Comments on: Ten Things I learned from my trip to Spring Training

By: pjmarn6

pjmarn6 — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 06:20:16 +0000

And here I was hoping that Calcaterra was going to stay in spring training all year long. I really enjoyed all the other writers and their intelligent writing.

By: mckcal

mckcal — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:15:03 +0000

But the overall diversity (a positive) masks an issue that you seem to be dismissive of that has implications for the quality of the game and equality of opportunity. If there’s ever gonna be truth to the theory that black americans don’t care about baseball it’ll be in part because they don’t see any black americans playing it. And whether they so much as make their high school team there are lots of good things that come from all kinds of different kids playing little league together.

By: hisgirlgotburrelled

hisgirlgotburrelled — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:05:34 +0000

The US WBC team has Rollins, Brandon Phillips, and Adam Jones starting. No doubt Prince Fielder would have been the starting 1B had he wanted to play, and Kemp or McCutchen would have started over Victorino.

By: thefreaksfg

thefreaksfg — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:48:34 +0000

Re: #4, I’ve noticed that a lot when I go to games as well. I usually sit in the upper reserve on the 3B side so I can only really tell when a ball is easily gone if it goes to RF, but nonetheless I seem to have no issue determining when a ball off the bat is gone or just a routine fly out, while the majority of fans do as you described: “going “whooo!” or making some other noise that suggested they thought it was a home run when, most of the time, it was a mid-range fly ball”

By: Craig Calcaterra

Craig Calcaterra — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:48:12 +0000

I’m talking about major league baseball as a whole, not just united states players. Obviously, given the low number of U.S. born blacks playing the game the U.S.-only contingent is white. My point is that, overall, major league baseball is diverse because of people playing from other countries.

By: Jason @ IIATMS

Jason @ IIATMS — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:03:07 +0000

Thanks so much.

By: gbrim

gbrim — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:37:10 +0000

Since a high proportion of spring training fans travel to see their teams in action, the fans you say are ‘not necessarily informed’ are in many cases the same folks you consider informed in their home parks.

Three things for you to consider–
1- The high sky in AZ makes it very hard for outfielders (and fans?) to judge fly balls.
2- Sitting in an unfamiliar setting (park, seat location) makes it hard to judge flight trajectory, too.
3- If you still aren’t persuaded, go to a D-Backs regular season home game and you won’t hear the 18000 or so fans screaming at every lazy fly ball drifting out to a corner outfielder.

By: mckcal

mckcal — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:55:16 +0000

Feel like you have a blind spot on the diversity issue. The game is diverse because there are so many players from other countries. In the U.S. the game seems pretty whitewashed. I wouldn’t describe the WBC team as diverse.

By: 4d3fect

4d3fect — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:19:41 +0000

Shlabotnik! Ha!

By: unclemosesgreen

unclemosesgreen — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 20:45:14 +0000

I was typing something longer and worse – now I can just say: What Jason @ IIATMS, whose blog I highly recommend. People respond to incentives, and money is the most popular (if not the best) incentive. It really is all about the money usually.

Also loved the Hunter Pence/caveman diet stuff.

By: Jason @ IIATMS

Jason @ IIATMS — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 20:37:37 +0000

Good recap, Craig. I love the off-field stuff. I love the “what’s the funniest thing you ever heard/said during a mound conference/on-base chat” stuff. The kinda things that you always wanted to know.

Or Batman.

Or scorpions.