Yes, the exploits of the 1173 Sox still enthrall to this day.
Well, as of last night it’s over until next spring. Why are you complaining NOW? You should be happy.
Or you could, ya know, just not watch.
34 minutes between batters.
42 minutes between innings/commercial time.
An hour and 15 minutes of batters stepping in and out of the box, spitting, unstrapping and re-strapping his gloves, straightening out his uniform, scratching his balls, spitting some more…
You gotta savor the details.
Hope your bag of nuts is big. Pitchers and catchers don’t report for another 104 days.
Baseball has about 15 minutes worth of action per game. There has not been 15 minutes of action in the entire history of golf.
It depends on what you call “action.” Especially with men on base, there’s a lot going on between actual pitches. As was said earlier, it helps if you understand the subtleties of the game.
“[Baseball] is like the music I love: slow, boring, and beautiful in its details.”
This (and the somewhat related item 1) are what make baseball a great sport. Each team has the same number of opportunities to win. You can’t sit on the ball and try to run out the clock. As someone said sometime on TV, you have to put the ball over the plate and give the other team their chance to come back in order to win (or at least convince the batters that the ball is over the plate).
There’s plenty more to the game also. But I can’t argue that a game can be boring, I’d rather go to Pittsburgh and watch the bridges rust than sit through a pitcher’s duel.
Baseball is a game about tension, not action. So, while the time between batters sucks, and the time between innings…well actually I don’t mind the break between innings, it let’s me do other things while the game is on, the time spent stepping in and out of the box etc. is part of the game. Now, you might not like that part of the game, no problem, I don’t like all of it either and sometime do with they would hurry the hell up. But a plate appearance that goes 10 or 12 pitches because the pitcher got into a full count and the batter is fouling off that last strike over and over and over and takes forever, that’s one of the best things baseball has going. Without those pitches the resulting home run, or line drive, or strike out, wouldn’t be half as cool. If it ends with a pop up or a ground out it’s less good, but still not bad depending on context.
The building tension as the batter and pitcher battle over that last strike is freakin amazing if you like that sort of thing. Some people do. But that’s also the stuff that adds into the whole, “An hour and 15 minutes of batters stepping in and out of the box, spitting, unstrapping and re-strapping his gloves, straightening out his uniform, scratching his balls, spitting some more…” because the time in between those pitches during that plate appearance count as part of that action, which is what the WSJ didn’t get. That’s the game. The time when everyone is running around looking for something to do is just an end result of a much longer bit of play in.
Hey, I actually like baseball. I get it. But I can still recognize that it’s boring as shit.
Exactly.
Like baseball & soccer, golf is a [del]sport[/del] game nearly anyone can play. Doesn’t matter if you can play well, because they are engaging in their own way when you’re participating. Tedious as hell to watch though.
(American)Football, and yeah even rugby and Aussie football, are more fun for the average joe to watch rather than to play. It’s fun as hell to see fights and guys hurting each other, less so to actually be getting hurt. I can’t explain why I can’t watch hockey. Maybe violence for its own sake (with a sort of game thrown in) turns me off. And before anyone starts in on the NFL for being boring: 1) yup, and 2) it’s better understood as a strategy game performed by amazing athletes, and has become less a game of amazing athletes playing a physical game. You want the latter, watch rugby. Baseball is a game playable by guys with beer guts, and where failing 65% of the time still makes you a legendary success.
To the people bringing up soccer: I agree, which is why I mentioned it in my OP. Baseball is boring as fuck. Soccer is boring as fuck with the added element of being just completely stupid and without strategy or any interesting aspect at all.
One thing I completely forgot: Nothing matters in baseball! Last night was game six of the World Series, and even if the Red Sox lost 10-0 they still would have had another game to play. This makes last night less important than any NFL playoff game where the loser goes home. There are no second chances in the NFL.
Oh yeah, it totally can be. I almost never watch a baseball game without doing something else too, there is too much down time not to. It’s just that WSJ article bugged me because the way they chose to count action was missing out on what was actually interesting in the games.
I love 10 second attention span critics of soccer, they are so cute and dumb
Winning one game can be a fluke. Winning 4 out of 7 usually means you’re the better team. That’s not “second chances,” that’s a series.
You might want to have a doctor take a look at that.
I love football, but honestly one of the things that bugs me about football is that there is so much random chance in the game. It’s not about who the best team is, it’s about who had the best game that day. Baseball playoffs are a little bit like that too (don’t get me started) but a series gives you a lot more information about who the best team was than a single game.
At least in NASCAR shit goes BANG!! every once in a while. What’s baseball got? Hit by a pitch? At 100-ish miles an hour? NASCAR features 1-ton death machines screaming around at 200+ mph!! If you’re really lucky a spectator might die!!
But it’s still pretty boring between the times shit goes bang.
I would submit that if you missed the first three runs, you weren’t “actually watching” the game.
Watching any sport is stupid, pointless, and boring as shit. If you’ve got money on a game, that’s different. Then it’s like keeping track of an investment. But just sitting around watching people exercise for the sheer hell of it is lame as fuck. Soccer, baseball, American football, whatever. Your sport is shit, and you’re an idiot for watching it.