Even though (aside from a couple columnists) it's written at a 7th-grade level, I've been buying USA Today Baseball Weekly for years, largely for the stats. Now, begining with the current issue, BW is a mere half of the new SPORTS Weekly... but the only additional coverage is of that dullest of pro leagues: the NFL. I'm betting baseball only makes the cover in October, on Opening Day, and when a "hard-working" white infielder tests positive for steroids.

Most baseball fanatics I know hate football. Hate hate hate. The Colts play where now? (Nothing personal, gridiron fans, but taste is taste.) We're considering donning a black armband every Wednesday when purchasing this half-useless rag. I know all about the alleged "limited audience" factor the McPaper Inc honchos use as an excuse for marginalizing the Diamond Game. Perhaps if they assembled a better product they'd have a larger readership. They could've at least made the baseball section a pull-out so I could purge the Jarhead Pastime instantly!

I never knew it, but The Sporting News was once baseball-only.

Ah, Bill W, tilting at windmills again, I see.

Although the so-called football--"soccer" IS football, how lame is a sport that only uses feet for kickoffs and punts/FG's is called "football"?--is by far my least favorite of the 5 major US sports, it's a bit of hyperbole to say that baseball fanatics hate football. I ocasionally sit in the season seat at Dodger Stadium of a person who loves both equally. But, yeah, it's an apples/oranges kind of thing. My 3 big complaints about gridiron:

1. It's 3 seconds of action followed by 45 seconds of standing around. There's never any flow to a game, it's all herky-jerky. A bit esoteric perhaps, maybe it's the musician in me?

2. Coaches have way too much of an impact on the outcome (via playcalling); I often think of gridironers as mere puppets executing their well-drilled routines, rather like circus seals.

3. While I'd never deny the skill involved in, say, throwing a 60-yard pass on the dime to a receiver, gridiron more than most other sports relies on brute strength, rather than overt skills.

Also, I've long suspected that a lot of the NFL's appeal is tied up to betting. Remove that aspect and I don't think the fanaticism would quite be there.

That said, I'm looking forward to the start of the NFL season. Not as much as the Angels drinking champers after they win the World Series--hey, quit laughing!--but still.

Baseball has been overshadowed in the media by the NFL? All baseball's fault (and perhaps a bit of the demographic/lifestyle shift that makes the Agrarian Age aesthetic of baseball seem so slow and dull to a lot of people); no sympathy there.

[quote]Originally posted by Jim Allen:
a bit of the demographic/lifestyle shift that makes the Agrarian Age aesthetic of baseball seem so slow and dull to a lot of people...

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I dunno... I often find they're the same people who find Dostoyevsky and Godard dull, and they ain't particularly agrarian.

Well, the fanatics I'm around refer to OPS and walk rates more than batting average (the least informative major stat, right?), so we may be talking about two different focus groups!

"Baseball is what we were ... football is what we have become." - Mary McGrory

(yes, that's damning)

Hmm...there's a gorgeous bartender at a place I go to who did an M.A. thesis on Dostoevsky. I know he likes football, but does he find baseball dull or not? A litmus test.+

Interesting theory BillW....I disagree that most baseball fanatics hate football -- millions of fans of both sports, including myself, can cite relevant statistics and memorable events while still enjoying the "brute strength" and strategy involved in both sports.

Getting back to the original topic, I recall when The Sporting News was 100% baseball and, not coincidentally, the popularity and sales of that publication began to plummet shortly after they became "all sports"....while SI is the exception, IMHO most publications do a far superior job when they concentrate on ONE sport exclusively (and don't even get me started on that trash called ESPN the Magazine that has the journalistic quality of the National Enquirer)....I am a former subscriber to Baseball Weekly and still pick it up periodically throughout the year and, while I cannot say that I am surprised by the decision of USA Today's less than stellar management, I can't see how this will benefit the true sports fan....the quality of the content of Baseball Weekly has always been mixed since its inception and if they believe their average reader only has the short attention span that their "parent publication" caters to, then I for one will continue to search for more in-depth sports journalism written by quality writers like Frank Deford, S.L. Price and John Feinstein and that fortunately is more prevalent online than in some of these soon to be extinct weekly birdcage liners.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: gamecock ]

[quote]"Baseball is what we were ... football is what we have become." - Mary McGrory (yes, that's damning)

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And a perfect example of why baseball is sliding towards irrelevance in the sporting landscape.

I was watching a ballgame with my pal Buzzer one night. ESPN ran that baseball commercial--the one with the Copland-esque music, the short clips of Gehrig, Ruth, Williams, the loathsome Kirk Gibson of the shit Dodge--sorry, letting my Dodger hate derail the train of thought--and so on. He nailed it: "That's why baseball is in such trouble. It's living in the past! They had one clip from the last 10 years and most of them were before we were born. Why should some kid today give a shit?". Er, um, well, because...............

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: Jim Allen ]

Since I still do remember being taught as a child that, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all..." I'll refrain from offering any of my opinions on football. (To be fair, I have to admit that just about every team sport --including baseball-- that devotes such serious attention to the coordinated manipulation of a single, roundish object has begun to impress me as being a bit goofy in certain respects, so I won't get all high-and-mighty over which of these games is superior!)

I'll apologize in advance for being naive and simplistic (I have moments when I feel that I could, rather appropriately, be using some variation of the term "just fell off the turnip truck" as a screen-name) but I've concluded that many people would find baseball much more captivating (and the game would achieve a livlier, more continuous flow) if the hitters were required to stay in the batters box and face their pitches, rather than being granted a time-out every 15 seconds in order to primp. Perhaps I should add, here, that this suggestion is coming from a baseball fan, not a baseball-hater, and someone who actually enjoys the "pastoral" aspects of our (former) "National Pastime."

Well, I see I've managed to remain completely "off topic" for the entirety of this posting, but I will say that I admire your passion, Bill W! And your colorful turns-of-phrase have me smiling. I'm also sympathetic to your cause: it's a sad day in Muddville when a guy can't get his baseball coverage pure, clean & simple, the way it was meant to be. (While I'm on this wayward subject, has anyone else become dis-heartened by the trend for baseball sportscasters to be increasingly stentorian and bombastic in their commentary, in a seemingly wrong-headed attempt to juice-up the game they're covering? I've always preferred the knowledgeable, soft-spoken gents who offer their play-by-play in an amiable, intimate way, as though you're spending 9 innings with a favorite uncle by your side. In this respect I truly appreciate Tony Gwynn's new career as a baseball announcer: he's really sharp while at the same time he's very easy on the ears. That's the sort of distinction that makes baseball unique, I believe, and that's why I can understand your desire not to have it lumped together with some other ball-or-puck sports, worthy as they might be... )

[ September 06, 2002: Message edited by: fielderschoice ]

[quote]Originally posted by Jim Allen:
"That's why baseball is in such trouble. It's living in the past!"

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That was the same problem I had with Ken Burns' "Baseball" -- 8 pretty good "innings" to cover the sport up until the 60's then just one awful episode to cover the last 30-40 years -- as if nothing noteworthy has happened.

[quote]Originally posted by Jim Allen:
He nailed it: "That's why baseball is in such trouble. It's living in the past! They had one clip from the last 10 years..."

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But it's a rich past... and I don't entirely agree. That Most Memorable Moments ballot is absurdly front-loaded with recent events, as
pointed out here by Rob Neyer -- 17 of the 30 candidates (some of which AREN'T moments) occurred since 1970! Would it hurt little Johnny to learn that Stan Musial was a better player than Ken Griffey Jr?

Well said on announcer bombast, f'choice ... whenever I see tapes of old games, it's refreshing that the announcers occasionally shut up.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by fielderschoice:
I've always preferred the knowledgeable, soft-spoken gents who offer their play-by-play in an amiable, intimate way, as though you're spending 9 innings with a favorite uncle by your side. In this respect I truly appreciate Tony Gwynn's new career as a baseball announcer: he's really sharp while at the same time he's very easy on the ears.

Not to get too far off topic but excellent points f'choice RE: baseball announcers and, for that matter, sportscasters in general....while I don't want to sound like some curmudgeon, too many announcers today are enamored with their own "catch phrases" (will someone please tell Stuart Scott his "act" died about 2 years ago and to please try and use some minutia of what he presumably learned in journalism school at UNC -- as limited as that may have been -- this coming from an admittedly biased SC Gamecock grad)....getting back to my point, when I have the pleasure of listening to Vin Scully (the DirecTV Extra Innings package is worth the cost to listen to Scully's broadcasts alone) it reinforces the vast differences between top-notch announcers, including Joe Buck, Josh Lewin, and several of his young contemporaries, and too many of the egocentric variety you see on ESPN....btw, I agree with you on Tony Gwynn as well....during the handful of broadcasts I've seen him on to date he has been an enormous surprise -- I presume once he becomes baseball coach at San Diego State full-time his broadcasting duties will be all but eliminated, which is a shame.

Fortunately, baseball purists still can find quality journalism in virtually all forms of today's electronic media if we only know where to look....hopefully the management at USA Today's Baseball Weekly will recognize the error in their ways before their publication becomes lost in a sea of mediocrity like TSN and countless others have become.

Yeah, FC is correct about announcer bombast. Disclaimer: I almost never listen to the audio for a ballgame, only soccer/rugby/cricket matches (so I can tell what the hell is going on). For the major North American sports, I turn the sound off and listen to CD's. From the few times I've listened to them, the Angels announcers are terrible; Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler need to take large doses of barbituates, stat. But even worse than their announcers-on-crack routine is Fox Sports Net's (they carry the Angels on cable) insistence of having people parade through the booth for interviews. The announcers will spend two innings interviewing some dork and oh, manage to slip in the fact, sometimes, that there's actually a ball game going on. And I simply can't watch games done by WGN; apart from the Cubs & Sox being horrible, they cut away so often--almost between every pitch it seems--to show sickening shots of allegedly cute kids in the stands and chicks with big tits that I feel like screaming at the TV "HEL-LO! There's a ballgame happening here!". *Cough* Yeah, I take it a little bit too seriously.

At one point in the late 70's/early 80's Los Angeles had arguably the best announcers in their respective sports working here. Vin Scully (Dodgers), Chick Hearn (Lakers) and Bob Miller (Kings); in addition, Dick Enberg was the Angels announcer. Ah, those were the days.

I love listening to the English football (soccer) announcers--Martin Tyler is a favorite--because not only do they say things like "Oh, that's an insouciant little pass along the touch line" and not have it sound pretentious, but they actually shut their cake holes for long stretches until something actually needs to be said. Heaven.