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Assuming the Bruins make it through it's going to be interesting seeing Chara and Pacioretty playing against each other again.

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Yeah I've been watching the games, the Sharks seems to be doing well but even if they manage to win this game they'll still choke later on.

Well shit

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Yeah, shit. :P


I had a feeling this would happen ever since the Kings won the first of their games.
Still, I'm more impressed by the Kings than I am upset at the Sharks.

 

Maybe I should stop rooting for my favorite teams, both of them were ousted in the first round of the playoffs and whenever I've watched them play they seem to lose :P

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...or very embarrassing if you are a Habs fan. Both games they had a 3-1 lead and lost it.

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Urg today is just tone of the most heartbreaking days i've had as a sports fan 

 

I'm a Liverpool fan (those of you who follow the premier league already know where this is going) and after a glorious season where we looked like we might be able to grab a fairy tale title everything is in tatters. Not only that, this year was the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, a event where 96 fans lost their lives (including the cousin of our current captain), and which was initially blamed on the fans (although subsequent evidence strongly suggests it was the polices fault.

 

It just felt fated, like here was the story that would prove sport could still be the supremely uplifting drama, but now its turned to ash.

 

I was watching the game with my dad (footballer/soccer is probably our big father son thing) and i could just feel the despair in the room after we surrendered a 3-0 lead any realistic chance of the title with it.

I'm not sure about my fellow readers but my sports team affiliation is something deeply ingrained from childhood. So watching my team play isn't just about wanting them to win its about wanting them to win so i can celebrate with my dad like we did when i was a kid.

 

in short, today was the worst.

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Hey Cody, sorry to hear about the worst of days. I hope it's looking a little better in retrospect. To come so close to the title is still a staggering achievement. Don't let go of that.

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I'm not sure how many baseball fans are on here, but I was wondering if anyone had used the MLB.tv subscription service. I'm a Brewers fan, and now that they are having a halfway decent season, I want to watch some games. Unfortunately, they never air where I live. Is the service worth the money? Does it go on sale at all? I sort of wish there was a lower tier of the service that let you just watch one team's games rather than everything. 

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It depends on how much of a baseball fan you are.

 

If you want to watch a game here or there, then you're not going to be well served by getting mlb.tv. There are...ways...in which you can watch a game here or there online, albeit in low quality.

 

But let's say you love baseball. Well, in this case, mlb.tv is a great thing because it allows you to watch every game, both home and away, in HD. This is pretty neat. Also, the premium service comes with the app, which is really top notch. (My favorite thing about the app is being able to hear the home and away radio broadcast of every game, because instead of going to commercials, they'll just go to crowd noise from the game, which is something I wish that I could have as a like, hour long mp3. Just baseball crowd noise. People cheering, an organ every once in a while, maybe some far-away pop tunes.) 

 

I don't know if it goes on sale, ever, although I haven't paid too much attention to this. If you're someone who wants to watch the Brewers play from anywhere, then do it, since it's pretty neat to be able to just watch baseball when you want to, and the season is long enough to perhaps justify spending ~$100 on this. 

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Urg today is just tone of the most heartbreaking days i've had as a sports fan 

 

I'm a Liverpool fan (those of you who follow the premier league already know where this is going) and after a glorious season where we looked like we might be able to grab a fairy tale title everything is in tatters. Not only that, this year was the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, a event where 96 fans lost their lives (including the cousin of our current captain), and which was initially blamed on the fans (although subsequent evidence strongly suggests it was the polices fault.

 

It just felt fated, like here was the story that would prove sport could still be the supremely uplifting drama, but now its turned to ash.

 

I was watching the game with my dad (footballer/soccer is probably our big father son thing) and i could just feel the despair in the room after we surrendered a 3-0 lead any realistic chance of the title with it.

I'm not sure about my fellow readers but my sports team affiliation is something deeply ingrained from childhood. So watching my team play isn't just about wanting them to win its about wanting them to win so i can celebrate with my dad like we did when i was a kid.

 

in short, today was the worst.

Watching Suarez cry was rough, and I don't like Suarez. 

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I'm not sure how many baseball fans are on here, but I was wondering if anyone had used the MLB.tv subscription service. I'm a Brewers fan, and now that they are having a halfway decent season, I want to watch some games. Unfortunately, they never air where I live. Is the service worth the money? Does it go on sale at all? I sort of wish there was a lower tier of the service that let you just watch one team's games rather than everything. 

 

I've had MLB.tv for 3-4 years now and it's awesome. The blackouts due to being in-market suck, but it sounds like that's not an issue for you. They will pro-rate the price throughout the season as they go. You'll still be paying "full price" for the time left, but if you jumped in in August you aren't paying the price you pay in March.

 

It also turns out that you can have up to 5 IP addresses logged in per account, so I've paid $25 to share it with 4 other people. Are you a Something Awful forum member? There's an active thread for people looking to put together groups that I can point you towards if you are.

 

You can fall asleep to the wonderful tones of Vin Scully.

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I've got a shared MLB account that is great when the wife doesn't want to endure another baseball game. It would be invaluable if I was out of market

On the hockey front pretty exciting how the series have panned out. Should be a very exciting Stanley Cup regardless if Chicago makes it in. Lots of speed on all 4 teams left

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Can't say I'm a huge hockey or baseball fan but I do support the Pirates and Pens when they play.  Cutting the cord last hear has mostly snuffed out my sports watching but I still follow most leagues in podcasts and online daily.  American football remains my favorite but I have a number of soccer teams (Spurs, Chi Fire, local USL Pro team) and am finally getting around to learning the rules of cricket because sure why not.

Anyways, go Steelers and Penn State I suppose.

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Yeah I'm a cord cutter as well and the Braves recently signed a deal to put all their games on Fox Sports South. They currently broadcast some percent on a local OTA station, but when that's gone I'll just never get to watch any games. Not that I'll be missing much when they struggle to score even two runs in a game...

 

I looked into the rules of cricket once and it just struck me as a dumbed down/boring version of baseball. YEAH I WENT THERE.

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It seems very much like baseball although I wouldn't use dumbed down or boring to describe it.  Maybe just different.  Baseball is very constrained, hit the ball in this triangular area and advance your runners.  If you are a particularly skilled hitter you might be able to drag on an out, fouling many times regardless of the final outcome.

 

Cricket with what is essentially rotating pitchers and 360 degrees of field where the ball can be in play lends to much more creativity.  I also really like the idea that a batsmen has to pick and choose where he attacks the ball.  I've only seen the shortened version T20 but guarding your wicket with less aggressive strokes versus swinging for the fences presents a very interesting mental aspect.  Not to mention every once in a while a guy will just let the ball glance his bat, it goes away from the catcher and lazily rolls to the outer boundary, taking everyone by surprise and netting a nice 4 points.

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Haha yeah I know there's more to it than my glancing through the Wikipedia page will teach me, but it gives me enough knowledge to mess with my Indian coworkers and say cricket is just baseball with two bases, no balls and strikes, and games that last a week for some reason :)

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Ha, I really want to broach the subject of cricket with some of my coworkers in India since I've seen a handful of Indian Premier League games but the potential for it to come off as racist is too awful to bear.

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Nah, cricket is extremely popular in India. It's a cultural question. Just ask if any of them are fans. It'd be like them asking you what football's all about. It might be a bit stereotypical but it's not racist. Besides, how are you going to learn if you don't ask!

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The Blue Jays have won 8 games straight, the last two of which have been against the Rays, our nemesis. It's so nice to be excited about baseball again.

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3 games ahead is a good place to be.  Chicago is hanging tight 4-4.5 gb from detroit, not too bad for end of may, but their offense is abysmal some days

 

 

side note, one of the best playoff hockey games of the year just ended, going to #6

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Hah! The Habs are still in it! NY might be ahead but they still have a shot!

In non-hockey related points, I wanted to bring something up since cricket was mentioned above. Personally, I've found that for sports I didn't get a chance to play as a kid, the way I ended up learning their rules and how to play always came from video games (the ones that come to mind are Amercan Football and Golf). I might not have a totally deep understanding of the nuances or anything, but I know the basic rules and how a game works.

The thing with cricket, though, is I don't really see any games coming out about it. Maybe it's because I'm not looking hard enough, or maybe they just don't see releases here in North America, but I feel a few games of Virtual Cricket 3000 or something would be a great way to at least start learning.

Does anyone else have similar feelings on games teaching sports?

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Ucantalas I agree and think its shortsighted that many professional leagues have been fine with just a single annual game now being made.  As far as I'm aware there is only one MLB, NHL, and NFL licensed game.  I think profitability is made quite difficult due to how expensive that licensing is.  Just ten years ago I believe all three of those leagues had multiple games (All 2K made I think).

 

There was a completely broken Ashes cricket game this past year that Giant Bomb did a quick look of.  But as complete novices I think they were just checking it out since an official apology was made and the game removed from Steam.  

 

I can't point to any studies but anecdotal evidence has shown me that people who don't enjoy soccer will happily play Fifa games since they are relatively easy pick up and play.  They may get frustrated after an offside call ruins a scoring chance but during the next World Cup they'll see that happen, remember what it is and maybe get that much closer to becoming fans or respecting the game more than they otherwise would have.

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That Ashes game is hilarious because not only was it removed from Steam, they actually cancelled the game after it had been released. That Giant Bomb quick look is pretty funny. Don't expect to learn much about cricket though...

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I also really like the idea that a batsmen has to pick and choose where he attacks the ball.  I've only seen the shortened version T20 but guarding your wicket with less aggressive strokes versus swinging for the fences presents a very interesting mental aspect.

 

Well spotted! This is one of the key things about cricket, the tension between protecting your wicket and scoring runs. Obviously you'd play very differently in a 20 over game over a five day test match. I don't really want to compare it to baseball because I don't know enough about baseball, but I think the main thing that cricket has is options - the bowler can bowl at a much bigger area in terms of height and width. He can try and suck the batsman in to playing a shot he shouldn't be playing. Also the bounce can add another dimension, a top spinner can spin the ball two ways (or not at all), and fast bowlers can use seam and swing to further bamboozle the batsman. When it comes to the batsman, he has a bat with a flat surface so has much more control over the ball. Add the 360 degree field you mentioned and they can be extremely creative with their shots.

 

As for video games, I really love Cricket, but i've not really played any decent games. Not sure why that is. Maybe the amount of options available make it too technical? It's a tough balance between satisfying cricket nerds and casual players. Apparently the new Don Bradman game is meant to be decent though...

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