> Roger Odisio wrote:
>
> > Fascinating, no? Nothing like this in cricket, is there? There is, in
> > fact, nothing even interesting about cricket, which, correct me if I'm
> > wrong, doesn't even produce any stats to pour over.
> >
>
> you're wrong:
> http://www-usa.cricket.org/link_to_database/STATS/ would be a place to
> start.
True. But the stats here fall miles short of what baseball produces. The sort of thing like batting average, on base average, and slugging average in the late innings of close games, when a lefthander is pitching. Or the percentage of balls turned into outs with the range of a second baseman. But I don't want to make too much of this. More stats may indicate extra dimensions to baseball, or just the extra perversity of its fans.
Snipped a lot of stuff about the relative importance of cricket vis a vis soccer.
> Then they go on to suggest that baseball is
> American. Baseball I believe is to Dutch Rounders as the Kiwifruit is
> to the Chinese Gooseberry - a sacharrine standardisation of a wild and
> exotic fruit. The chinese gooseberry was renamed for the US market, at
> a time when chinese-anything was hard to sell. Dutch Rounders can only
> have been renamed as a nationalist project, at a time when America
> needed something to call its own.
Ahh yes, the claim that baseball was nothing new, but merely a copy--you say "sacharine standardization"--of the game of rounders. Let's play a game of where do ideas come from, and when does quantitaive change become qualitative.
The schoolboy game of rounders did exist first (btw, could you situate its creation in history for me?). And baseball was in some sense derived from it. But that derivation became transformation. First kinds of changes: laying out the field in a diamond rather than a square (home plate eventually being changed from a square to a five-sided figure in 1900), the new concept of foul territory, and the elimination of the practice in rounders of retiring a runner by throwing the ball *at* him. Soon followed the placement of the pitching mound, allowing overhand pitches, the strike zone (before that, a batter could ask for a pitch in a certain area), bases on balls, the idea that a ball must be caught on the fly to register an out automatically, the number of innings to be played, and on and on. You get the idea. Baseball became a different game than rounders, as tennis is different than squash.
> You make quite a deal about the
> standardisation of rules and dimensions - as if these constituted the
> invention of a new game.
I said nothing about standardization per se constituting the invention of a new game. I discussed certain dimensions and then adjustments of them with an eye to keeping the battle between pitcher and hitter on the same plane. So that, as much as possible, stats become timeless. One of the best things about baseball is its history.
Baseball is not completely standardized. Unlike any other major sport I can think of, it is played on fields of different sizes and shapes. Just about every major league park has different dimensions than any other.
> This is not the case - apart from the fact
> that most participants in any sport do not play in official games on
> standard courts
I don't get this. As far as I can tell, just about every organized sport is played in some area of standardized dimensions, except of course baseball.
> - you'll find that, by your definition (precise
> universal rules), NO sports existed at the beginning of the 19th
> century. Except perhaps tennis and bowls.
Hmm. There's various forms of wrestling, running, and all kinds of sports now lumped together as "track and field" that include running, jumping and throwing (e.g., discus, javelin). Most go way back, wrestling and running being probably the original sports.
> Standardisation of sporting
> codes was a lateish 19th and early 20th century project, as was the
> development of administrative bodies and representative teams. So to
> say baseball became a new game when the regulations were ossified is to
> imply that every sport currently played came into existence at around
> the same time. I guess you could well argue that.
I could argue that. But I haven't and don't care to. As I argued above, baseball became a new game when it was created different than its predecessors, not when "the regulations were ossified". In fact, as I tried to say, the rules of baseball have never been "ossified". As we speak, the lords of baseball are trying to redisign that most fundamental element, the strike zone, which has fallen victim to the whims of rogue umpires.
> Another thing that shouldn't be underestimated is the geopolitical
> importance of cricket. Earlier this year when India and Pakistan were
> scrapping over Kargil, their national cricket teams were playing in the
> cricket world cup in the UK. Throughout the conflict the Times of India
> <http://www.timesofindia.com/> kept its cricket news in the top
> lefthand corner of its website (while war dominated the rest of the
> page), and its daily polls were as likely to be questions like "Should
> Azherruddin stand aside as captain?", "Is Sachin Tendulkar at the top
> of his form?" as "Should India test more nuclear devices?". Pakistan
> lost its World Cup match against India, but went on to reach the final,
> while India didn't even make the semi's. This divinely equitable
> solution may have saved thousands of lives by allowing each side a bit
> of pride. Maybe I'm making too much of it, but as even Chomsky has
> noticed - Sport is Important. After the World Cup Pakistan, the West
> Indies (combined Carribean teams -former world champions now ruined by
> US sattelite TV) and India were due to meet for a tournament in
> Toronto. The Times of India poll asked if the tournament should go
> ahead, and responses were abut 2/3 against, and eventually the
> tournament was rearranged so that West Indies played both sides, but
> they never played each other. Anyway, I believe if it were not for
> cricket, there would never be peace in South Asia. Can you make a
> similar claim for baseball? i don't think so.
No question, I cannot make such a claim. Neither can you. Sports has social significance. But they can neither insure peace or nor prevent war.
RO