[Magdalen] beisbol Q?

[Grace Cangialosi]

Well, much to my dismay, my grandson has decided that the sport he wants to focus on and hopefully play in high school is baseball.  I know, I know, that's heresy on this list, but I find the sport second only to golf in boring-ness!

He was playing soccer, and I had high hopes for that, because he was a very good player. But most of the really good players left the rec league for the very expensive and time-consuming travel teams, and he aged out of the rec league last year. AND there's no soccer in the middle school, so he can't prepare for the high school team.  Apparently walk-ons never make it.

 He wants to go to the Naval Academy, and he needs a sport, so baseball it is. He's taking it very seriously, doing conditioning three times a week and working with a local coach who is pretty amazing, runs batting practices and other kinds of drills for local kids, and who invited Joseph to play with his team for their last six games. So this afternoon I get to go to the second game of a double header and spend an otherwise gorgeous afternoon watching the grass gr__, er, I mean watching a baseball game! Well, at least with baseball you don't have to worry about concussions!

If anyone has a magic potion that will make baseball interesting, please send me the recipe. Otherwise, it's going to be a very long four and a half years, though I have no intention of making *all* of his games!

On October 10, 2015, at 11:46 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:

Yeah, well, Jim, that's a HUGE (or should I say a YUGE) market there. And
long established. But the rest of the country is a different thing
entirely, what with all the team franchises moving, and the enormous
mobility of people generally. If we grow up with a team, we are often
likely to stay with them, no matter where we end up, unless maybe, as in
the case of one of my brothers, we move someplace with a strong franchise
(he's been in the Bay Area for 45 years and become a Giants fan, much to my
disgust).

In any case, there is no amount of advertising or anything else that is
EVER going to make me a Nats fan. Furthermore, I disagree with MLB that
there is any reason why Washington, D.C. "deserves" a baseball team at all.

On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 10:16 PM, Jim Guthrie <jguthrie at pipeline.com> wrote:

> From: Jay Weigel
>
> MLB's rules are completely outdated and totally suck. There IS no such
>> thing as "local loyalty" because of the mobility of the American
>> population
>>
>
> I dunno. The Mets/Yankees have a huge amount of local loyalty -- as do the
> other teams in NYC (save sometimes the Knicks <g>).
>
> But that might be because there are two teams that actually play each
> other from time to time, with great hopes for a "Subway Series."
>
> I get annoyed because I can’t get the Yankee radio broadcasts. I realize
> many fans hate Susyn Waldman and John Sterling, but I find them charming.
> But they're blocked on the WFAN stream.
>
> Cheers,
> Jim
>