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> Everyone who stays for at least 7 innings is staggering out, drunk as a skunk. Whether I ride the train home or I get on the roads, I'm positively surrounded by drunk zombie people. Woe betide us if the home team didn't win.

Good Lord, what games have you been going to? I see a couple MLB games live every year and a few minor league games. I haven't seen anything like what you're describing. That doesn't mean there are no drunks or obnoxious fans, but that's the risk of doing something in public. The last game I saw live was San Francisco at Milwaukee in June. Giants won 1-0, and the home team crowd was fine. And I mean the Brewers fans like their beer, but in no way was it a zombie apocalypse. Last game I saw in Oracle Park last year was also fine. Even Boston a few years ago, which definitely has more of a college town vibe than SF or Milwaukee, was hardly zombie land.

I'll also say that AAA ball is typically awesome. The games are much cheaper than the big leagues, you get to see some big league talent rehabbing from time to time and see the occasional prospect who gets called up. They also tend to be very family friendly.

> Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players, and good clean fun. But it seems that activists and jerks set out to ruin the experience for people like me. I'm not having it. I'd have way more fun at a punk rock women's roller derby bout.

I don't know about that. Baseball has a certain level of honor, sometimes an excessive amount e.g. some of the "code" that has started to fade away the last decade or so. It also invented the concept of a nearly all-powerful commissioner, which was created specifically because players threw a World Series for a payout. It's a wonderful game, a thinking person's game, but it's always been quintessentially American for both good and ill ever since it scaled nationwide during the Civil War.

> Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players, and good clean fun.

I've been a baseball fan for years, and I've always hated that attitude. Bob Costas and other purists always talk about the "sanctity of the game" - it's a bunch of BS. First of all the game was never the "pure" or "holy" activity that people make it out to be. The history of the game is full of racism, sexism, drugs, womanizing, greed and so on. Not trying to be a hater, just telling facts. The game's purists like to look at history with rose colored glasses.

And as far as the fans, I wish the fans would be more passionate about the game. I've been to games in other countries - Mexico, Taiwan, Japan, and it's awesome. I'd rather have rowdy fans than people falling asleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FDrcWTSczs . I mean, come on, that's a Yankees/Red Sox game, one of the biggest rivalries in sports, and the dude is asleep?! No thanks. Give me the screamers and the drunks.

> Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players

Wait, when was this?

I mean, Babe Ruth was infamous for drinking and womanizing.

Not sure I agree with the "respectable players" part either, but for "Baseball has been a game of moral fiber" that could be in the sense that the game has a "moral" thread (one of character) running through it. There are "unwritten" rules to the game that players and fans simply follow but are free not too, if not they get corrected for violations the same way a culture/society corrects members who fall afoul of acceptable moral character or unwritten rules.

Example: guy hits homerun adding to his teams 5 point lead and stands in the batters box admiring his hit before taking a slow excited jog around the bases -- thats just `rubbing it in` and unbecoming. No one who has played the game or watches regularly will blink an eye when his teammate comes up to bat and gets drilled with the baseball -- including the guy hit. There wont be a fight, he wont yell or charge at the pitcher, he will take his base and he'll take care of it in the locker room with the guy that showed up the badly losing teams pitcher.

For an example of a fan violating this see Steve Bartman[0] an especially egregious violation of "unwritten" rules due to the games importance and its impact on the home team while being a home fan

Other sports, this may lead to brawls or petty snipping in the media and resentment which spilled over to fans. Back when the Radiers were in Oakland and Chargers in san diego you'd want nothing to do with that unless you were looking for a fight. Same with teams in the other football sport.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bartman_incident

There have been plenty of bench clearing brawls in baseball for any number of silly reasons. It's no more moral a sport than any other.

> No one who has played the game or watches regularly will blink an eye when his teammate comes up to bat and gets drilled with the baseball -- including the guy hit.

Committing violence against an innocent bystander, in return for mere nonviolent disrespect, is the complete opposite of morality.

> There wont be a fight, he wont yell or charge at the pitcher,

I'm not sure we're watching the same game. ;-)

> against an innocent bystander ... is the complete opposite of morality

It's not an innocent bystander, it's against the team to tell the team to check their member. It's not the philosophical understanding of "morality" it's the practiced version. And the "morality" part is not the message telling the other group to check it's out of line member, it's that there is a thread of character or "morality" in the first place to allow a team (or society) to keep order from within to avoid wider violence/incidents that spill over into adjacent populations and last far longer as seen in other sports

> I'm not sure we're watching the same game

If a pitcher is frustrated at losing and beans a guy for no other apparent reason, then either the batter will charge the pitcher or the star player on the pitchers team will get drilled when he comes up to bat and that'll be the end of it. That what i mean with the "unwritten" rules, to the casual observer it just looks like typical fighting or payback for some random thing like other sports, but there is a "gentleman's code" to it

> It's not an innocent bystander, it's against the team

But "the team" doesn't get hit. One guy gets hit.

> It's not the philosophical understanding of "morality" it's the practiced version.

It's practiced violence.

> to avoid wider violence

Eye for an eye never ends. The way to avoid violence is to never start it.

> there is a "gentleman's code" to it

No, it's a caveman code for brutes. Gentlemen use words to settle their disagreements, not fastballs.

Cherry picking sections of sentences and ignoring (or maybe simply not understanding) the context to pick an argument is against the spirt of HN. Whatever your argument is being based on, it is in a completely different lane than my posts and we are unlikely to not continue talking past one another. Take care.

My argument is simple: a pitcher throwing a baseball at a batter with the intention to hit the batter is unethical, dangerous, and counterproductive.

It's not to be admired. It's an idiotic tradition that should end.

Moreover, the kind of frontier justice promoted here should absolutely not be implemented in society at large, as implied by your first reply to me. I would certainly not put athletes in charge of policing morals (not that our current crop of unathletic billionaires is any better).