data.3news-bydate.train.rec.sport.baseball.104847 Maven / Gradle / Ivy
From: [email protected] (Dale Stephenson)
Subject: Re: And America's Team is....But Why?
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Lines: 43
In <1993Apr20.182807.18366@bsu-ucs> [email protected] writes:
[...]
> You are absolutely correct. Braves fans are nothing but a bunch of
>bandwagoners. Correct me if I am wrong, but 4 or 5 years ago you couldnt give
>away a ticket to see the Braves play.I would bet my next paycheck that 80% of
>the so-called Braves fans living outside of Georgia at the present time can not
>name more than 3 players from their 1988 season. On the other hand, ask any
>Cubs fan living anywhere in the United States to name 3 players from any given
>year and 80% of them probably could.
You could be right. Then again, you could be wrong. This claim is completely
unverifiable and untestable. I'd wager most of the Braves fans on the net
could name more than 3 players from their 1988 season.
You could give away tickets to Braves games. However, my Dad and I were able
to get great seats from scalper for face value, which isn't exactly the sign
of a hot ticket...
> Granted, the fact that a team wins brings people to the ball park, but
>that does not mean they diserve the title "America's Team"
> The only reason they are considered America's team is because of Ted
>Turner and his little TV station which broadcasts across the nation.
This is *precisely* why they were considered America's team. Even
(especially?) when they were bad, you could see most of the Braves games on
cable. You could do that for the Cubs as well, but the Braves had better
camerawork, better announcers (what would you rather listen to -- Harry discuss
the game, or Skip and Pete discuss motoball?), and teams that weren't *too*
much worse. Because of TBS, the Braves had a lot of fans outside of Georgia.
At home in Kentucky, even though we were much closer to Cincinnati there was
as many Braves fans as Reds fans, even in 1990. You could actually watch the
Braves play -- you had to go to Cincinnati to watch the Reds. I can go
anywhere in America and watch the Braves.
> I'll consider Toronto AMerica's team before the Braves
Why? I'd guess that Braves fans are more widely distributed than Toronto
fans.
--
Dale J. Stephenson |*| ([email protected]) |*| Baseball fanatic
"It is considered good to look wise, especially when not
overburdened with information" -- J. Golden Kimball