SI.com's "Things We Miss in Baseball."

It had its charms. When people threw shit at our family for wearing Brewers gear to a game back then, they would good-natured about it.

As for Milwaukee, this is going to Marianas Trench levels of nostalgia, but I miss the Two-Fisted Slopper PSA from the uber-crappy County Stadium scoreboard. Based on this picture, it has apparently been revived on the Miller Park boards, presumably for kitsch purposes.

 

And the quarter-pound king dogs with that Cleveland Stadium mustard.

 

There was always at least one person at every game who would spell "Fuck" across the upper deck by flipping open empty seats.

 

I liked the old flat-top Pirate hats. I also tried to mimic Tekulve's sidearm delivery.

 

... or the students at the University of Wisconsin who got trampled a decade and a half ago at a football game, which is really when this practice began to end (everywhere except basketball, where students storm the court after every 2-point win over a mid-major so they'll get three seconds on SportsCenter).

I think what he meant was balanced schedules, as they are unbalanced now.

I remember in the days of the 12-team NL, you played 18 games against teams in the division and 12 against the other division. Simple, symmetrical -- 3 home and road series against division foes, 2 home and road series in cross-division games. I know the AL had a balanced schedule from 1977 on, but the NL only had a balanced schedule for a couple of years after expanding to 14 teams in 1993. The big issue now is that non-division teams only come to town once, while in-division teams come three times (or sometimes two if you're an NL Central team). But Interleague Play made scheduling a lot more difficult.

 

Not only that, but you played exclusively within your own division in the last month.

The Dodgers have two series with the Pirates in September.

 

Hmmm.
I thought "competition" might make the list. But apparently Youppi is more important to baseball than a league in which everyone has a decent shot to win.

 

I miss the old NL West, illogical though it was. I liked seeing the Dodgers and Braves, both contending, played home-and-home series on consecutive weekends this month. Reminded me of '91.

 

Yeah, because Lord knows Cleveland, Seattle, Toronto, Montreal, the White Sox and San Diego were in the hunt every fucking year in the 70s.

 

Or the Senators, Browns or A's of the '50s.

"Competitive balance," noble though it may be (it's actually kind of boring, IMO), has never, ever been reality. Not when I was a kid, not when you were a kid, not when your grandfather was a kid. You can't miss what didn't exist.

 

A fair competition can't save those who are incompetent.
But an unfair competition can exclude those who don't have a $150 million player budget.