Sports

[coony77]

This category is called "TV, Movies, Sports, Video & Theatre". Yet, I´ve never seen a post about sports - and I´ve been a member here for 8 years now. 

I wonder why  How many members does JWTalk have? Hundreds? Thousands? And not 1 of them is interested in sports? Scary... 

 

 

[Tortuga]

I remember a few topics about baseball.

I am not a sports fan but I do like to watch a good MLB Major Leage Baseball game. I am currently watching the 2023 MLB World Series between the Texas Rangers and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

 

Some people might find the way that I watch baseball a little unusual..

A 3 hour baseball game is too long and boring for me so I always record the game and watch the whole thing in fast-forward. I can watch a 3 hour game in 1 hour.

When I watch a game in fast forward and something interesting happens, I hit the 10 second rewind and watch it again in normal speed. 

I don't have to listen to any of the commentary and sometimes it is absolutely hilarious watching what people do in fast forward, just think about what a group of guys chewing gum looks like..

 

Do you like sports?

 

 

[Qapla]

Would you like to talk about parisses squares?

 

[coony77]

50 minutes ago, Tortuga said:

Some people might find the way that I watch baseball a little unusual..

A 3 hour baseball game is too long and boring for me so I always record the game and watch the whole thing in fast-forward. I can watch a 3 hour game in 1 hour.

When I watch a game in fast forward and something interesting happens, I hit the 10 second rewind and watch it again in normal speed. 

I don't have to listen to any of the commentary and sometimes it is absolutely hilarious watching what people do in fast forward, just think about what a group of guys chewing gum looks like..

 

 

I do something similar with American Football - but for completely different reasons. Not because I find anything about it boring or too slow, on the contrary, I watch it because I find it super exciting. But I have to watch the games mostly recorded, because they're shown here in the middle of the night due to the time difference. And then when I watch the recording the next day, I also fast-forward, but not the game itself, I just skip the many interruptions, like timeouts, halftime-break, etc. (and once in a while, when I happen to watch a live game after all, I sometimes forget that I can't fast-forward and put the remote away annoyed ). 

 

I like sports very much, I follow many sports like soccer, American football, basketball, track and field, ... - almost everything, except baseball. Sorry, bro!  

No one could ever fast forward to the point where I would NOT find this sport boring anymore . But fortunately, that's all a matter of taste.
 

[DancesWithWife]

I was obsessed with sports growing up. As I have gotten older, I am less interested in sports. I didn't even realize the World Series was going on. I watch a game now and then. Don't really have a favorite team or sport anymore. Over the years sports just became less and less appealing to me. I like playing them when I was physically able. I have played all sports. 

3 minutes ago, coony77 said:

almost everything, except baseball. Sorry, bro!

I have always enjoyed the game of baseball. To me it's a chess game, something different could happen on every play of the ball. It goes back to having a catch with my dad. I guess my strongest memories of sport is baseball, because my dad loved the game of baseball. 

 

The cost of going to a game is incredibly expensive too. My dad and I went to the Seattle Seahawks vs Oakland Raiders at the Kingdom in Fall of 1977 after the Raiders won their first super bowl game. We sat in level 1 seats, near the 40-yard line for $8 each. Parking was like $5. Same for the Seattle Sonics and Mariner Games in the 70s. 

 

Since my dad passed away in 2019, I don't look at standings of any team. I don't really watch sports overall. Don't really miss it either. 

What I do miss is spending time with my dad. I'll never forget it when he lovingly slapped me on the back of the head and told me to do the YMCA as it was being played at a Mariner game. We always made it into an event. Getting early to the game so we could eat first, watch batting practice. Eating during the game and afterwards. 

 

 

[Foxes53]

I enjoy soccer, cricket and athletics.

I try and keep up with the headlines in other sports i don't watch usually so that I can hold a conversation with someone who is more interested.

[Tortuga]

The 2023 Major League Baseball World Series is over. The winner is

Spoiler

The Texas Rangers 

 

[Beggar for the Spirit]

Sports is fun “reality TV”.

I enjoy soccer, NFL, NBA, tennis. And playing sports is even better, over the years we have had some fun games with various brothers from different congregations. We have some outstanding athletes, 1 brother was even a Pro Golfer and an elder 👍 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by Beggar for the Spirit

[coony77]

On 11/2/2023 at 4:38 AM, Tortuga said:

The 2023 Major League Baseball World Series is over. The winner is

  Hide contents

The Texas Rangers 

 

Thanks, Richard. First I wondered what to do with this information BUT now I´m glad you shared this. So, next time I hear people talking baseball, I´ll bring this up and will sound "baseball smart" for 10 seconds 

[DancesWithWife]

I will tell you a funny story about sports.  I was living in Michigan. It was Thanksgiving Day.  Many had the day off, so gathered to watch football as a family. I was at my ex-wife's (she left the Truth, now an apostate) cousins' home.  I really did not want to be there as they were huge Lions fans. I am not a big football fan, but I still went for "association". Well, one of the games involved my home state, so I was cheering for them, despite the rest pulling for the Michigan team. I was asked to leave the person hosting the event. They were JW's. At first, I thought you are joking. Nope, he was very serious, if I was rooting for my team I had to go. In a way I was glad to leave as I didn't want to be there anyway. But to be thrown out, over a football game. I also noticed about half did not make it to the meeting that night too.  This would have been around 1990.

 

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by DancesWithWife
added date

[Friends just call me Ross]

Erm...Sorry, but, I do not find that a funny story about sports. 🙃

[Qapla]

Wait!!

 

There is humor in his story ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 hours ago, DancesWithWife said:

I will tell you a funny story about sports.  I was living in Michigan.

 

[DancesWithWife]

Just now, Qapla said:

Wait!!

 

There is humor in his story ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like the Red Wings but not the Lions. I am so happy not to be in Michigan!

[DancesWithWife]

6 hours ago, Friends just call me Ross said:

Erm...Sorry, but, I do not find that a funny story about sports

It wasn't funny then, but really opened my eyes. I think of that event and use it as a learning lesson. Never been serious about any sports since.

[Pabo]

On 11/1/2023 at 7:29 PM, Foxes53 said:

I enjoy soccer, cricket and athletics.

 

Cricket!!!!

 

I didn't know American's knew about cricket, unless you are either from the sub-continent or watch the The Big Bang Theory.

 

 

In summer it is traditionally the cricket season, but as the demographics of the country is changing with its immigration, some places have a surge in participants, whereas other parts of the country it is stagnating. But with the inclusion of the women's cricket, it is growing reasonably well. In the past, we used to watch all the cricket for free on TV, but because the game controlling body is trying to pay its way (in that of paying its players), for most shorter version of the games, whether international or regional, you have to pay a subscription service to watch at home. You used to get a lot of people watching the game live, but the ticket prices have gone up significantly, and with the cost of living, the attendances have been waning. The cost of food and drinks at the games are just too high for families to attend the longer formats of the game. But usually the "Test Matches" are still shown on TV, and some of the shorter versions of the international games are also.

 

Also too, there is little known story about the variety of signs that crowds now have when they are in attendance of cricket game. You may see at times a sign that has "4" or "6" when a batsman hits a boundary "4" runs, or over the boundary on the full for "6" runs.

 

 

These were started by a group of Bethelites who from the Australiasian Branch attended the Sydney Cricket Ground at one of the one-day international finals of tri-nation series in the very early 90's. That craze first started when they brought in their own "professionally printed" cardboard signs. How they "printed" their signs is somewhat shrouded in mystery, as they did have access to some printing machinery, but it cannot be confirmed whether they did it themselves or they had another printery made it for them. They were neutrally coloured signs, black numbers on white cardboard, and there was not other logo's or printed information. There is a Youtube video of the highlights of that game, but there wasn't any video of them holding the cards, as they were seated on the upper level of the old Bradman Stand, and most video footage was taken with the crowd on the fence.

Edited November 20, 2023 by Pabo

[Pabo]

Australia is known to be a sporting nation, as we do play a variety of sports. Whilst we are a small country in the sense of population, and we tend to be very competitive as well, especially when it comes to some of the Summer Olympics games. As we do not have a great deal of snow, so we don't have as many sportspersons of note in these sports, unless they train overseas where they have the facilities that we just don't have.

 

However, we do play various types of football, which can be confusing when you may talk footy to another person, but you could be talking about an entoirely different sport. There are the following:

 

Soccer (usually played in summer to coincide with the northern hemisphere season) - originally played mostly by immigrants from Europe, and many clubs are ethnic based, but some are slowly transitioning to be much more neutral.

 

Rubgy Union (winter sport) - which was the original "Rugby" where back in the early 1900"s it was split into two where you now have Rugby Union and Rugby League. Rugby Union is played is different to Rugby League when it comes to the way it is played, especially in regards to tackling and the ruck, mauling, scrums, line outs and other tactics of the game. The people who follow "Union"  are either from the rich higher class society or those who are of a Polynesian heritage, where "Rugby" is basically their form of religion.

 

Rugby League (winter sport)- played mostly on the eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland and usually gets confused with "Rugby Union" by Americans. This is a game where the players do not wear helmets or body pads, and the ball is passed backwards, not forwards. The game can be fast at times, but also can be very brutal when you have players running at full speed carrying the ball into players of the defending team.

 

Those who follow Rugby League call Rugby Union -> "Union", but Rugby League -> "Footy". And Rugby Union followers call Rugby League "League", and Rugby Union "the game played in Heaven". It can be very confusing depending where you live in Australia, but we all Australians shake our head when Americans just call the game Rugby whether it is Union or League.

 

Australian Rules (winter sport) - this is a game where if you don't kick the ball to pass though the biggest two posts at the end of the field which the goal is worth 6 points, you get a 1 point if the ball pass through the side goals or hitting the post, or if the defending team touches the ball last. This game is played on a oval field (the same as a cricket oval), and is the game that has the biggest following. For those who do not like "Aussie Rules", they often refer the game as "Aerial Ping Pong", as the ball can be kicked from one of the oval to the other and back within a few kicks, and if you sat near the centre of the oval, it seems that your head goes from one goal end to the other and so forth..

 

However, we do play NFL (American Footy or "Grid-iron"), but this is mainly in the SE Queensland area where there is a large amount of U.S. expats that reside here.

 

We have national hockey, netball, basketball leagues for men and women, which recently seems to slowly growing in size as well.

 

But when you are surrounded by many wonderful beaches, in the summer, you find that many are trying keep their cool in having a swim at a beach or the pools, and have the radio on listening to the cricket game being played in whatever part of Australia the game is being played at.

[Foxes53]

Quote

Cricket!!!!

 

I didn't know American's knew about cricket

 

Originally from UK.

Lived within walking distance of the county cricket ground of Leicestershire.

When I had no money as a youngster i remember that you could get in free for the last 1/2 hour of a days play.😀

[Pabo]

On 11/21/2023 at 9:43 PM, Foxes53 said:

Originally from UK.

Lived within walking distance of the county cricket ground of Leicestershire.

When I had no money as a youngster i remember that you could get in free for the last 1/2 hour of a days play.😀

 

I and a few of may friends used to go and watch plenty of Sheffield Shield games at North Sydney Oval back in the late 80's, which was free for us kids. We used to catch a train up from the Illawarra area south of Sydney, get off at Redfern station and buy a City Circle ticket (we never purchased a ticket from the station where first boarded on the train) and then back onto the next train that took us to Circular Quay or Wynyard station. We then on our BMX bikes rode up to where the Bridge Stairs was located to cross over the Harbour Bridge to get to Milsons Point, then proceeded to ride up Alfred, Lavender and Millers Streets to get the the North Sydney Oval. On the way home, we rode to Milsons Point Station (it was less patrolled by station attendantd than that of North Sydney Station), hopped on the train and went all the way home, only changing at Central Station to get on the Illawarra line.

 

The City Circle Ticket (they were cardboard tickets at the time) allowed you to get on or off at any station unlimited times within the "City Circle Stations" without having your ticket punched. These stations included Central, Town Hall, Wynyard, Circular Quay, Museum and Redfern (which was a outlying station but was included because of its close proximity to Central Station). These tickets didn't have a starting station stamped on them, they just said "City Circle".

 

 

Whereas if we purchased a City Circle ticket from the station on the Illawarra line, we would have to pay the total return fare from the station you started at to Central station and the City Circle fare as well. So the ticket would have been $2.50 for us kids, whereas just buying the City Circle ticket was only 30 cents. As the ticket we purchased was within the City Circle, there was no place of origin, so we had no issue in getting to our final destination outside of that City Circle. That extra $2.20 allowed us to buy our lunch and drinks and some snacks for the day. If only our parents knew that we were going all this was when we were only about 9-11 years of age at the time.

[Lee49]

" I was living in Michigan " - also

I played little league baseball ⚾, pitcher ( I had a mean curve ball that nobody could hit ) and 1st baseman, I was considered a power hitter for my age nearly a 500 batting average and hit the 1st homerun in our newly erected night ball field ( made the local newspaper, big time for a 12 year old ) I also played in a city basketball league 🏀, we used to play before the Detroit Piston games in downtown Detroit and 7th thru 9th grade basketball, I quit sports after 9th grade after my mother passed however I took up golf in my later years and got pretty good with it untill covid hit and I fell out of practice along with hip and knee issues, I like football, Tennessee Titans, Michigan ( M Go Blue 🏈) KC Chiefs, Alabama also ( soon to play Michigan at the Rose Bowl ) just like to see a nice close game, not a big hockey fan although I've been to a Detroit Red Wings game and a Nashville Predators game.

Question: What's the hardest sport to learn ?

Spoiler

 GOLF - Golf is one of the few sports where people can’t rely on brawn to do well. This makes golf the hardest sport to play because you have to rely on technical ability, accuracy, patience, and love of the sport rather than physical fitness.

 

[Pabo]

2 hours ago, Lee49 said:

Question: What's the hardest sport to learn ?

 

The better questions is, what is the sport that has the highest amount of fatalities? And it is not base jumping.

 

Spoiler

https://top-10-list.org/2009/11/30/ten-violent-dangerous-sports/

 

 

 

[Pabo]

2 hours ago, Lee49 said:

I played little league baseball ⚾, pitcher ( I had a mean curve ball that nobody could hit ) and 1st baseman, I was considered a power hitter for my age nearly a 500 batting average and hit the 1st homerun in our newly erected night ball field ( made the local newspaper, big time for a 12 year old )

 

I liked baseball and still do, but we don't get to see many games here Australia. I had just registered to play (9 years old at the time) for a local U12's team before I broke my left arm in the pre-season, which stopped me playing sports for a couple of years. I was left handed with the bat, and also pitching.

 

We had on the team a friend of a friend (they knew each other through Scouts) who was just over a year older than I (10 years old), but he could easily pitch at 90mph (144kph). He was that good that he was the U19's state and national pitcher, as nobody could ever hit his pitches due to the speed. As we were just training, Speersy (was his nickname) was practising his pitching and the coach asked me to go into bat against hit, as he was trailling out all the new registered players. So I stood near the plate and just told Speersy to throw a couple just to gauge his speed. He threw a couple of screamers pass me and I thought "okay, he is fast".

 

Then I walked up to the plate, took my stance, but one step closer to the pitcher than what most pitchers would do. He threw a pitch, I swung the bat and hit it over the length of the football field, over the fence onto the railway line on the full. The coach was amazed and just looked at me. I looked at the alloy bat I had used and there was a massive divet where I struck the ball. I handed the bat to the coach and asked if he had a spare bat. He passed me a bat and then went back to the plate and told Speersy to throw another. Being annoyed that I had hit him on the first go, he tried even harder and I hit that ball even further then the previous one. And again, I put a dent into this bat as well. I looked at the coach, and said "no more bats for me, but to get my own". Every pitch he threw, I connected and hit him out of the park.

 

The coach tried to get me to take a stance further back, but I was too uncomfortable with it, as was the catcher (the assistant coach) who was ducking and jumping back whenever I swing the bat when i stood over the plate. The catcher had noticed that I took a big step back and when I swung my bat, I would swayed forward as well. He mentioned it to the head coach and he watched me from the side and noticed it too which freaked him out. Normally batter would want to be standing further back to give them the most time to see the pitch coming, but I was the opposite where I would be closer to the pitcher giving me a shorter reaction time, but because I wound back just as the pitcher was releasing the ball, but when I had made contact with the ball with my bat, it was just before the ball was over the plate and my body then swaying forward with the bat gave me that extra power in hitting that ball. It was completely unorthodox, but it worked brilliant for me.

 

I also was being trained as a pitcher, but I wasn't at all a fast pitcher, but I definately made that ball swing, stall and drop, slide and raise which was my specialty.

 

As the years went by and I was at high school, there used to be an all out sports competition day when we played against the other local high school in our area. Speersy went to the opposing high school and his school wanted to challenge our school in baseball, as baseball wasn't a regular representative sport that any school played, but each school could nominiate other sports or games for each school to compete against, such as chess, table tennis, badminton etc. But Speersy told his school that they couldn't win because I was on the opposing side and was the one who had no issue hitting him, not only that, I could also pitch as well. They didn't believe him at first until during the first time we had this competition, where I had happened to be on the volleyball team playing at his high school. He found me and said that his teachers wanted to see if I could still bat against him, as they didn't believe him. By this time, I was no longer left handed, but I had learned to do everything right handed because of the extent of the injury I had suffered. So we went down to where we used to train and he warmed up with a few pitches before I went out to the plate. The first pitch he threw, it was hit over the length of the football field on the full and after one bounce hitting the railway fence line. He pitched about a half a dozen of pitches and there all went the same way, some over the railway fence line. Then one of the opposing high school teachers said for me to do it left handed. Speersy looked at me and I just shrugged my shoulders and placed myself in the left handed stance, and every one of those balls he pitched went the same way as I had done right handed. Then one of the teachers though he would pitch one to me, and I made sure that it went way over the railway line on the full.

 

Below is the high school that we used to train at before I broke my arm and also where we demostrated to Speersy teachers. The grounds has changed over the years, also the trees now along the fence line of the rail line. The red dotted line measurement line the direction I generally hit the ball from onto the railway line to the right.

 

[Lee49]

How could a baseball player be worth $700 million?

I should've stuck to baseball !  😂 🤑

  "It’s hard to look at Shohei Ohtani’s record $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers without experiencing some reflexive sticker shock."

 "Back in 1979, the Houston Astros signed pitcher Nolan Ryan to a then-stunning $4.5 million contract for four years — making him baseball’s first player to make more than $1 million a season. In a satirical Boston Globe column at the time, Leigh Montville imagined a conversation in which a high school guidance counselor encourages a highly accomplished student to pursue a career in baseball."

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/12/opinions/shohei-ohtani-los-angeles-dodgers-contract-frommer/index.html

[Lee49]