Yeah, make baseball great again. It used to be a slowburn strategy game which rewarded patience and didn't hinge entirely on a small selection of star players. But every sport over the last 30 years has been a race to the bottom, they've all been changing the rules to to punish intellectual plays and reward sheer athleticism over team cohesion. Even Basketball used to be a much more thoughtful game which required more cooperation between players.
30 years ago, basketball strategy involved a whiteboard and a series of planned passes. Now it's "get the guy we're paying $40m a year the ball every chance you get".
It's not really that fun to watch anymore. Most of the tension is gone and it's just a matter of "which teams star player is starry enough today". Older games were amazing for the dynamism and teamwork. It was neat to see some of the duplicity in the strategy too. NFL still has some of that, but a lot of sports are in a race to the bottom--I'm particularly annoyed with changes to hockey which make the role of Enforcer less important. The Enforcer was part of what kept the game tense because he acted like the queen on a chessboard--important to counter but also a powerful tool for strategic plays. The European style of hockey is much too gentle and technical and has a lower strategic element because the inability to physically counter the opposing team reduces the game to "soccer on ice" with too high an emphasis on star players. After all, if the other team has a star, you can always sick the enforcer on him to prevent his easy movement. That option is not available when checking is too aggressively ruled.
Yeah, make baseball great again. It used to be a slowburn strategy game which rewarded patience and didn't hinge entirely on a small selection of star players. But every sport over the last 30 years has been a race to the bottom, they've all been changing the rules to to punish intellectual plays and reward sheer athleticism over team cohesion. Even Basketball used to be a much more thoughtful game which required more cooperation between players.
30 years ago, basketball strategy involved a whiteboard and a series of planned passes. Now it's "get the guy we're paying $40m a year the ball every chance you get".
It's not really that fun to watch anymore. Most of the tension is gone and it's just a matter of "which teams star player is starry enough today". Older games were amazing for the dynamism and teamwork. It was neat to see some of the duplicity in the strategy too. NFL still has some of that, but a lot of sports are in a race to the bottom--I'm particularly annoyed with changes to hockey which make the role of Enforcer less important. The Enforcer was part of what kept the game tense because he acted like the queen on a chessboard--important to counter but also a powerful tool for strategic plays. The European style of hockey is much too gentle and technical and has a lower strategic element because the inability to physically counter the opposing team reduces the game to "soccer on ice" with too high an emphasis on star players. After all, if the other team has a star, you can always sick the enforcer on him to prevent his easy movement. That option is not available when checking is too aggressively ruled.