Random Sport Titbits

[TheGrandAvatar]

[Chris2K]

Not a lot of darts talk around here, but earlier in the World Championship Final we had the statistically greatest leg of darts in history:

Insane.

[Lineker]

Fair play - this tweet is fantastic. 

[Meacon Keaton]

How long has this thread been called "Titbits"? Sounds like a watch you'd wear on your nipples.

[The Lusophone]

So the World Baseball Classic is happening right now, and Great Britain has qualified for the first time. As you might expect for a sport that isn't very popular here, we're not very good. Most of our team are from the US or the Bahamas, and 11 of them don't even play for teams. One of them retired in 2018.

And it's not gone well thus far. An expected but relatively narrow 6-2 loss to the United State (who I assume are not sending their best, like with their basketball team) and then a trouncing by Canada 18-8, where the mercy rule was enforced in the 7th innings.

Until today, when we won our very first game in the WBC:

Spoiler

 

A historic win for Team Great Britain on the world's stage! 🇬🇧 #WorldBaseballClassic pic.twitter.com/YzJCR4SLtq

— World Baseball Classic (@WBCBaseball) March 13, 2023

Tea time! 🫖

Team Great Britain secures its first #WorldBaseballClassic win ever. pic.twitter.com/cZK031Kbme

— World Baseball Classic (@WBCBaseball) March 13, 2023

 

 

[The Kraig]

As someone who knows players from the Glasgow Galaxy and Glasgow Comets baseball teams, not a single one has mentioned the GB team. Maybe that will change. Or we'll just roll our eyes and start a Scotland team. 

I came in here to share this...I had no idea it happened. Stoke, Wolves, Shamrock Rovers, Dundee United, Cagliari, et al...in the same league. In the United States. With silly new names. In 1966. What.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Soccer_Association

[Gazz]

I imagine getting into the Great Britain Baseball squad is a bit like when I got onto my high school basketball team despite being short, fat, and possessing no basketball skills because I was the fifth and final person to sign up to practice.

[Colly]

There was a lacrosse team at our uni, and it was made up entirely of "anyone who went to the tryout who could be bothered to shell out for kit".

[gunnar hendershow]

My high school's golf team for a time came down to "do you own a set of clubs?"

[The Lusophone]

What kind of bougie high school did you go to that you had a golf team?

[Bobfoc]

1 hour ago, Colly said:

There was a lacrosse team at our uni, and it was made up entirely of "anyone who went to the tryout who could be bothered to shell out for kit".

I think that's the case for most university sports here. The American collegiate sports system seems so strange by comparison. The idea that 80,000 people in the UK would watch a university football match is utterly laughable.

[Colly]

I dunno, the Newcastle Uni footie team play a fairly decent standard. Obviously it's nothing like the American system.

On a slightly related note to the baseball we were talking about all the investment in women's and girls football earlier this week. I have a complete bugbear about netball which is clearly a sport designed solely because "girls can't play basketball", so the sooner it's phased out the better, but I had a nosey to see what it's like internationally. They actually have a World Cup, mainly played by commonwealth countries, however the USA have a team in which only one of the players is American by nationality, all the others are British/Caribbean etc. Rubbish sport.

[The Lusophone]

Fun fact about that, it's not actually designed to stop girls from playing basketball, but it's the way it is due to the creator of the sport, Clara Baer, misinterpreting the rules as written when they were sent to her by James Naismith, the inventor of basketball.

By the time anyone realised it was a sport in its own right, though you're right that it basically functions as a way to separate girls and boys into the two different sports.

[Twist]

13 hours ago, Gazz said:

I imagine getting into the Great Britain Baseball squad is a bit like when I got onto my high school basketball team despite being short, fat, and possessing no basketball skills because I was the fifth and final person to sign up to practice.

I’ve actually won a British national championship in baseball and let me tell you right now … this is pretty much bang on.

[Colly]

With apologies that it's a Daily Express link, but this is tremendous and incredibly on brand.

 

[The Buscher]

I went to the largest high school in my state so the sports teams generally had a lot of competition for spots.  The lone "we'll take anyone" sport was cross country and track, because ultimately only the times for the top few runners actually mattered.  Probably 30ish runners on boys cross country, but then indoor track would start and there were considerably less winter sports, so their roster would explode to like 60-70 guys.

I had some friends that ran so I was interested in doing it just as an excuse to keep shape, but I had no reliable transportation and by the time I was driving I had to work after school.

Well...that, and our indoor track team didn't have an indoor track to practice in.  And my friends would always tell me about how the daily winter practices out in the freezing cold were just the worst experience of life.

[The Lusophone]

Dani Alves is on hunger strike and his wife is leaving him, I didn't know he was a Graham Linehan tribute act.

[The Buscher]

Not sure if it's this way for other states but in Connecticut, the coaches at all of our state colleges are considered teaching faculty, and therefore they are in the same union as all the professors and have all of the same very safe job protections accordingly.

I'm very much pro-union but in the specific case of coaches it strikes me as really odd.  For starters, nothing in their contracts requires them to win, no metrics, anything like that.  Much like how teachers aren't required to produce certain GPAs or anything.  They merely need to show up and do their job.  You basically can only be fired for cause (scandals, etc)

And that's why most of these coaches keep their jobs forever, either leaving voluntarily or, in the case of a poor performance, "retiring" but almost certainly getting a handshake package deal behind the scenes.  And this is also why when Kevin Ollie got outright fired, he sued and ended up getting a massive settlement all at the expense of taxpayers.

Meanwhile I look at my alma mater.  Their baseball coach is currently in his 24th season at the helm.  The team website proudly labels him the winningest coach in program history.  Which is true.  But what isn't said is he's only had a winning record in 2 of 23 seasons.  Career record is like 315-470, his team is off to a 3-13 start this year and just lost a game 31-3 that had to be mercy ruled after 7 innings.

Yeah it's a D-3 school and at D-3 it's not like you can do much advanced recruiting.  It's always students first, athletes second.  But my god.  My cousin was on the team the last 4 seasons and he said the coach is a nice guy but genuinely a terrible coach, doesn't connect with his players, doesn't strategize, nothing.  He loved playing and loved his teammates but even for D-3 he said it just felt demoralizing to get clowned game after game, year after year.  And yet this guy's job is pretty much iron clad just like any other professor.  It's just a bit wild.

[Lineker]

 

[Colly]

🤷‍♂️