The Sport of Nerds

[Madame Adequate]

Who likes Baseball? If you like statistics, baseball is the sport for you!

[Pike]

I FUCKIN LOVE BASEBALL

Watched it all the time as a little kid. You bet I'm full grognard. :hyper:

[Pant Leg Eater from the Bad World]

I like playing baseball. And I like watching baseball in person. And I love watching the playoffs and the World Series.

However I don't like trying to watch 182,000 games a season to keep up with my team. So. Ugh.

[Madame Adequate]

There really are an astonishing number of games in a baseball season.

[Colonel Angus]

Way too many games per season. W/ life I can't keep up w/ it like I used to when I was younger. They REALLY need to cut the regular season by 30 games. If they want to add another round of playoffs to make up the loss of money, I don't mind. But I don't need 162 somewhat meaningless games.

[Slothy]

Who likes Baseball? If you like statistics, baseball is the sport for you!

And yet Lonny BooB wastes all of his time with Football Manager.

[Madame Adequate]

If he thinks that's a game for stat nerds, he should try Out of the Park Baseball.

[Raistlin]

I enjoy going to baseball games, even minor league ones. I went to a ton of Rockies when I lived in Colorado. However, I cannot watch baseball on TV, and thus cannot regularly follow the sport. For some reason, the game is just too fucking boring on television.

Nowadays I only care about the Red Sox losing, mostly due to Masshole sports writers and fans like Peter King. Though I still have a soft spot for the Rockies.

[Sephex]

Who likes Baseball? If you like statistics, baseball is the sport for you!

And yet Lonny BooB wastes all of his time with Football Manager.

*BoB gives baseball a shot and watches a game*

"What is this? Where's the game clock? Why are all these Yanks in pajamas? These announcers sound like they're dead. Why are there innings when they are outside? What the hell is a Baltimore? Are the Nationals Nazi sympathizers?"

[Agent Proto]

Baseball is an amazing sport to follow if you love stats. :D

[escobert]

Not really a baseball fan. I do like to go to a live game and it's good white noise on the radio. But, there's now way I'm watching it on TV.

[Miriel]

I would like it even more if the balls were lit on fire. Fireball.

[Psychotic]

When I've seen it on American TV shows and cartoons it's looked kind of exciting. I watched a bit of a game probably 10 or so years ago now and it was just dull. Nobody hit the ball, the pitcher was just throwing it at the batter and he didn't want to know. Was that a typical baseball experience or did I just get unlucky, and the TV version of baseball with dudes slugging the ball into orbit is the real deal?

[I Took the Red Pill]

That's a pretty typical experience, I'd say. There's a lot of camera shots of dudes chewing gum or people yawning in the crowd because there's just so much damn time between plays and they gotta show something.

For me having baseball on TV is a calming thing. When I was in high school I'd always sit on the couch and do my homework with a ball game playing in the background because it's relaxing and it doesn't demand your constant attention like other sports. In fact you can pretty much just ignore the game until you hear the crowd roar, because that's when something interesting has happened. But the sounds of the ball hitting the catcher's mitt, the sound of wood meeting ball, the droning of the announcers' voices (except for Joe Buck, who is just the worst)...all of that stuff makes baseball good background noise.

Live games are great fun, though. The local minor league team started doing "$1 Thursdays" last summer. Tickets to the game were $1. Hot dogs were $1 each all night. Beers were $1. And I'm not talking watered down Bud Light. They had Saranac IPA on draught for a smurfing dollar. I got wasted with my friends while eating like 7 hotdogs and watching baseball. MLB games are a really good time too, but obviously the tickets, hot dogs, and beers will be significantly more than $1.

[Sephex]

Nobody hit the ball, the pitcher was just throwing it at the batter and he didn't want to know.

I stared at this sentence for a bit and finally figured out you were referring to the pitcher refusing the catcher's hand signals and ended up laughing my ass off.

[Pumpkin]

Played it a few times when I was little, but its never been my thing

[Old Manus]

Football scoreboard:

61652


Cricket scorecard:

61653


Nerd sport? The answer is obvious.

[Aulayna]

The sport for nerds is the League of Legends League Championship Series.

[Bubba]

Baseball is my second sport after English football. My Dad's family were American and from Connecticut and were huge Yankee fans. Me and my Dad used to watch the Yankee games when they were on here in the UK... at smurfing midnight. I fell in love with it though. I love all the stats that they churn out. Well, most of them. Crap like VORP and even Whiff are a bit daft if you ask me.



Nobody hit the ball, the pitcher was just throwing it at the batter and he didn't want to know.

I stared at this sentence for a bit and finally figured out you were referring to the pitcher refusing the catcher's hand signals and ended up laughing my ass off.

You see, I read this as the batter didn't want to know. As in, when the pitcher isn't throwing strikes so the batter doesn't swing and lets it go for a ball. Psychotic, you need to confirm.


Football scoreboard:

Cricket scorecard:

61653


Nerd sport? The answer is obvious.

Cricket and baseball do actually share a lot of similarities. Baseball has the edge though as it doesn't last for 5 days and SOMEBODY SMURFING WINS.

[Loony BoB]

Not all cricket lasts five days. There are matches that are played over a five days, four days, one day and even just something like 2-3 hours. All are entertaining in different ways. And when it comes to statistics, I'm not 100% certain but I'm still pretty sure that cricket wins out there, especially as cricket is recorded as the second most popular sport in the world, which means more players, which means even more statistics. :mwahaha:

So yeah, cricket is my statty sport, not football. If they invented a cricket manager game as good as Football Manager, you can bet your butt I'd be playing it.

They won't, though. :(

[Shorty]

I thought this thread was going to be about curling.

[Pike]

I thought this thread was going to be about curling.

ANOTHER FANTASTIC SPORT :hyper: I miss the Winter Olympics so much

[Shorty]

I thought this thread was going to be about curling.

ANOTHER FANTASTIC SPORT :hyper: I miss the Winter Olympics so much

Well, you know, the angles and calculation and all that. Seems more nerdy than stats tbh!

[Loony BoB]

I thought this thread was going to be about curling.

ANOTHER FANTASTIC SPORT :hyper: I miss the Winter Olympics so much

Well, you know, the angles and calculation and all that. Seems more nerdy than stats tbh!
To be fair, pretty much all sports have angles and calculation scattered throughout. Not too many have such an emphasis on friction, but cricket has seam and spin bowling which relies completely on such things.

[Del Murder]

Baseball is a statistician's dream. There is a stat for everything. Every time a player comes up to bat to a pitcher, we know the probability he will get a hit or a walk or a strikeout, hit it in the air or on the ground, which direction he will hit it in, how many bases he may get... The great thing is that all this data now goes into actual recruitment of players and it's not just for nerds. Guys get paid millions for having a good BABIP.

Baseball is not as exciting as football or basketball. It is not nonstop action. There are down times. Hell, there will be at least 17 stoppages of play in every game. And sometimes nothing happens (but that's still interesting since a 'pitcher's duel' means a close game where one play could win it). It's also a long season and not every game matters as much as it does in football or in tournaments like the World Cup or March Madness. But that's the beauty of the sport. The long season means the stats are actually statistically significant and can be used to make projections. And generally, fluke teams don't win.

Baseball is all about the duel between the pitcher and the batter. Only in boxing is there a more strategic pairing of two athletes. It's about anticipation. The batter needs to anticipate which pitch he is going to get and where he's going to hit it. The pitcher needs to fool the batter into thinking a good pitch is not worth swinging at or a bad pitch is. It's so cerebral, and that is hard to get across on TV, but it is the bread and butter of baseball.

Baseball is my favorite sport. Go A's!

[Bubba]

I thought this thread was going to be about curling.

I did some impressive curling this morning. I think that's due to having to much for dinner last night.

[Ayen]

I enjoyed playing it when I was a kid, but it was never really something I cared to follow. Guess I'm not a nerd.

[Shiny]

Baseball is fun live, but completely dire to watch on television unless it's the Red Sox vs. The Yankees.

[Bubba]

Baseball is fun live, but completely dire to watch on television unless it's the Red Sox vs. The Yankees.

That's because it always kicks off!

I've managed to watch the Yankees a few times but never managed to catch them against the Red Sox.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

It's just not my thing. I actually find golf more entertaining to watch, and well, it's still golf.

Car racing boils down to who crosses the line first/goes the fastest, but the strategies and gathered statistics/data used in car set up/car building and during the race are astronomically large. There's a lot more there than some people realize. I'm sure it applies the same to all types of sports.

[Old Manus]

I love watching golf. It's like test cricket. You just turn it on in the morning and chill out on the sofa with one eye on it drinking multiple cups of tea for the next 6 hours. Great way to spend a hungover Sunday. Maybe I would like baseball.

[Pheesh]

Baseball is fun live, but completely dire to watch on television unless it's the Red Sox vs. The Yankees.

Recently they actually have some of the longest and most boring matches of the season, but yes, it is almost worth it when they start tossing pitches at each other's heads.

[chionos]

I love baseball. It's probably my favorite sport, especially to see live. I go to several (but not enough!) Cinci Reds games each year, and even though they lose about 90% of the games I go to, and even though the beer is RIDICULOUSLY priced, I still enjoy the fuck out of it.

I'm one of those odd people who can watch it on TV, too, though I don't watch very many games during the season that aren't Reds games.

The statistics are a math nerd's wet dream. I especially love that players have both offensive and defensive numbers that have to be weighed against each other, and it's great fun to see how the math translates into actually gameplay, including those games or unexpected plays that contradict the stats. So-and-so has never gotten a hit against a lefty in August on a Friday and he has to get one now or the game's over. <nervous anticipation>Holy shit, a hit!</nervous anticipation> <jumpupanddownandcheerandbeer>