Oakland Park Baseball

Hey, let's up the turnout this Sunday.

The weather may not hold up that much longer. Come take advantage of the fact that it's not raining.

When it rains, we still play but we have to play in the mud and we have to bail out the field before the game.


So make sure to come out this Sunday while it's still sunny.

10:30 warm-up / 11:00 game
Golden Gate Field (62nd and San Pablo Ave.)

Well, I have two possible new people coming that I told about are games during the week. One is a Nick Cox-type kid of 13, the other is a former varsity player of 28. Not sure either will show, but I guess we can use either one of them if they do!

this sunday is November 20th, so i can promise you at least one warm body we haven't seen in months.

Not that it matters, but I plan to make my Golden Gate debut tomorrow.

http://www.sportsvite.com/game/1000000433



I have a permanent post up on CraigsList now, and I've also placed a notice at this other site, see the above link.

The Sportsvite site lists Park Baseball as Male participation... if a woman came to play and she had skills, we'd be scurred ?

Anonymous wrote:The Sportsvite site lists Park Baseball as Male participation... if a woman came to play and she had skills, we'd be scurred ?

that is correct. Like all jocks, we here at OPB are secretly afraid of women.

and children for that matter.

and sometimes the elderly.

and every now and then barnyard animals.
but not the barnyard animals that might bite you, just the cute and fluffy ones
like hamsters.
and bunnies.
and eggs.

but seriously, who's not afraid of eggs?

edit: i forgot to make my point-
anyone can play as long as they can keep up.

There is an old thread to this, and the last thing seemed to say women couldn't play. I'm very ok with allowing them, however.

The odds of a woman wanting to come out and play with us is extremely low. And the odds of that woman who shows up actually having adequate skills is even lower, unless one of the women from the Cal Berkeley softball team wants to play.

Are you guys aware of how good that team is, albiet at softball? I think their winning percentage in like the last 5 years is OVER .700 !! They've only won the national championship once during that time, but the Cal Bears make it deep in the postseason each year.

Even following recent discussions, I must stress that ability has hardly been a requirement to play with us. There are men who we have allowed to play who were terrible, and some who could nealry-almost-kinda get by. Some of those people improved, some didn't. But barring attitude issues, we let them all play.

So ability isn't an issue. If we want to have ability to play become an issue across the board, then that is another discussion.

Then, putting on my socials justice hat, I need to point out that one reason women aren't as good at sports is because they have precious few opportunities to play, which compounds the fact that many families (and social constructs) discourage women to participate in sports. That is an old world view which I have absolutely no wish in taking part in.

Please excuse the trollishnish of this reply as I know I am about to offend some folks.

The Cal softball team is amazing as are many of the Bay Area college softball teams. In softball and baseball, fielding, base running and intellect of the game (situational hitting, how to tag up and what not) are basically the same. That being said, Park baseball is really a glorified softball game with a smaller ball (I not dissing, I love playing wth the group). I remember watching the women practice softball at Curt Flood a few weeks ago and I must say, all things being equal... they would have kicked our ass had we played them. Having played basketball against REAL woman players and batted against woman fast pitch softballers... I MUST offer respect. Often times they could hold their own.

I hope I haven't lost my Al Bundy N.O. M.A.'A.M. membership with this post.

Antmo makes a good point, that our non-live games are similar to softball played with a baseball. Overhand pitching makes little difference when we pitch so slow.
For those who are bothered by this thought (and I don't think I'm one of them) we could push for more live games. The problem with that has been the inaccurate pitching, but we have yet to see what difference a static home plate ump will make. Maybe it will go well, and we'll want to do more live games as a result. Problem is, there are a few of us who prefer the non-live games and may stop coming if we shift away from them. That said it seems Ahmer, Andrew and Brian only show when there is a live game scheduled, and there might be others.
I personally think turnout would be pretty good if we switched to more live games, provided we established that walks could be cut back. If a static home plate ump doesn't help that much, then we should look at the many other ideas for handling walks.

My post wasn't a rant against our slow pitched games in case it was construed that way... I like them... I was just sticking up for the women.

tallguy wrote:we could push for more live games.

without even reading the rest of the post yet, I have to say right off the bat that this isn't going to happen. Ok, now back to your post.

The Live games are a novelty in our league, and will never be the norm. If people want live games, that's that formal leagues are for. No offense Brian, Ahmer, Andrew.

And by the way, guest, who the hell are you?

And, Peter, I wonder if you were around back in the days when we tried to let girls play. We even had some very athletic girls come and play... it didn't work that well.

But, anyway, I don't really care much about this. My post was just about how I put up a post elsewhere to increase turnout. And check this: If I had listed our games as co-ed in the post, it would have REDUCED turnout. Yeah, maybe a girl would've shown up, but several guys would NOT come after seeing it was "co-ed". The bigger picture outweighs the social justice angle in this case.

Word, Scott.

(As usual)