Why I Prefer Baseball

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From The Wall Street Journal:

We’ve arrived at a moment when some choices have to be made. After a lifetime watching America’s three main professional sports—baseball, football and basketball—I’ve decided I prefer baseball.

Starting Tuesday, I’ll exclusively devote what’s left of my sports-viewing budget to the Major League Baseball playoffs. And not just in the hope that my hometown Cleveland Indians will overcome last year’s heartbreaking loss for the ages to the Chicago Cubs.

Set to one side that the reason most Americans can sing the words to their national anthem is that for generations, every American attending a professional baseball game has stood to look at the flag while someone sings “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Many Americans think the last words of the national anthem are “Play ball!”

Baseball is about baseball. The NFL and NBA seem to be about more things than I can process—some of them political, some of them personal.

Baseball has an informal code of on-field conduct, which has held for a hundred years. The NFL doesn’t seem to have an enforceable code of anything.

. . . .

From Babe Ruth 90 years ago to Aaron Judge now, when you hit a home run, you run around the bases and into the dugout. That’s it. No end-zone antics that suggest the sport itself takes a back seat to a personality.

After the Yankees’ Mr. Judge hit his 50th home run this week, a record for a rookie, his teammates had to force him out of the dugout to wave to the cheering crowd.

. . . .

Sportswriters sometimes use the phrase “lunch bucket” about a player who is mainly interested in doing his job well without drawing attention to himself. Other than someone like Kawhi Leonard of the San Antonio Spurs, you don’t see too many stars in the NFL or NBA described as lunch-bucket guys anymore.

Most future stars of basketball and football are identified while they’re in high school. They often play in special leagues and receive constant visits from coaches at Division I universities.

Once inside the university, these players live and practice in gold-plated facilities. They play on national TV and are talked about nonstop by analysts and the political commentators at ESPN. They get famous young. (Though let it be said, 90% of the non-sports NFL and NBA news was made by maybe 10% of the players, until now.)

The road up in baseball is different. Promising teenagers go from high school into baseball’s minor leagues. They play for teams in places like Delmarva, Clinton and Greenville. They travel by bus and play before crowds not much bigger than what they had in Little League. They rise from A ball to AA (say, the Trenton Thunder) then AAA teams, which are in places most people have heard of, like Toledo, Fresno or El Paso.

Years spent competing and surviving against other skilled players teaches them they have to learn to be a member of a team before anyone calls them a star.

Some might say baseball isn’t political because so many players are from Latin America. But maybe the Latin players are mostly bemused at what the U.S. considers social problems, compared with escaping from Cuba across shark-infested waters or getting out of a dirt-road slum in Nicaragua or the Dominican Republic.

There is an expression in sports: Don’t leave it in the locker room. It means you are supposed to save your best performance for the game. With baseball, that’s still what you get.

We live in a highly polarized country. If people want their sport and its performers to be an affirmation of their politics, feel free. I don’t.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal

To stay in Mrs. PG’s good graces, PG should note that The Chicago Cubs clinched a spot in baseball’s post-season competition yesterday.

Even regular visitors to TPV who are not baseball fans will likely still remember the Cubs won the World Series last year, after a 108 year drought. See here, here and here.

Since Mrs. PG is a Cubs fan, she knows that two World Series wins in a row are probably more than she should expect. Besides, staying faithful through long droughts of post-season success are what develop the unflinching and stoic character for which Cubs fans are known.

Too much success in a short period of time might undermine Chicago’s character and transform its citizens into Los Angeles Dodgers or New York Yankees fans. A worse fate cannot be imagined. Chicago would be ruined.

20 thoughts on “Why I Prefer Baseball”

  1. I have a hard time watching baseball. I watched a bit of the World Series last year since a nearby windy city had a team playing. The pitchers took forever to throw the ball, and half the time they threw it to the first baseman instead. Can they add some defensive linemen to the game to charge the mound and make the pitchers get rid of the ball faster? Or something to liven it up a bit?

    I also have a hard time watching hockey. I can follow the puck for so long before my eyes get tired, and then I turn away for just a few moments… only to hear a siren blare that one of teams just scored.

    Football is basically the only sport that matches my attention span to the action.

  2. Too much success in a short period of time might undermine Chicago’s character and transform its citizens into Los Angeles Dodgers or New York Yankees fans. A worse fate cannot be imagined. Chicago would be ruined.

    Speaking as a Yankees fan who stopped going to baseball games because her fellow Yankees fans started booing the home team whenever they didn’t play perfectly–and also started shouting “Kill the umpire”–I agree with you. Completely.

    And let me note that I was in the expensive seats BEHIND HOME PLATE for the game that made me decide never to set foot in the stadium again.

    • Yeah, the obnoxious Yankees fans have gotten way out of control. And we won’t even talk about the new stadium.

      Btw, for any Cubs fans who like urban fantasy, Jim Butcher’s story about Harry Dresden investigating the Cubs’ curse is worth the read.

  3. I somehow avoided developing into a sportsball fan (for pretty much any value of “sportsball”). But for those of you who enjoy various sports — enjoy whichever sport floats your boat!

  4. I’ve noticed that in the PGA very few players are taking the knee. Same with the skateboarding championships.

    More concerning than the knee, to our esteemed leaders, is the head. The confluence of CTE and tackle football are the elephant in the room. There is no way the brain can be protected from the skull–the mechanism of concussive brain injuries. It is time the NFL owned up to this and made it at least an player-ejectable offense for any play leading with the head. I’m sick of seeing defensive backs attack receivers helmet-to-helmet. They should be ejected and fined for this, period.

  5. It’s my sincerest prayer that Mrs. PG experiences the euphoria that I did when the Toronto Blue Jays repeated in the 90’s (I still have a commemorative sweatshirt from their first win and wear it often; usually when I ski).

    Having grown up in The Bronx, the Yankees during their last dynasty was a thrill.

    Note: crossing your fingers properly is to have your index finger cover your middle finger; it works every time. Guaranteed.
    Trust me.
    🙂

  6. The difference between baseball and the other balls is the amount of knowledge and concentration needed to enjoy baseball. If the season starts right, I get engrossed and listen to several games a week keeping in my head the stats and player quirks that make baseball so fascinating. But if I lose interest and quit listening, I end up barely paying attention after the All-Star break.

    If I can’t be at the ball park, I prefer listening to baseball games on the radio to watching them on television. Since the closest major league team is a couple hours away, I prefer local AA ball.

    Football or basketball, I can watch and enjoy for a few minutes, but I seldom am drawn into a game. I went to a rural high school where everyone played everything, so I know the games fairly well, but only baseball satisfies my taste for complexity and drama.

    Everyone is different.

  7. I agree wholeheartedly about devoting the rest of my sports viewing time towards baseball. I recently decided, that after about 20+ years of following the NE Patriots, I will boycott the rest of the season. I watch sports (save the NBA & NHL) to escape the realties of life for a few hours, and I dislike having the realities of life injected into the NFL’s version of 1984, so even though I’m a NY Mets fan (insert insult here), I will root for Cleveland to win the Series and for Washington to get bounced in the 1st round.

  8. It’s a good thing you have a baseball wife rather than a baseball widow – less chance of being shot down when there’s a game on. 😉

    Unlike the other ball games there’s no set time, they play until someone wins.

    An ‘inning’ can be all of six pitches – or dozens (too long ago for my excuse for a memory, but I do remember a game where all nine of the players were up to bat in one inning, and if I remember right most of them went to bat a second time that inning. Another was a batter that fouled away at least a dozen pitches until he got a piece of one he liked for a home run.)

    And then it’s the end of the ninth with a tied score and they go into extra innings. I remember checking on my dad because his TV was still going way past midnight; it was a night game and the home team had tied things up in the ninth – and there were ten more innings before somebody scored.

    Those other games are okay if you need to be somewhere in a few hours, but baseball takes as long as it takes.

    Too lazy to look up the quote, but only three things can happen in baseball; you can win, you can lose, or it can rain.

  9. Baseball.

    The only sport where if absolutely nothing happens its called a “perfect game”.

    Only golf is slower, but at least there’s a few dozen guys playing at once.

    The only sport that’s worse than both of those put together has to be cricket. I got stuck in a place (thanks army)for an extended time where there was nothing to watch sports-wise but cricket. I watched for a week and still have no idea how its played.

    Really made me miss football.

      • I am having fond flashbacks of teasing my boss for his love of watching curling.

        “So you watched a game? On purpose?”

        The only sports that sound vaguely like something I’d watch is Mixed Martial Arts and fencing. But those happen under controlled conditions. I want to see some “Jackie Channing” where like Jackie Chan, they use any random object that comes to hand to thrash their opponent.

        • Curling is awesome. And it’s one of the few sports where you think, “I could do that,” and you’re not wrong. Also one of the few sports where men and women can compete on an even playing field. Also, you are allowed to drink alcohol while playing.

          It broke my heart when they ran curling championships just down the road from me, and I had to work that weekend.

  10. If people want their sport and its performers to be an affirmation of their politics, feel free. I don’t.

    This weekend I watched the 2016 game between the AFA Falcons and the USMA Black Knights. Arion Worthman’s first game as the Falcons’ starting QB. Jalen Robinette caught three passes for big yardage and became Air Force’s all-time leading receiver for yardage. Air Force won 31-12 and took the CIC Trophy.

    And you know what?

    I enjoyed that more than any NFL game available. Maybe this weekend I will watch the 2016 game between Navy and Air Force. Or maybe Navy and Notre Dame. Maybe both.

    When a pro player kneels during the national anthem, I see disrespect. When the NFL ignores its own rule that requires a player stand for the national anthem, I see disrespect. What are you protesting? Racial inequality? Police brutality? The lack of WIFI in your kitchen? You have not made it clear. What you have made clear is that your protest trumps my pleasure.

    BTW if you demand an end to inequality, we shall accommodate you. Effective immediately every NFL team will have seven black players, not more, not fewer. One player must be East Asian; we will hold a lottery so that each team will know if its East Asian player will be Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or Vietnamese. Maybe we should include Filipinos, Cambodians, Laotians, and Thai in that group. We will deal with the South Asians — Indian, Bangaladeshi, Malay, and Indonesian — separately. Then the Near East Asians. I suppose the two Texas teams and the two Los Angeles teams and the Miami Dolphins need a higher allotment of Hispanic players than the others; say, ten or eleven players of Hispanic descent for these teams versus four each for the others.

    To get the proportions right, each team must have one Jew and one Muslim. Maybe a Hindu. And a Buddhist. Looks to me like thirteen Roman Catholics and maybe twice that many Protestants. Fill out the remaining positions with atheists and agnostics.

    Oh, and twenty-seven of the players must be women.

    He who loves the law shall get his fill of it.

    Winter is coming.

  11. I switched to wrestling awhile back after other sports became too fake. At least WWE is a TV drama about wrestling, and knows it. The NFL has all the same false narratives and drama, but also silly politics. And the worst part? People treat that stuff like it’s all real.

    Watch wrestling for a few months and you’ll start to see the false narratives in all sports. Politics and media too. It’s all over.

    If you need something more competitive you aren’t thinking of wrestling in the right light. It is a competition, but the competition is to put on the best spectacle. If you are the most popular, either as a good guy or villain, you’ll end up in the main event.

    From that perspective wrestling is a very pure competition. But I watch for the drama. 🙂

  12. I would rather watch paint dry than watch baseball on TV (not that the NBA and NFL are any better) thanks to the countless commercial breaks and the annoying commentary.

    Pack the kids up and go to Fenway Park for a live game? I’m in. It’s a whole different world. I’m an old Mets fan (still have my Doc Gooden glove that my 10 year old uses in little league) and my youngest is a Cubs fan (from before that was cool), but baseball is the kind of live sport I can enjoy even if it’s the Sox and the Royals or 2 other teams I don;t personally care about.

    I’ll have to take everyone’s word for it on cricket 🙂

    • Absolutely. More lunch-bucket players in the NHL than the other three major North American sports leagues combined. Plus, more real diversity in terms of % non-North American players. And a great atmosphere live–eighteen minutes of TV timeouts for an entire game, instead of that many minutes in one quarter of an NFL game.

      • I went to a lower level game (match?), not televised I don’t think. They just played the game. Seemed like there was one dude on each team who was the designated fight guy. So almost on cue, right off the bat they started fighting. Our guy won, which was cool.

        Then they rematched after halftime (is there halftime?), and fought again. It was more of a draw that time.

        Since I don’t know hockey it didnt’ matter to me who the players were or whatever. It was a fantastic show.

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