Sammy Sosa busted with a corked bat...

[Gurm]

PIT,

That's the word I was looking for - Rounders.

MMM,

Didn't mean to bring family into it. I'll concede that there is the occasional thinking man amongst the Baseball crowd. "Football" and "Hockey" (and "Bucketball", as it should have originally been called) are still right out in the brain department.

- Gurm

[MultimediaMan]

"Occasional"

Gurm, again you generalize (and completely miss the point). Low IQ? Basketball, Football or Hockey? Look at their paystubs, please. These people make their money, and the way to make money is to do the job. If part of that job is showmanship, well then so be it!

These people are businessmen! Every one of them are in the business of making money by the bucketful. Most of them do.
Those that don't make the big endorsements usually stay with their sport in some other function: In the coaching or management staff - they don't make as much per year as when they were playing, but most of them are making more than your average Doctor or Tier2 lawyer yearly.

Low IQ!? I think not.

Q: Ever wonder why sports luminiaries buy or build sports bars and car dealerships?

A: Tax write-offs.

Is that dumb or Low IQ?

No.

Lose your conceit, Gurm. There are some who walk different paths who are vastly more intelligent than you or I. They may not know the difference between a School Bus and a PCI Bus: they may not need to.

[Tjalfe]

really.. if you has a good job in the real world, and had a high IQ, would you not be stupid to turn down a job paying in the millions if you could land a job as a professional ball player?

[Indiana]

Re: Sammy Sosa busted with a corked bat...

Originally posted by Kruzin

Now Sammy is being doubted for his home run records, with fans wondering just how many of those runs where scored by 'cheating'.

Well, I guess he could always get a job at nVidia....

[Gurm]

I generalize. I generalize because it's true.

I'm sure you can scour the NFL and find me a smart guy in there.

The problem is that he's surrounded by 500 dumb guys.

If they're smart, just ONCE I wanna tune in a post-game interview and hear something intelligent about their poor defense, or their strategy. But no. Every DAMN time it's "we just didn't want it bad enough, I guess" or "they just played harder than we did".

People tell me Kobe Bryant is smart. Got a high SAT score (although in another thread we covered the fact that such a feat means little nowadays). Then, praytell, why is it that he says things like "edumufication is impohtent". And don't give me the EBONICS argument. If you're smart, you won't talk like a trog. If you're NOT smart, and try to sound smart, people will know.

And we do know. Ok?

Don't get me started on this. Every time we have this argument, I pose the challenge. And every time I wait.

Find me footage. Find me footage of an NFL player showing off his brain. You won't find it.

I'm sorry to be like this, but it is just too true.

It saddens me that in this society, these people are considered "heroes".

- Gurm

[az]

See, that's what I said I agree with

I can see into the future

AZ

[GNEP]

But then "nobody complained that Einstein couldn't play football" ...

[paulcs]

I think it sucks that Einstein didn't play football. All those years at Princeton and for what?

Paul

[paulcs]

I don't believe you hit all those homeruns because of a corked bat. Steroids might help, however.

Paul

[Helevitia]

Reading Gurm's hatred for dumb football players brought up some dejavu. It felt like bad dejavu though. Hmm, let me check....ahh yes, here are the two threads I remember.

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39387&perpage=40&highlight=football&pagenumber=1

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31124&highlight=football

Dave

[Zao]

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought someone had whacked him over the head with a bat

[Kruzin]

I really don't care about Gurm's opinion of sports figures.
He always trys to drag any sports thread off topic with his endless ranting.
His opinion of the intelligence of these people has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

So, back to the topic...
I listened to an interview on the radio this morning with an ex-pro baseball player.
He was quite insistant that a batter always knows what bat he is taking to the plate with him. They are all marked, and a batter chooses his bat depending on the type of play he wants to make.
So, while it's possible that Sammy had a brain fart, and grabbed the wrong bat, it's equally possible he knew exactly what he was doing.
This guy also insisted that a corked bat will give the ball a better jump off the bat, because of the slight flexability increase to the bat, thus increasing it's speed, and giving a better chance at a long hit.
Sammy claims he only uses this bat in practice to "give the fans a better show", so obviously he believes it helps his distance. And apparently the league believes it makes a difference, or it wouldn't be against the rules. The last guy caught using a corked bat was suspended for 7 games.

So, as it stands today, fans will always have a question in their minds about how many of his home runs where hit with illegal equipment. Sammy will have a black mark on his record (along with the steriods rumors from a few years ago). The MLB is contemplating what (if any) action will be taken against him.
All in all, it's been a bad week for Sammy and his fans...

[KvHagedorn]

I don't really give a damn how dumb football, baseball, basketball players are. It really doesn't affect me in the least. The problem I have is the stupidity of a society which allows such people to be valued so highly monetarily. If someone is good at football and wants to play professionally, great! Pay him $50,000 a year. If he is exceptional, maybe $100,000. As things stand, I cannot in good conscience pay to go see a pro sports game. I cannot support Nike because they give ridiculous amounts of money to sports stars for hawking their products while they pay homeless urchins in Pakistan ten cents a week to make them. People pay taxes and these rich mother****ers who own the teams get a lot of these tax dollars to build their stadiums? That money should be paying teacher's mortgages and college loans! This sort of totally free capitalism endagers itself by such pure irresponsibility.

[Kruzin]

I entirely agree that the big sports stars make too much.
But the majority of the players don't make 6 or 7 or 8 figure salaries. The insane salaries of the elite players are the reason tickets to the games are so expensive, and why I don't go to the games. But there are lots of people willing to pay the high price for the tickets, and as long as they keep accepting yearly price hikes, it will continue.

As for the stadiums being built on tax dollars, there is more to it than that.
I don't know how it is in other states, but here in Colorado, we have had 3 new venues built in the last decade (Coors Field for the Rockies, Invesco Field for the Broncos, and the Pepsi Center for the Avs and Nuggets). And while the state partially funded them, each was done by a vote, and a temporary sales tax hike. Basically the people said they wanted new the venues, and they where willing to pay for them. Additionally, lots of corperate dollars where pumped in by each venues respective sponsor. It's not like money was taken from other funds to build these places. The voters spoke, and payed for the construction with additional taxes.
I do wish that more people would vote for increases in teachers salaries, school funding, and such. But that's part of living in a democracy.

[KvHagedorn]

.. and such an indication of the lowbrow nature of the masses makes democracy itself a suspect institution. If I am being taxed for something, I expect some benefit from it. The only ones who benefit from these high dollar brand new stadiums are the billionaire owners and their rich cronies who sit in the nice new suites smoking their cigars, laughing all the way to the bank because they duped the moron taxpayers into buying them a party palace, to which they STILL charge said average Joes top dollar for admittance. That isn't democracy, it's tyranny of the majority (and the majority of people have always been dumbasses, in my experience.)

If these sports team owners want a new stadium, let them pay for it by hiking ticket prices, and let the people who actually USE the facility pay for it that way. If people stop coming because of the high prices, I would assume they had voted NO to the new venue.