I miss the good 'ole days when...

...these boards where about BASEBALL!

*Helping each other
*Giving advice (good or bad)
*Old fashioned ballbusting about each other and not getting butthurt
*Just having fun with a game we all love!!

Take all the bullshit somewhere else!!

Let's play ball!!!

Tim

Amen Tim. I used to love it when people would share their teams and solicit honest opinions. Or maybe their team was struggling and they wanted help to figure out why.

There are a whole lot of things I miss about ATG and that is certainly one of them.

Rich

I agree with you Tim but the old days are never coming back. If you ask for help on these boards now you are bullied and derided for asking stupid questions. "What you don't know that!!!" Well if my team wasn't struggling and knew the answer I wouldn't ask. So I just stopped asking.

Ed

As the person who made the original post that led to the little political dustup yesterday, I want to apologize for bringing politics into the forum. I completely disengaged from social media four years ago to avoid precisely such things. I agree with the sentiment expressed here that we should be talking baseball and not politics. And, believe it or not, this is not a hostage apology made in order to maintain my SOM membership. I actually mean it!

I'm sorry.

Kevin A

"I agree with you Tim but the old days are never coming back. If you ask for help on these boards now you are bullied and derided for asking stupid questions. "What you don't know that!!!" Well if my team wasn't struggling and knew the answer I wouldn't ask. So I just stopped asking."

Agreed Ed however I would rather be derided and bullied on these boards for my terrible strat play than my political beliefs which have nothing to do with what we are doing here

Robert

Best way to ask for help is to to simply send a league message to someone who you believe knows what they are doing.

Regarding the tallguy747's now locked thread. Wasn't it all about baseball, given MLB's egregious entry into post modern politics to punish a state for seeking election reform? It may not be directly relevant to SOM's fantasy world of "be well and play well" but I guess we can't talk about real world issues regarding the state of major league baseball without offending vast swaths of people.

So many people have complained over the past nine years about the colorless, vanilla quality of these boards since TSN kicked SOM to the curb and have bemoaned the loss of the "gold old days". Just so we are clear, the good old days were full of controversy and spirited debates which ruffled a lot of feathers; sort of like the Wild West of ATG message boards. I was certainly a vocal participant in that culture and made some enemies but also a lot of friends.

SOM locking two threads last night is consistent with their vision for these boards but is highly antithetical to making the boards worth reading and participating in and emblematic of a highly polarized culture where silence equates with perceived safety.

yeah it was a hot thread topic- i do miss those--
thought we had a forum at one point designated to talk about politics - but as Druid says- it certainly is about baseball given that its MLB that we are talking about.

Anyway, most of us stopped really participating when the move happened bc they were censoring criticism of SoM entirely bc they messed up the move so badly.

One thing they have consistently failed to realize is that once something is gone it doesn't just come back on its own most of the time unless you are really really lucky.

And every response on this thread is spot on. And that doesn't have to mean they are all in lock step.

Tim, Rich, Ed, Kevin, Robert, Bruce, Salty--cheers

The Last Druid said:

So many people have complained over the past nine years about the colorless, vanilla quality of these boards since TSN kicked SOM to the curb and have bemoaned the loss of the "gold old days". Just so we are clear, the good old days were full of controversy and spirited debates which ruffled a lot of feathers; sort of like the Wild West of ATG message boards. I was certainly a vocal participant in that culture and made some enemies but also a lot of friends.

Hey, look! We found something we agree on. As Mel Allen would say "How about that!" The boards were much more colorful and spirited back then. And the members respected and trusted each other, even when they were having it out.

I'm sure some of y'all remember the TSN Forums had The Bullpen Page(I think that's what it was called), which was a free for all anything-goes page for discussions of, well, pretty much anything. I never posted on there, but it was interesting to go read some of those threads!