed to go so we created carriages and cars and airplanes.  And now when baseball players need to hit the ball harder to get homeruns, they use steroids.  Perfectly logical progression.  I bet all the naysayers wish we still lived in caves and gathered berries for food.

Joke

Looks like Dodgers and Phillies for the NL. It could shape up to be a LA vs. BoSox WS.

Garion81 wrote: ^ It not over till its over.  I hope the Dodgers bring a killer instinct to the park tomorrow night.    Man! Saturday night  Dodgers at home at Dodger Stadium 57,000, USC is at home in the Coliseum  against Oregon 90,000, UCLA is at home in the Rose Bowl against Wazzu 65,000. Stay off the freeways about 10 pm there is going to be a hell of a traffic jam near downtown LA.   and we can't sell out Calprog annually (400).

All it would take is to have Keith Emerson play solo and you would get 400 people there,

rushfan4 wrote: With that lineup if CalProg were in my vicinity I'd be there in a second.  It's a good thing for the Dodgers that Manny is probably not a prog fan because I could see Manny being Manny and not showing up for a playoff game because he would just have to attend CalProg.

Edited by Garion81 - October 03 2008 at 17:14

Since this how the rest of the country see us let me explain. It is because of the start times.  If you see a Dodger game on in the east at 8 pm it is 5 pm here.  Have you any idea what the freeways are like at that time?  Dodger Stadium is on a hill about 5 miles from downtown LA.  There is a radius of about 50 miles people come to see a game. It takes three innings to get there at that time. Regular start times like 7:10 pm people are usually there. As for leaving early it is also notoriously difficult to get out of because there are only two roads that go up the hill to Chavez Ravine. Otherwise you may not get home till after midnight.

rileydog22 wrote: The best-of-five divisional system is not a functional playoff method.  They play 162 games to figure out who's worthy of a playoff spot, and they need every last one of them--and sometimes one more.  And then they let it come down to three games to decide who moves on after that.  C'mon, anybody can beat anybody three times.  They really aught to at least expand that series to seven games.  Sure, it'll make the playoffs three days longer, but I don't see why MLB doesn't want to cash in on a couple extra playoff games.

The baseball season is long enough as it is. We would be going almost into November with anymore added games. Baseball should be over in the first weekend of October. These games shouldn't be played when it's cold or snowing. It's not fair to the fans or the players. What they need to do is play more double headers during the season and expand the rosters to 27 players. If they finished the season in the early part of September then they could play best of seven series' all the way through to the World Series.

rileydog22 wrote: Why 27?  25 is more than enough.

If you are having a double header or 2 a week to get the season over earlier then the pitching staffs would not be able to handle the work load. These guys are not like the ones prior to the 70's that could go on 3 days rest.