OT- No Tyin' in Baseball

[Carlito Sway]

Now I know this is an NFL board and all but I've seen so many inane OTs that this just had to apply. I simply can't believe that the crappy MLB's all-star game ended in a tie. Holy ish, isn't that one thing that never happens in baseball?!? Isn't the tie the reason we rag on soccer - because it's just plain un-american?

For an exhibition game to be called like that is pathetic. If that doesn't sum up the state of the game, I don't know what does.

[DeathByLinebacker]

I don't think it was that big a deal. They were out of pitchers and wouldn't be fair to the Phillies and especially the Mariners to leave their pitchers out there for a 3rd inning when no one else went more than 2. The reason they ran out of pitchers is because the managers try to play everybody so all the fans can see their players play.

Not handing out the Ted Williams MVP trophy was pretty stupid though.

[rfk_skins]

Well it just goes to show you what direction the game of baseball has taken. First there where steroids, then talks about a srike now this, i tired of baseball and football rules. Here's what I say to baseball..............:finger:

[cdanrun]

On top of the tie, MLB renamed the MVP trophy for the All-Star game in honor of Ted Williams this year. Guess what, since the game ended in a tie, nobody is gonna get the award in his honor.

[rtandler]

Baseball could screw up a two-car funeral procession.

That pre-game "30 Greatest Moments" thing was hideous. It combined the worst elements of an Olympic opening ceremony and a Super Bowl halftime show. All that was missing was a washed-up rock band like Aerosmith.

:gus: :shootinth :doh: Positively painful.

[PCS]

What MLB may want to pay attention too, is the anger fans had after the game. (Er, not including the idiots throwing beer bottles :doh: ). Fans left the game mad. Not the ideal choice of emotions to have following such an event. Whether the decision to call the game a tie was corect or not, the question MLB should be asking is if this anger was felt by a large percentage of its fan base and is it reflective of an anger more towards MLB is genera these days. IMHO, yep is the answer to both. Will they heed this apparent warning? Probably not.

[@DCGoldPants]

Maybe its time for an owner (selig) to not be commish anymore. The players and the fans have no faith in him. We all know him as a liar and a theif. If any team should be contracted, it should be the Brewers, they've had 10 losing seasons in a row.

[All In]

I think it's reflective in the youth of this country that baseball is going down hill, more kids play soccer than baseball (ref: some article in the post in the world cup section). I don't like watching baseball, and even less how it is run.

Here's Boswell's take on last night.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47237-2002Jul10.html

For Baseball, a Tie That Fits Like a Noose

By Thomas Boswell

Wednesday, July 10, 2002; Page D01

MILWAUKEE

Maybe Tuesday night's humiliating culmination to a mockery of an all-star game will send Commissioner Bud Selig a message that even he can grasp: Baseball fans will not tolerate a work stoppage when it can be avoided.

With the American and National leagues tied at 7-7 after the top of the 11th, Selig decided that, if the NL did not score in the bottom half of the inning, then the game would be called.

When the news was flashed on the scoreboard, the crowd exploded in boos. As the information sank in, as well as its symbolic impact at a time when the possibility of a strike hangs over the sport, the crowd organized its anger.

"Let them play. Let them play," chanted the standing fans in Miller Park, directing their anger at Selig, a lifelong Milwaukeean.

When the NL did not score, both teams trudged off the field as the crowd showered even more boos on all concerned. Long after the game, fans in the stands still chanted, "Bud must go."

Selig's justification was that both teams had used all 30 players and were down to their last pitcher. However, those final pitchers -- Freddy Garcia of Seattle and Vicente Padilla of Philadelphia -- had pitched only two innings apiece. Both are starting pitchers who are accustomed to pitching seven innings or more. Both teams had a player for every position -- and all in their natural positions.

In other words, two nine-man baseball teams with no acceptable reason not to continue playing. For many years, all-star game starters routinely pitched three innings. In recent years, the convention has been two innings. But that's all it is, a convention.

Baseball was faced with a classic choice. Put the fans and the game itself first, or make sure not to make any player, his team or his agent unhappy. Selig's fear was that Garcia or Padilla might get hurt. But they might get hurt in any game they pitch.

"I apologize to the fans here," Selig said. "Both managers told me they were out of players. In our wildest dreams, we never thought this would happen."

Selig's words, and his explanations, were indeed eerie. Imagine that, in a few weeks, if owners and players cannot reach a labor agreement, that he may say words -- as a strike begins -- that sound quite similar and are based in an equally flawed logic.

"I had no choice," Selig said. "As much as I hated to do it, and with all the reluctance in the world, I had to call the game.

"I couldn't think of an option."

That could be an even bigger problem in a few weeks.

"I feel bad for Bud, especially here" in Milwaukee, AL Manager Joe Torre said.

Selig argued that Padilla was working on his "throw day" with less than normal rest. Yet, in last year's World Series, Randy Johnson won the sixth game as a starter and saved the seventh game, in no days' rest.

This entire all-star "celebration" ended as a complete public relations nightmare for the sport -- but, perhaps, as a cautionary tale as well. Monday's Home Run Derby, in which Sammy Sosa hit eight home runs that traveled more than 500 feet, was surrounded by questions about which players, and how many players in baseball, use steroids -- which are illegal and banned from baseball, but not tested for.

Also Monday, the players' union decided not to set a strike date but sent representatives back to each team to discuss what such a date might be.

To top it off, this All-Star Game was supposed to be a kind of memorial to Ted Williams, who died at 83 last week. Instead, the Williams story became a grotesque farce as his children argued about whether their father's body should be cremated or cryogenically frozen in the hope of restoring him to life someday or, perhaps, selling his DNA for profit for cloning.

As a final insult to Williams's memory, no MVP was chosen for this undecided game. This was to be the first all-star game in which that award would be called the Ted Williams Trophy.

If Selig, and baseball owners and players, cannot understand after this all-star catastrophe how close their sport is to the edge of a cliff, there is no helping them.

You don't call off the all-star game just because it's after midnight or TV viewers have clicked off their sets. If you have to put Padilla at first base and let a fielder pitch, then so be it.

This evening's uniquely bizarre culmination to what is supposed to be a showcase event merely ended 48 hours in which it seemed that the whole sport seems to be holding its breath.

Top management sources say that the season can still be saved. But, in the next breath, are quick to tell you that there's been absolutely no progress on the luxury tax issue and, without movement from the players, the owners aren't budging.

Perhaps Selig knows something that others do not. Here in opulent new Miller Park, built largely with taxpayer funds, where his daughter owns the Brewers, Selig brought together every shred of nostalgia, exploitative schmaltz and genuine baseball enthusiasm that the game can muster.

Why just introduce Cal Ripken to the crowd if you can have Bonds and his godfather, Willie Mays, hug each other in right field? How about a tribute to "October heroes," even though it isn't October. Get Carlton Fisk, Reggie Jackson, Bill Mazeroski, Kirk Gibson and Joe Carter at home plate for a mass hug.

The first pitch? Why have just one? Not when you can have a separate mound and home plate for former Milwaukee stars)Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Paul Molitor and Robin Yount. Don't forget the jet fly-over, the 500 Children of Milwaukee with bats like light sabers, the Rudy Giuliani guest appearance, the Williams tribute, the Jack Buck tribute, the Sept. 11 silence and the fireworks.

Nice work, Bud. Probably nobody will even notice a strike.

Actually, there were at least 10 other special events. Why waste all that dead time between half innings? Next year, maybe the All-Star Game can use the seventh-inning stretch for bingo.

Before the game, at something called a "Second Town Hall Meeting," Selig answered every question anybody could cook up. Why are games so long? How can you test for steroids? When will relocation be addressed? Would Selig prefer a work stoppage to the current labor status quo? (At first he said "no," then he changed his mind and said they were equally repugnant.)

Finally, no one could think of another question to ask Selig on what has become his annual State of Everything hour, even though some of the queries were sent from as far away as Tasmania and Singapore. In fact, only one subject had been overlooked entirely.

No one had actually asked a question about baseball.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

[Erwin S.]

Baseball is horrible. During my early teens I ate, slept, and drank baseball. I played it 6 months out of the year and spent all my evenings watching games. Then the strike came and I woke up. Now, I'm still disgusted. I'm a Tiger fan. Enough said. But seeing Weaver leave, go to the Spankies and get very little in return, I really hate baseball.

Last night I didn't watch the game out of protest BUT I think they should have let position players take the mound. Anyone know why they didn't? That's baseball. Run out of pitchers, find someone who wants to throw. You can't just call the frickin' game. It's so fitting though isn't it? Nothing can go right with baseball.

[TennesseeCarl]

Major league baseball is about the best friend soccer could have in this country. Millions of baseball fans are casting about for an alternative as the players and owners totally screw up a wonderful sport that's prospered for more than a century.

To have disgruntled fans in Selig's home park for an All-Star Game....as Stengel would have said, "Simply Amazin' ". Can these guys get anything right?

I hate watching a sport I loved trash itself in some bizzare ritual suicide.

[KMP]

Baseball blows! :puke:

[NavyDave]

I watched a little was in awe of Barry Bonds who almost had two homers.

This is a joke.

There are more kids playing soccer because we have more hablas and of course the Woddy Harrelsons in suburbia can't jump or hit the curveball.

Baseball will still have a place but stuff like this shows that it will take someone like Dubba ya to force revision since the owners and players wont.

[bulldog]

talk about handling people with kid gloves :laugh:

there are so many limitations on today's baseball players it is amazing a manager can get the requisite number of guys out there on any given night.

1. we can't bring in pitchers without the 'appropriate' warm up period.

2. we can't bring a pitcher back into even what is an exhibition game because it will derail him from making his next start for his regular club.

3. we can't play at least half the position players against certain types of pitching. remember the days when ballplayers took all their at-bats in a 9 inning contest?

4. starting pitchers, outside of the top echelon, can't be expected to make it more than 5 or 6 innings in any given start.

5. once teams get a lead in the late innings they have to subsitute for regular position players to improve their defense. Once again, your starters can't seem to make it nine innings.

so, what is all this a by-product of?

a watered down sport where 50% of the pitchers of today's game would not have been in the majors 20 years ago.

oh, they throw the ball 90 miles an hour. it is not a velocity problem.

it is the fact they just don't know the game and how to PITCH as opposed to THROW a baseball :laugh:

you see guys who are starters that have one pitch they throw well and another they are able to get across maybe 40% of the time.

in the past, a one pitch guy was relegated to the bullpen as a reliever. even fastball pitchers like Ryan could use offspeed pitches effectively to set guys up.

no more.

and position players? what a joke. As I noted, so many don't play everyday or for a full nine innings because of offensive or defensive weaknesses.

you have regular outfielders making $4 million a year who don't even go to bat against left handed pitching.

they have to be platooned.

and let's not even get started with today's relievers. :mad:

has there ever been a time when you have seen relief pitchers throw more wild pitches, balls in the dirt?

maybe it is just my own stupidity, but my belief is you used to bring in a relief pitcher to PRESERVE a lead. The rule was sort of like the oath doctors take: FIRST OF ALL, DO NO HARM :laugh:

baseball is a joke.

and MLB wants us to believe that all the hitting records that have fallen in the last 4 or 5 years is proof that the game is enjoying another 'Golden Age'? :laugh: :laugh: :doh:

you really think that Barry Bonds, hitting 73 home runs at a geriatric 38 years of age, is proof of the health of the game?

in my mind it shows the opposite.

it is like George Foreman winning the heavyweight title back at age 45.

it was more the evidence of the dearth of talent in boxing as a sport than it was a testament to George's greatness as a athlete.

[Henry]

The MLB All-Star game was on last night? Who won?

[Atlanta Skins Fan]

I watched the game last night and had no problem with the game being called after 11 innings, mainly because going longer would have caused Torre to burn Garcia's next start by using him too many innings. Garcia is Seattle's best pitcher, Seattle is in a pennant race, and the all-star game shouldn't affect pennant races.

What bothered me is the amazing stupidity that no one had anticipated the situation. This is why rules are made. Any number of various rules could have been drawn up a long time ago and avoided the amazing situation of Selig huddling with the managers and umpires while the fans booed. The rules could be:

1. Game is called after 11 innings, or

2. Roster includes 3 starting pitchers each (credited as all-star "alternates") who are to be used only in extra innings, or

3. Extra innings release all the position players to play again (thereby getting the best offensive players back on the field, and likely ending the game faster).

The obvious confusion on the part of Selig and the managers just showed how ineptly baseball is being run. That said, I thought the booing of the fans was unnecessary and in poor taste. The game really is just an exhibition game, and as much as the Selig/manager confusion was laughable, the booing really put a gratuitous sour edge on the night. I felt bad for all the old players who had come back, and even for Ted Williams spinning in his grave as his newly minted Ted Williams MVP trophy sat unawardable under the torrent of boos. Now all anyone will remember is the ending fiasco, which was made worse than it needed to be by the booing.

If nothing else, at least the booing showed how quick the fans are to turn on the sport at the moment. Maybe that will help these buffoons avoid a strike. If the players strike while earning something like $2M average per player, it's beyond comprehension. It's worth starting over at that point. F*ck these overpaid @ssholes. Rewrite the rules, break the union, bring up new players, and start over.

[rtandler]

Originally posted by Atlanta Skins Fan

I felt bad for all the old players who had come back, and even for Ted Williams spinning in his grave as his newly minted Ted Williams MVP trophy sat unawardable under the torrent of boos.

If only poor Teddy Ballgame had a grave to spin in! :doh:

[The Evil Genius]

I guess I am one of the few that had no problem with the game being tied.

Seeing that it is an EXHIBITION.

Do they allow ties in Spring Training?

Yes.

Does anyone complain then?

No.

People will watch baseball no matter. The people that don't? Oh well, thats their prerogative.

To me though, there isnt a better way to spend a Saturday or Sunday afternoon when football season isn't around.

Peace.

[OrangeSkin]

The all-star game used to be a big deal, not just to the fans, but to the players. Now it's just a joke. Had that happened in the '30s or '40s, the players would have DEMANDED to keep playing. The two leagues used to hate each other, but with the advent of interleague play we don't see that anymore. Too bad really. I hope baseball goes on strike so we can put it to bed forever.

[The Evil Genius]

OS,

I dont think interleague played has changed the outlook between the two leagues. I think it was changed prior to that.

I think FA has softened the way the AL and NL look at each other. Players now relaize that there is a good chance that they are going to switch leagues in their career.

I do agree that the All Star game has become less of a deal though. You wouldnt have seen the "no thanks I want to spend time with my family" responses in the old days.

[OrangeSkin]

Yeah, that too, EG. I like to see guys who actually enjoy the game, like Piazza. Too bad that a lot of them claim that they have a "calf strain" or something so they can have a nice beach vacation.

[Rat_Boy]

I think that the people who are pissed at the game ending in a tie do not understand why the All Star Game is played.

I mean, I disagree with how Bud handled the situation, and I would have given out dual MVP's, one for each side, but to end the game in a tie is fine by me.

I got to see Hunter totally make a bad arse play to rob future HOF OF Barry Bonds of a homer man!!! Winner, or no winner, he made that play!

I think that play emplifies why this game is played. So the fans can see all of MLB's greatest players in one game playing against each other. To see some great plays just like that one.

[The Evil Genius]

Funny promotion...

Saints giving away ties in wake of All-Star deadlock

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Darren Rovell

ESPN.com

The St. Paul Saints are at it again.

Playing off the theme of Tuesday night's 7-7 tie at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Milwaukee, the independent minor league team will be having "Tie One For The Bud" night and will giving out ties with commissioner Bud Selig's face on them to select fans that attend Wednesday night's game against the Sioux City Explorers.

"In addition to suspending our club policy which restricts the appearance of neckties on the premises, we've petitioned the league to investigate the prospect of having all our games end in tie scores," said Tom Whaley, the team's vice president, in the news release. "We thereby reduce the risk of anyone getting hurt physically or emotionally by the random vagaries associated with on-field losses or extra innings."

After talking about the result of the All-Star Game in the office on Wednesday morning, Bill Fisher, the team's assistant general manager, came up with the idea. Fisher bought the ties, readied the artwork -- which is a caricature of Selig designed by an artist the team retains -- and brought them to the printer.

The ties are expected to arrive minutes before the gates open at 6:00 p.m., Joe Block, the team's director of media relations said. Any fan that wins an on-field contest during the game will receive a tie, according to Block.

On June 7, the team -- which is partly owned by Mike Veeck -- gave away seat cushions with Selig and union head Don Fehr's face on them.

Darren Rovell, who covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at darren.rovell@espnpub.com.

[The Sisko]

"The MLB All-Star game was on last night? Who won? "

Correction. The MLB All-Star game was on last night? Who cares ?