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Devilsadvocate, et al:
Are you not entertaining the age-old question of is today better than yesterday? Taking it a step further, will tomorrow be better than today? Seems to me that you're dealing with the what-ifs and the coulda-shoulda-woulda principle. It reminds me of all those arguments that compare today's athletes with those of another era. Each person has their own opinion, and we've all heard the story ... "opinions are like ***-----, we've all got one and we're all entitled to one."
On to the point I think you're making. Is it easier to succeed today in this gendre than it was a decade or two ago? I somewhat agree, in that the access to information is more readily available in todays world. If one can acquire the information necessary to learn about his or her endeavors more easily, then they probably can develope and advance in a shorter period of time.
Regarding the value of internet forums, like anything else they can be productive or counter-productive. I'm reminded of the statement made about "why are there so many bad writers? Answer: Because there are so many people who can't read."
I find the information posted here and at other locations interesting, entertaining, informative, provocative, insulting and sometimes totally useless and a waste of time. One must be able to ferret through the bad sometimes in order to find something of value and substance. I personally enjoy the discussions, as I'm sure many of you do, in order to get a varied look from many diferent angles on any given subject.
"It takes all kinds of schooling to adapt oneself to my type of fooling" wrote Robert Frost. In this regard I would say that there are a great number of ways to develope good skills and rule knowloedge. The internet is one of those places. Another way / place, which was not mentioned in this thread, is by going to the ball park to observe good umpires doing their work in real time. I know that when I first entered this 'dark side' of baseball, I went to Stanford's sunken diamond,as well as other venues, and just watched the umpires work. Being a formere ball player it took me several innings to focus my eyes on the umps and not the ball. I believe this is one area that a great number of umps fail to take advantage and witness first hand. Watch the good umps, again and again and again.
The more time and hard work that an individual puts into learning their craft, the quicker they will grow in knowledge and ability. When that happens then a number of others will say " Hey, he's good, can I work with him?"
ED
[Edited by etbaseball on Feb 14th, 2002 at 01:45 AM]
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