Freaking Dodgers win on Uribe HR

[SF11704]

SF11704, your words express my sentiments about baseball as well as anyone I've encountered on these boards. As I said in an earlier post, many of the younger people, who haven't experienced what you and I have, just don't understand. We may as well be talking a foreign language. We just grew up in a different time and a different world.

Hey OLD1949 ... so the Doyers played a good game last night. Back to a series again! Anyways, I thought quite a bit about what you said and why things may be very different for us and I got an idea. Back when we were kids we had nothing like today's social 'online' network. We all a couple of friends that were Giant or Dodger fans and that's who you talked sports with. Very small circle and also very self-contained. Really never had many divergent opinions. Nothing like it is today. We also didn't have trolls and trolls seem to play a very big part how fans react with each other. I personally enjoy the Giant forums and I'm sure you enjoy the Dodger forums as well. Sports SportsHoopla is good because of the lack of trolls. At least to a pretty good extent. I hated the ESPN boards because they were over run by trolls and the agruments actually started to take the form of online bashing and quite a bit of nasty individual confortations. You could almost sense the anger and 'hate' in some of the exchanges. I left the ESPN boards for those reasons. I also think we (our age group) tends to reflect back on how it felt to be a fan when we were 8-12 years old. I was a very enjoyable time for me and the memories are good. What's better than being at a ball game and watching your team play. Even better a double header! I also think that the landscape of social media has forever changed the way a 'fan' sees and follows his team today. It's real time in every sense of the word. When we were kids there were times I didn't know the score till the next day's papers were out. We really didn't have any means of instant response. The best I had was a radio announcer giving scores. I still remember the WINS 1010 radio station giving scores every 30 minutes (on the 15 and 45 minutes markers). Sometimes that was the only way to get a score. It got really difficult when they moved to SF. Night games were starting at 11:00pm EST.
I don't think our language is 'different' today but I do believe that we have a much different perspective on 'fandom' or whatever we want to call it. These online forums also give us the ability to do something that we never could in our day and age .... with a click of a buttom we can talk 'smack' in any other team's forums. In some cases it goes well beyond 'smack' and almost borders on confrontational targeting. Before I found Sports SportsHoopla the ESPN boards were over run with it and it really took the enjoyment out of being a fan!

You enjoy this year because I think this may be your team's year and as a fan you should celebrate what they accomplish. That's part of the privlige of being a fan. I know that 2010 was a very special year for me. I was starting to wionder if I would ever see anothe WS championship .... and as things turned out .... I saw two!!!!

 

[calsnowskier]

Gotta say, This thread has become one of my favorite EVER...

Love hearing these in-depth observations from the old-timers.

GOOD STUFF!

 

[SF11704]

Gotta say, This thread has become one of my favorite EVER...

Love hearing these in-depth observations from the old-timers.

GOOD STUFF!

very kind of you to refer to us as old-timers .... my kids just call me 'The Relic' ....

 

[Old1949]

SF11704...I agree with what you say. I think another factor is that when you and I grew up, baseball was THE national pastime sport. The current generation grew up with smash-mouth football being the sport of the day. In old-time baseball, you were successful based on the skill level you demonstrated. In football, skill is important to be sure, but much of that skill relates to how well you physically dominate and beat down your opponent. That's a big difference that I believe spills over to the mentality of the fans. Apparently some baseball fans today feel that beating down their rival fans, either literally, or figuratively with their words, somehow makes their team look better. Really, it does just the opposite.

Cal...Glad you're enjoying the discussion. I am too, and I think it's the type of discussion that makes these boards worthwhile, as opposed to some of the smack talk SF11704 mentioned.