The Sports Thread

They do, indeed, have pro-leagues in South America. Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't mean they don't exist. Whenever you hear of major league players playing "Winter Ball", that's referring to pro-leagues that play down in South America and the Carribbean during MLB off season.

The South American pro-leagues are probably on par with the independent leagues here in the U.S. Playing "pro ball" does not mean that a guy is being paid a shit load of money. I used to know a guy who pitched for the Johnstown Johnnies of the Frontier League and when I knew him he was tending bar at Uno's. Guy was a pro baseball player, just not a Major Leaguer.

PS- Yankees record in games I have attended this season is now 12-3.
 
The NFL rules!!

The Chargers look pretty good. Tough to judge for sure, but they looked good (not perfect) against the Rams. Too many penalties. They have a lot of quality depth in a lot of positions. Sadly a new running back on the third string (Tyronne Gross) hurt his knee. Hopfully it's not bad.
 
They do, indeed, have pro-leagues in South America. Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't mean they don't exist. Whenever you hear of major league players playing "Winter Ball", that's referring to pro-leagues that play down in South America and the Carribbean during MLB off season.

The South American pro-leagues are probably on par with the independent leagues here in the U.S. Playing "pro ball" does not mean that a guy is being paid a shit load of money. I used to know a guy who pitched for the Johnstown Johnnies of the Frontier League and when I knew him he was tending bar at Uno's. Guy was a pro baseball player, just not a Major Leaguer.

PS- Yankees record in games I have attended this season is now 12-3.
But none of these leagues compete with MLB. This is what I was getting at. No talented player would choose to play in LA/SA leagues at the expense of playing in the majors. It sounded like Zoidberg was wondering if any of the great Latin players were playing in their home country. Winter ball is for AA or AAA players. Clearly the top-tier players do not play winter ball in Mexico or whatever.
 
But none of these leagues compete with MLB. This is what I was getting at. No talented player would choose to play in LA/SA leagues at the expense of playing in the majors. It sounded like Zoidberg was wondering if any of the great Latin players were playing in their home country. Winter ball is for AA or AAA players. Clearly the top-tier players do not play winter ball in Mexico or whatever.

Ah, alright. I think some of the very young MLB players might play winterball and I think I remember hearing that Miguel Tejada still plays, but yeah it doesn't make much sense for MLB players to do it.

And if there were any really great players down there, I'm sure we'd have heard of them, so I suppose you're right in that also.
 
You know, I'm getting a little tired of having to school people on this. You may just be trying to start shit anyway, but I guess I'll bite: A third of the players in Major League Baseball are born outside of America. A third. Consider that the same goes for each of the six or seven minor league affiliate teams for each major league team, and the who-know's-how-many independent league teams.

Mostly we're talking about players from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Puerto Rico, as well as some from Panama, Mexico and Cuba. The sport is absolutley huge in those countries. So much that most major league teams have opened up "baseball academies" and put minor league affiliate teams all of Latin America because there are so many kids who want to play, and they might as well learn from MLB instead of one of the many pro-leagues down there. Hell, in Cuba it's practically the law to watch or play baseball. They like the sport more than we do.

You mentioned that it's popular in Japan (why you mentioned Japan and not all those Latin American countries, I don't know. Shit it seems like every other player in the league is named Martinez or Cabrera or Lopez or something). Yeah, the Japanese League is there, and there are growing programs in Korea, Taiwan and China. Oh, and I'll just stick this one in this paragraph, but there are quite a few Canadians who play, too.

There was an event called the "World Baseball Classic" held for the first time a few years ago, and there were teams from all of the places I mentioned (The Dominican team was pretty much a walking All-Star team) as well as South Africa, The Netherlands, Australia and Italy. Granted, all of those teams were a joke but damn it they were there.

Is this meant to be important or something?
 
Not really. I pointed out that it's not a major sport in the overwhelming majority of countries. Just because a few South American countries are into it doesn't falsify this.
 
Not really. I pointed out that it's not a major sport in the overwhelming majority of countries. Just because a few South American countries are into it doesn't falsify this.

Sorry to do this to you again, but you just keep wanting to be wrong. This is what you said:

Oh, and no one outside your shitty country cares about baseball either. Well, except the Japs who are like a crazy version of Americans anyway.

And I then went and smashed the shit out of that little gem like it was a hanging curveball. Nice attempt at back-pedaling, though.