More Reasons Football Sucks Compared to Baseball

As some of you may know, the few who read my blog, a couple of posts ago I wrote about the inferiority of football compared to baseball. Any thinking person knows this already, but let me reiterate with even more reasons baseball is superior.

First, I'd like to point out how annoying anonymous comments are to me. I'm pretty sure who wrote the five "anonymous" comments, and any reader of my little missives has every right to write an anonymous comment, that's why I allow them. However, the problem is that I have to write another blog entry to answer the aforementioned anonymous comments, especially considering just how wrong those comments are, particularly in this case. The superiority of baseball over football isn't subtle, it's considerable. A new blog entry is necessary to cover the many, many reasons I already won this debate against innumerable football fans. But here we go again, in no particular order, 10 reasons why I'm right. Enjoy!

But first...

Baseball season is just around the corner, and I can't wait. Fenway Park is pure magic, a Boston Cathedral. Did I mention that I...can't...wait. It's that kind of enthusiasm that is behind this little tidbit of information: The Red Sox have sold out every home game since May 15, 2003, the longest streak in MLB history. I know my Red Sox, and I know baseball. I know football, too, because the Patriots are so amazing. That's how I know that baseball is just a better sport. Pitchers and catchers report for Spring training on February 12! The best sport of all is coming soon. Onward to the list.

1. Baseball is not a timed sport. As Yogi Berra once said, "It ain't over 'til it's over." You could be down 20 points in the 9th inning with one out left, and come back. They don't, "knee the football" or run out the clock. Overtime in professional football (why do they call it that? Soccer fans have a legitimate complaint) is a joke. A coin flip? Really. What a joke.

2. Cheerleaders are annoying and indicate just how boring football can be. You need distractions. Baseball has plenty of fabulous looking women in the stands.

3. The All-Star game. Baseball's mid-season masterpiece of excellence is wonderful. What does football have? The Pro-Bowl? Give me a break.

4. The NFL discards players like used condoms after they retire, and lets them deal with concussions that lead to misery and suicide. The MLB Player's Association is a great union that treats players with respect. Thank Kurt Flood for that, an amazing human being.

5. Pitching and hitting are two of the greatest skills in all sports. Sixty feet, six inches...the perfect distance to create incredible difficulty and a strategic masterpiece that transcends anything in, "football."

6. A good catcher is harder to find that a good quarterback. Another amazing talent that most non-fans do not appreciate or understand.

7. This is a big one for me. In baseball, they have open try-outs. If I can pitch or hit or catch, I can go show what I have to a baseball scout. That's it. In football, you go from college to the NFL, even though most NFL players have rocks in their heads (that sweet football scholarship). If you can play, baseball will take you. No bullshit college lie, or draft, or any of that crap.

8. Every baseball park is unique. The angles and distances are the same, but the outfield challenges vary (Green Monster at Fenway, Ivy at Wrigley Field, etc.). It makes the games more interesting.

9. The National League (and American League if they are playing in a NL park) forces the pitchers to bat, no designated hitter. The strategic decisions that come from this fact alone indicates baseball's superiority.

10. Footballs is all rules, little strategy. Baseball has simpler rules, more strategy. Just the way it should be.

Now Some Quotes:

"Baseball is like a church. Many attend and few understand." Leo Durocher

"Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical." - Yogi Berra

"Baseball is now, and always will be, the greatest game in the world." Babe Ruth

"There is no written rule, but it is part of baseball's rich common law that batters shall not glance back to see where the catcher is setting up because that reveals the intended pitch location. A catcher may give a peeking batter a polite warning. If the batter is a recidivist, the catcher then may set up outside but call for a pitch inside. When the batter leans out toward where he thinks the pitch is going, his ribs receive a lesson about respecting the common law. Sport is a moral undertaking because it requires of participants, and it schools spectators in the appreciation of, noble things--courage, grace under pressure, sportsmanship. Sport should be the triumph of character, openly tested, not of technology, surreptitiously employed." Source: Say it ain't so (Townhall.com, 02/08/2001)

Where Cats of Quality Go to Relax, Love, and 'Nip Snort

Our art department is always churning out new ways to attract discerning cats and humans.

The Adoption Industry, Coercion and Lies

How Adoption Brokers See Children

Mothers are losing their children all of the time to the adoption industry, the "Adoption Brokers."

No exiled mother willingly surrendered her children to adoption.  They didn't "give their child away."  Exiled mother's babies are not gifts.  Exiled mother's babies are not unwanted.

Mothers are exiled from their babies not because they were proven unfit, but because they are vulnerable (young, unwed, sick or poor). Exiled mothers are lied to by social workers, adopters, adoption agencies and even the church in order for adopters to obtain their babies.

Mothers don't have a choice when surrendering their babies. They are coerced or outright forced into surrendering their babies for adoption.

Exiled mothers are women who wanted to keep their babies, but because of factors such as being unwed, poor, or sick, their babies were taken by force, coercion and lies.

Some mothers are still drugged when they are forced to sign the papers relinquishing their parental rights.  Others are told that they will never see their child again unless they sign the papers to surrender their child for adoption.  Others were told they would not be allowed to see their babies unless they signed the papers.  Still others, never signed but the mother's parents signed away their children.

All mothers are never told the truth about the consequences of adoption to them or their babies.  Instead, they were deliberately lied to. A cold manipulation.

Children are taken from their mothers so that the adoption industry can make money by playing the role of savior to infertile couples by selling the "ultimate gift" to them at the mother's expense.  Then the adoption industry comes out "smelling like a rose" for solving the welfare and moral problems of society.  It really all comes down to money.... keeping the mothers off welfare and making money for the adoption brokers.

The adoption industry tells mothers that they will forget.  Mothers are told to "get over it."  They are told "put it behind you."  Mothers are told to "get on with their lives."  The children are told that "their mother gave them away."

Exiled mothers never forget.  They never stop loving their babies.  They never stop missing their babies.

Exiled mother: A natural mother who has lost her child to adoption solely because of her age and/or lack of support, information or resources. An unrecognized mother, she has been thrown away, banished and discarded by her parents, the adoption industry and society, who deemed her unworthy to raise her own child.

This comes from a blog about the lie of, "open adoption" and can be found here.

15 Reasons Why Football Sucks Compared to Baseball

As we enjoy (some of us) the football season, and with the Super Bowl soon to come and dominate every bit of news for several days, it's important to remember that football is not a great sport. Compared to baseball, it kind of sucks. This will upset some people, but I have a strong case. Here it is, enjoy.

1. Any timed sport is inferior to a sport that isn't timed. You can't "knee the ball" to kill time in baseball. So long as there is one out left, the losing team can make a comeback.

Most of what they do in Football

2. Baseball has simple rules, but is infinitely complex, like chess. Football has more rules and regulations than the DMV, and is not complex...a flag is thrown on every play. It's annoying.

3. Football fans tailgate before the big game. No baseball fan would have a picnic in a parking lot.

4. "The rich history of the game is unmatched. The same 8 teams that made up the National League in 1876 and American League in 1900 still exist today, most in the same city. Baseball embraces it's past, football forgets it as it happens." - A. Ruck

5. Over 162 games, you can be confident the cream rises to the top and the best teams in baseball reach the playoffs. Can you honestly feel confident that is the case after a 16 game schedule?

6. You mever hear "We shouldve won that game!" or "We got screwed!" in baseball. You constantly hear it in football, because so often a team can out-perform another and still lose in football, aided by flukey, countless, boring penalties & turnovers.

Just a silly thing to do

7. The actually flip a coin to determine who gets the ball in OT. That's ridiculous.

8. No cheerleaders in baseball. They are annoying and completely pointless. Baseball does not need sex to sell it's game, nor a designated group of people to help us cheer.

9. Ted Williams

10. How many football players would you recognize walking down the street, excluding QB's. We see baseball players faces regularly and know them like neighbors. - E. Ruck

11. Baseball players have better character. They're more courteous towards fans, less jerky, they don't get into dog-fighting.

Fenway Park

12. Baseball stadiums are beautiful unique baseball cathedrals. The rooftops and Ivy of Wrigley field, the Green Monster at Fenway, the bay just a few feet from the field in San Francisco. The list goes on - Football stadiums are generally boring and have nothing unique like this.

13. Football teams have always exposed loopholes in the game, which the NFL invents yet another rule to combat, further contributing to the ever-changing nature of football. Baseball remains virtually unchanged since the 1800's.

14. Football fields are all the same gridiron…boring! Each baseball field is within a reasonable guidance, but unique.

15. Baseball is internationally loved and the national sport of at least a dozen nations. Truly nobody cares about Football outside of the US.

The Worst Weather on Earth, Right Here in New England

Looking Northwest atop the Research Observatory

A surprising fact about my beloved New England is that, in New Hampshire, atop Mt. Washington, is a place considered to have the worst weather in the world. In the world. While the height of the mountain is a mere 6,288 feet (second tallest mountain in the eastern US, with Mount Mitchell in North Carolina beating it by 175 feet). But it's not always about size, you know. A unique confluence of odd meteorological placement combines to create a very strange place, indeed. The highest wind speed ever recorded on Earth was clocked here, in 1934, at an almost unbelievable 231 m.p.h. (a hurricane qualifies as a Category 5, the most severe, at a mere 156 m.p.h.). 

Observatory in Springtime

Mount Washington's horrific weather is pretty much an accident of geography. It just so happens that if you plot the tracks of storms as they move across the U.S. from west to east, they all converge, thanks to prevailing winds, on northern New England. The White Mountains, meanwhile, focus things further, turning already bad weather to flat-out hellish. The range stretches from southwest to northeast, pretty much at a right angle to winds sweeping down from Canada. As they run into the solid wall of peaks, the winds stream up and over the top, accelerating all the while.

That direction of flow also compresses the winds between the mountains and whatever air masses lie above, squeezing them like a stream of water rocketing through a narrow nozzle. And just for a little extra oomph, two spurs of the range angle off in just the right configuration to funnel everything right at Mount Washington itself. A calm day up here is almost unheard of.

The temperature last week was -16°, and the winds were at about 60 m.p.h., gusting to nearly 90. Temperature wise, it gets worse. Mount Washington's record low of -60 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded on January 5, 1885. More recently, on January 16, 2004, the summit weather observation tower registered a temperature of -43.6 degrees, with sustained winds of 88 mph, resulting in a wind chill of -103 degrees. During a three day stretch between January 13 and January 16, 2004, the wind chill never went above -55 degrees.

Snowstorms have been recorded in every month of the year. Snowfall averages 311 inches per year, and a temperature above 72 degrees has never been recorded at the summit. Ever.

In Summer, ascending can be done via the Cog Railroad

Not that Mt. Washington doesn't have appealing features, like the Cog Railroad and Mt. Washington Hotel (which reminds one of The Overlook Hotel in The Shining). It is quite beautiful, however, and located far from the inhospitable summit.

If you're of a mind to visit this profoundly interesting place (I'd stick to the hotel, not the observatory at the summit), here's a lovely map. Cheers!

That's it.