I've been a fan since Mantle was still in centerfield. I've seen great teams and awful teams. The late 90's teams did it as right as you can based on the way the game is structured now.

I do agree that the mercenary, big-mouthed idiots make an easy target. However, don't kid yourself baseball itself has changed. It is no longer a game. It's business.

I still root for the linen. I'm just not an obnoxious, knuckleheaded, arrogant, bandwagon jumping fan. Incidentally, every market has their share of those....

I'm a HUGE Phillies fan and for once, I am going into the baseball season as defending WORLD CHAMPIONS!!! WOW!!! Took them long enough. haha

Now this season I feel they will still be competitive but the NL East is going to be strong with the Braves and Mets adding intrical pieces to their respective squads. But the Phillies do have their young and talented core and Cole Hamels is just going to get better. I like the Phillies chances to repeat as NL East Champs again. And once in the playoffs, anything can happen!!!

The Phillies really need to get a new home plate umpire...or they need to get that dude some glasses.

Wow...can we say fixed????

Wow...can we say hater? If the Phillies actually had a home plate umpire, they wouldn't need NEW one. They're the defending champs lol. Job well done.

I was being sarcastic.

Maybe I should have added the winking face...

I like smileys too; gotta use smileys

Actually, the umpires sucked pretty bad throughout the entire season. I never thought I'd see two homeruns taken away in the same week. I know they try their best, but sometimes the call is just so obvious. This will actually be the first year where we have instant replay from the start of the season now, right? I almost forgot about that

WOOHOO!!!! Less than one week to go!!!!

Well im a brewers fan and at the moment I dont know what to think lol. It seems that our pitching is quite soft. The whole CC thing was such a big deal here that the fans ended up freaking out when he left....Im not sure what they'll do since they barely crawled into the playoffs on a grandslam from Braun (for the most part, I was at that game lol it was quite cool).

I guess it depends on how the young guys do and if they can grab someone up once the season starts like they did with CC. Theyve decided to save the lil bit of cash they have now til the season starts. Main problem is we dont have the big money (like many other teams) to draw big name talent thats gonna stick around. To bad Sheets is made of paper mache, we could have either signed him for life or got something good for him....

I wish I would have played better in Little League. I wouldnt have to worry so much about the economy.


The stands will be a lot emptier this year, but the players will still be living high on the hog.


Sick....

The stands may be kinda empty for some teams.

The Tigers won't be one of them. Remember, this is the team that still sold 2 million tickets even when they were one of the worst teams in baseball.

One thing about Detroit. No matter how bad things are, Detroit and the surrounding areas always support their sports teams.

In a way, we use them as an escape from tough times. Gives us something else to think about for a couple of hours.

JAG, do you know why it is called the World Series?

Seems like a silly name to me, since only one country competes in it.

"Take me out to the ball game,

Take me out with the crowd.

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,

I don't care if I never get back,

Let me root, root, root for the home team,

If they don't win it's a shame.

For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,

At the old ball game."



Go Yankees!

I honestly don't know ( right off the top of my head ) why it's called that.

However. It's not entirely true that only one country has competed in it. The Toronto Blue Jays have been in it and won it.

There has been talk of a effort to get teams from other countries into the league. I don't really see it happening anytime soon.

For now, the World Baseball Classic will have to do.

The main problems with that are
1) It only happens once every few years
2) A lot of the star players from the Major Leagues don't play because it's held during Spring Training.

Also sometimes the players are not allowed to play in the WBC because their teams don't want them getting hurt in game that isn't important to the season.

Maybe it's called the World Series because the players involved come from many different parts of the world...?

Another problem is probably few foreign teams would beable to compete at a good enough level.

I wish you guys would get into football(soccer, the football you play with your feet). Would make it a lot more interesting.

I have a passing interest in soccer. I will watch occasionally when I run across it on TV.

The main problem that I have with the game is that, although it takes a lot of skill to do what they do using only their feet and heads, it seems that the majority of the time there are just too many players on the pitch. Things get bogged down in the middle if the playing field too often. There are also too many ' flops '. Guys getting slightly nicked by another player, and falling down like they got shot trying to draw a penalty. In other sports, doing that is cause for the guilty party getting penalized. In soccer, it's just part of the game.

Even though a guy who can make a run at the goal, like Ronaldo ( only guy I can think of off the top of my head ), by himself, weaving through the defensive players is impressive, there just aren't enough of those runs during a 90 minute game to keep people here in America interested.

Unfortunately for soccer, there just doesn't seem to be enough of the " HOLY CRAP DID YOU SEE THAT?!?!?! " moment to hold Americans' attention.

That is a big part of it as well. I know that I really don't want to see Justin Verlander throwing a bunch of pitches in games that don't mean anything to the Tigers organization. I would prefer that he throws all of his pitches in games during Spring Training and during the regular season and post season. When they count.



Although that was a good attempt, and may very well apply in this day and age, the World Series has been called that since shortly after the turn of the 20th century, if not longer.

Back then, every player was American.

I still like the O's - probably because I had some GREAT 'girlfriends only' chick days at Camden Yards. Good memories die hard...

we call them dives rather than flops, it has unfortunately become part of the game. Its a lot more prevalent in European soccer than English(I know we are in Europe as well, thats just what we call it).

Im not the hugest fan of the game, but i do appreciate it. Id say that there are plenty of 'HOLY CRAP' moments myself, though they dont always result in a goal. I guess it takes a particular understanding of the game to spot them sometimes.

I dont understand why its the biggest sport in the world but so unpopular in the US.

Maybe they should make each goal worth 10 points to fool you!

At this time, I would have to say that is a pretty accurate observation.

Although baseball is big in Japan, Bobby Valentine ( former manager of the New York Mets ) has said that the pitching over there, for the most part, is like the pitching in the Minor Leagues here. It just wouldn't stand up to Major League hitting. There have been some players from Japan who have done very well in MLB, but they are few and far between.

Countries like Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and a lot of the Central American countries have pretty good baseball teams. But what they don't have is the ability to pay a star player what an American team can. Even if they had a professional MLB team, they would have constant problems keeping the players that are good enough to make them contenders for championships.

Many European countries much prefer football ( soccer ) or cricket ( can't for the life of me figure that game out ) over baseball. That would make it very difficult for Major League Baseball to expand into Europe as well.