Re: ?Computerworld? article

--- Jay Maynard <jmaynard@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 08:41:59AM -0700, G Armour wrote:
> > Personally, the idea of playing baseball in cement buildings, like
> > they do in Minnesota (the Metrodome), is appalling.
> 
> Hmph.
> 
> I'm no fan of the Metrodome, but I grew up watching baseball in the
> Astrodome. Baseball would not be playable in Houston were it not for the
> domed stadium. (I'm not wild about Enron Field^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMinute
> Maid
> Park, because it feels like a warehouse to me, but it's still much
> better
> than an open air stadium there. Can you imagine a game on a 105-degree
> summer afternoon? ...not to mention the mosquitoes.)
> 
> Besides, I happen to like turf that doesn't introduce weirdnesses into
> the game. Artifical turf lets the players' natural skills shine through.

Jay, nothing personal here, but there are some places on this earth were
baseball is just not meant to be played.  <g>

Inside a closed-roof building isn't the ideal from my POV, but the killer
is that it necessitates artificial turf.  (Maybe not for long, as I
remember Michigan State University installed a hybrid turf in the Pontiac
Silverdome several years back for an international soccer competition -
forget which.)

If my implied opinion of artificial turf is unclear, let me clarify: 
Artificial turf sucks.  Any surface which causes a baseball to bounce like
a super-ball should be banned.  Somehow baseball thrived for seventy years
without it.  IMO, a player's natural skills shine when they prove that
they can read the playing surface.  It helps to have groundskeepers who
know what they're doing.  Kind of the same way in bowling, in which you
see a lot of bowling alleys going to an artificial surface (an advanced
formica).  You're pretty much guaranteed a consistent surface across the
house, versus the wood lanes where you need to be able to read the track
area better and every lane has its own special quirks.  I score better on
artificial (and so do most advanced bowlers), but there's more of a
challenge on the wood surface, and that helps separate the men from the
boys, so to speak.

My, what was the original Computerworld article about?  Cricket? 
Secession from the British Empire?  I forgot.

GA

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