So, why do you love baseball?

The Game Room
1

The reason I love baseball is because I enjoy anticipating strategy. I like thinking about what pitch I’d throw next. I like debating if the batter should bunt or hit. I like trying to decide if the pitcher should be replaced or if he should try to get out of the inning. Should the runner try to steal second? Should the catcher call for a pitchout? Is it time for a pinch hitter? What if the game goes into extra innings, do I wish I still had a pinch hitter left on the bench?

Every time I watch a game, I’m being my own manager.

Baseball, gotta love it!

2

For me, i’m not sure it’s as precise as that.

Sure, i often think about the same sorts of things that you do, about strategy and such. I’m also a big fan of statistical analysis; i have a sub to Baseball Prospectus, and i read quite a few blogs by sabermetrics-type folks.

But beneath all that, i think i love baseball for the same reason i love a lot of other sports—the sheer, visceral pleasure of watching outstanding athletes play a sport at the limit of human ability. And that’s all made even better by the excitement of a tight situation, a timely hit, an amazing play with the glove.

As someone who plays softball every chance he gets (i grew up in Australia, so i never played baseball as a kid), i also have some small appreciation for how difficult it is to do the sort of things that baseball players do. I mean, the guys we think of as poor fielders in major league baseball are simply awesome fielders by just about any other standard. That guy on my softball team? The ace? The one who can put the ball out of the park just about whenever he wants, and who routinely makes amazing plays at shortstop? He wouldn’t even get an invitation to Single-A camp, let alone the majors.

I also like the pace of baseball. It’s fast enough to be interesting, but leisurely enough that you can relax. And the leisurely pace is (for the most part) a product of the game itself, unlike football where the delays are largely contrived to make room for television.

Still, there are aspects of it that i would change. I would speed things up a little bit between innings, and i would also put a stop to the blaring advertisements and promotions and music between innings that ruins the relaxing part of the game. If you go to a cricket test match, the dead time between overs (only a minute or so each time) is generally quiet, with people chatting or reading the paper or whatever. It’s not like that at a baseball game, because there’s a constant wall of sound coming from the loudspeakers. I hate that.

3

I’m nostalgic for my childhood. Baseball was big in my neighborhood, and I was good enough at it to enjoy it. I traded baseball cards and played sandlot games and went to batting cages pretty much every weekend from the beginning of spring to the end of autumn.

4

I think it’s beautiful.

5

I think it’s a beautiful game. Hard to explain, but to me there’s an almost mystical quality, all those threes. I can believe that hitting a round ball going 90+ MPH with a round bat may be one of the more precisely difficult things in sports. Add to that the need to hit with power, and the mere inches that mean the difference between success and failure. It’s simple on the surface – pitch, hit, run, throw, catch. But it has such minutely detailed strategy, too. Plus it has no time restrictions and no ties. Any team, theoretically, always has the chance to win right up until the last out.

6

I love it because I understand it. I can take one look at the field, where the outfield is playing, how the runners are taking a lead, the pitcher and the batter playing their game-within-the-game, and understand eveyrthing that’s happening, everyone’s part in it, and whether I agree with both teams’ strategies.

A lot of that comes from my playing it when I was a kid, and from a father who analyzed a baseball game the same way others would analyze a chess match. That flows into the experience as well.

My wife is a football fan, but a baseball game on a warm summer evening gives her a reason to drink beer and eat junk food for three hours, and that’s good enough for her.

7

For a million reasons I could never put into words. Baseball on TV is tolerable only if it’s an important game I can’t make it to.

But to go to a game - any game, is bliss. From high school to the majors, if I’m near where I can get to a game, I’m there. I’ve sat in the rain, in the cold, in blazing sun with 100 degree heat - doesn’t matter.

8

I could spend an hour typing two thousand words and I still couldn’t explain it.

Because it’s beautiful, as jsgoddess says. A well-kept baseball field is a beautiful thing, certainly the most beautiful playing field of any sport. It is truly a diamond, perfect in its symmetry, the contrast of its colors, the arrangement of its topography.

Because it tells the story of the seasons and flows perfectly with the process of nature (in the northern hemisphere, anyway.) Winter a time of hibernation and coldness and death, spring of renwewal, the heat and grind of summer, the bittersweet beauty of a crisp autumn day of playoff baseball, knowing you are seeing the grandest thing of all but that it will end all too soon.

Because it is the sport, more than any other, that honors its long and glorious history. Baseball was a well established organized sport long before any other team sport, and indeed well before most other major sports even existed or had their rules set in their current fashion.

Because it is a game than any child can understand but that you can spend your whole life learning.

Because it is a game that you can play your whole life and still watch and appreciate the masters at work.

Because it is a game that can be enjoyed on so many levels; to play it, to watch it, to ump it, to coach it, to analyze it, to read about it, to revel in it.

Because it defies time. In hockey, football, soccer and basketball, in many opther sports besides, the clock defines what happens. In baseball, only the participants decide. It is a game that unwinds slowly but periodically presents the participant and the spectator with a firestorm of activity.

Because more than any other sport it is a game of anticipation, of planning and waiting and guessing, your stomach in a knot, sitting on the very edge of your seat or standing in the field or at the plate struck with hope and fear, as the moment of decision arrives.

Because it is a game of contrasts; a team game, more than most games a game in which no one person can much turn a bad team good or a good one bad, and yet a game in which every individual might fight his own battles. It’s a game played on a huge field but it’s also a game of inches - fractions of inches, really. A sport that lasts half the year and that at its highest levels is played every single day, played 162 times a year, and yet somehow, on a regular basis, even after all those games the matter may still not be decided and another game must be played.

Because it smells so wonderful; the fresh cut grass, the warm leather smell of a kid’s beloved glove, a fresh hot dog, clean air. Because it sounds so wonderful; the crack of the bat and the murmur of a crowd turning into a roar. Why, even the clink of aluminum bats is a wonderful sound, followed as it so often is by shouts of joy and cheering and yells of “I’ve got it!”

Because there are no ties. All must be decided; there are no ties in the standings, no tiebreaker formulas for putting one team in the playoffs and one out, no “points” for losing a game in overtime. You win, or you lose. It offer decisiveness and finality, a morally unambiguous judgment of winners and losers, and that offers a relief from a confusing, grey-shaded world.

Because of its narratives. Baseball does not need flashy presentation or “NFL Films” trumpeting the accomplishments of mediocre teams to grand music. Every team has an unwinding story, every player is a story. The statistical lines of a player’s career spin tales as surely as any author; the mercurial magnificence of Koufax, the steady determination of Henry Aaron, the lost potential of Pete Reiser. Many of baseball’s great teams are older than most of the world’s countries, their stories passed from generation to generation and built upon every year.

Because I can watch it with my wife and my little girl and we can talk and laugh and cheer on our boys but do it in a state of casual joy, because it is a pastime, a part of your life, never an intrusion and always welcome.

9

I played baseball every day in the summer as a kid. I played in leagues and tournaments. Then just watched it on TV. When I was about 20 I got into softball and played until i was 54. I have spent so many hours in the outfield. When I played it was always a flood of memories and feeling of endless summers and the uncatchable fly ball I wanted to feel in the web of my glove. But every year the distance between the bases grew.
When I could no longer play to my standards I coached kids leagues. They showed up and played but they did not love the game. They played like it was a thing to do, not the only thing. No focus ,no concentration and difficult to even teach fundamental set plays to them.
I coached womens softball. Many of them (it was a high level league) got it. They loved it and learned everything they could about the game. That was enjoyable.

10

The smell of the grass. Batting practice. Warmups between innings. Shortstops and second basemen communicating with gloves in front of their faces. Dugouts. Bullpens.

11

Because of the nature of the game, it allows for leisurely conversation. Baseball and Billy Graham were almost the only television my grandmother would watch. Sometimes she would watch with me, she would tell me stories about going to Senators and Orioles games with Elmer, her boyfriend and later husband. Both of my grandfathers died before I was born, and I was always conscious of the lack.

Growing up, I listened to Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn call Phillies games, and there have never, IMO, been more leisurely broadcasters than those two. In between pitches, they conversed slowly, men of a certain age who had seen much but remained curious, men who had nothing to prove to anyone but still took care to execute the fundamentals of their job. Sometimes they needled each other in the way that old men who are best friends do. Sometimes they sat in companionable silence, enjoying the day, and we were allowed to sit with them.

And sometimes I would listen to them on the radio and imagine that Harry and Richie were the grandfathers I never had.

12

Wow. All of the above. I remember Billy Crystal talking about going through the tunnel as a kid and seeing the grass of Yankee Stadium for the first time. I have the same memory. Nothing is as green as that color green.

It is a connection to my father. The man whose heart was broken by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 58. The man who would say “Slowly I turn…” everytime he heard the name Bobby Thompson. He didn’t start to mend until the Mets of the mid 80s. I’m glad he was able to find baseball before he died way too young (he died on the same day as Bart Giamatti). Yes *Field of Dreams *makes me cry everytime. His youth was like *The Sandlot *only set in the 30s.

I don’t see as many games as I used to. When I am working I listen to games every night while driving around.

13

Because when I am coming home on from a trip and the plane is getting ready to approach, and I look out the window and see a little park and kids playing in it, I know everything is going to be all right and the bad thing has not happened while the plane was in the air.

14

Because, unlike most other sports, baseball is a sport of suspense, not action. It’s the build-up and anticipation, the ability to think about the situation.

Bases loaded, two outs.The pitcher gets ready, throws the ball, you’re on the edge of your seat – ball one. You relax (if your team is at bat) or get tenser (if your team is in the field). But the strategy changes. Should be batter swing? What sort of pitch will work with him?

Also, you know exactly what happened. You can look at a box score and get a good idea about the entire game.

15

Probably because I played it as a kid, both hardball and softball. I’ve watched it on TV. I’ve played softball as an adult. I’ve been an umpire.

In fact, I’ve been an umpire so long that when SWMBO and I get to go to live games, she is highly amused that I will cheer for the Men In Blue and when a play happens, I watch the movement of the umpires on the field rather than watch the runners. There will be some bang-bang play on the bases and I’ll comment on how the umpire was in a perfect position to make the call.

16

Aside from all of the other well-made points about the beauty and grace of the game, and its connection to itself and American culture through time, the key thing is that for me, baseball’s the most like life of any of the major sports. It’s not made up of a handful of epic struggles scattered once or twice a week across time. It’s a daily grind of getting up every day, getting out there on the field, and doing your best to perform correctly dozens or hundreds of little tasks that individually don’t seem to amount to much but collectively, over the course of a few dozen pitches per inning over 9 innings per game over 162 games, end up making the difference between success and failure.

Nobody goes undefeated in baseball, just like no one gets out of this life alive. The absolute best baseball teams lose 50-60 times a year, roughly half as often as they win. Most good teams lose nearly as many as they win. Whether you win or lose, though, you don’t get to mourn or celebrate long. There’s another game tomorrow. You don’t get to crawl off back into your cave-cum-practice complex and spend six days watching film and trying to correct what you did wrong on game day. Every day is game day.

Just like in life, minor defeats are at least as common as minor victories, and it’s the ability to build on the latter and learn from (but not be crippled by) the former that determines long-term success. A batter steps up to the plate and at least 6 times out of 10, even if he does everything right, he’s not going to succeed. A fielder makes a play exactly the same way 150 times and one time, doing everything exactly the same way, the ball hits a rock and kicks away – just like in life, he has to be able to walk away from that knowing that he did the right thing the right away and that the other 149 times he’s going to get the right result. The batter or fielder also has to be self-aware enough to know whether he did in fact do the right thing the right way, recognize when he didn’t, and adjust accordingly.

17

The Perfect Game. Twenty-seven up, twenty-seven down. Impossible to even describe, let alone happen, in most other sports. You can bowl a perfect 300, and that’s actually done relatively often by professional bowlers. I would guess you could theoretically have a perfect hole-in-one in every hole in a golf game, but I’ve never heard of it happening. I cannot think of another sport where it’s even possible. A Perfect Game in baseball is a thing of rare, but attainable, beauty. Most of the best pitchers in baseball have never had one.

18

Good one!

Football: Holding the opponent to no first downs? Negative yards offense? That’s still only 1/3 of the game (offense and special teams).

Tennis: 6-0, 6-0, 6-0. But that happens a lot with mismatched opponents.

Soccer: No analogous situation to come to mind. Same with…

Hockey: see above

Then there’s a bunch of olympic sports like volleyball that you could probably make an argument for. But none of them capture the beauty of what a perfect game means in baseball. It’s every single cylinder running at perfect synchronicity with the rest of the machine.

19

I don’t have much to add to the excellent responses so far. Baseball just has a stronger mythology than the other sports. Maybe it’s because it preserves and celebrates its history better. Have you been to Cooperstown? The vibe in the air there is incredible. When I go I just want to buy and read every book in the gift shops and watch every video they show. I like other sports (particularly football,) but you just can’t have arguments like Mantle/Mays/Snider or Williams/DiMaggio like you can with baseball.

20

I have only seen my father cry once in my entire life. It was at that movie.