Show me your powers of persuasion, and your creative writing skills.
Why is your favorite sport, the best sport in the world?
My favorite sport is baseball.
The crack of the bat, the feeling you get when your team turns a double play or an outfield assist. The taste of hot dogs, Coca-Cola, and of course Cracker Jack.
In baseball, you can’t run out the clock and sit on your lead. You may be up by six runs going into the bottom of the ninth, but you’ve still got to get your opponent out three more times. You never know what’s going to happen until you pitch the ball over the plate and let the other guy take his turn. And anyone can be the hero on any given day.
It starts in the spring, lasts through the dog days of summer, and leaves us in the fall, always too soon.
With American football, I like how straightforward the overall concept is: You try to advance by force down the field, against an opponent doing their best to prevent you from advancing. Essentially ramming your will down their throats.
I also like that it is one of the few sports where two players (WR and DB) are competing directly to catch a ball against each other. You don’t really see that with other sports.
Because football (soccer) is chess on lawn, highly athletic and at its best moments sheer physical art. And the fans are the most passionate of all sports.
Likewise with tennis, there’s no clock. There’s only points, and every point is won by one player or the other. Once the ball is in play, someone is going to score. And no matter how far ahead you are (until the match is over), if you let your opponent win the remaining points, you will lose the match.
That’s a good point and one of the reasons why I like tennis so much, besides soccer (of course I also like a lot of other sports). And just like a beautiful goal in soccer, a thrilling tennis rally can be a piece of art.
I used to like basketball – pretty much the only team sport where those playing are responsible for both offense and defense at the same time, sans goalies - but the favoritism clearly shown by NBA refs to star players pretty much ruined it for me.
I would instead choose sumo wrestling, a sport every bit as statistic-obsessed as baseball, but with an even longer history (including, of course, corruption). I like the minimalism of it (i.e., no equipment) and the unique build-up to matches where rikishi try to psych one another, but most especially I enjoy it as an apt metaphor for life: two dudes resembling big babies in diapers (mawashi) battle for supremacy over a patch of earth (clay).
Unlike boxing where the goal is to pummel one’s opponent into a bloody pulp – not my idea of entertainment - the goal of sumo is not to hurt the opponent (though injuries do happen), but to outsmart and outmaneuver him, often by using his own strength and momentum against him. There are no weight divisions, leading to some incongruous and unpredictable match-ups, and the action can be fast and furious or drawn-out with considerable suspense. Like any sport, watching a “grand champion” (Yokozuna) somehow pull out a victory provides a compelling spectacle.
On TV, there are also slow-motion replays catching complex, abstract patterns formed by folds of flesh, a mesmerizing sight that can’t be seen in real time (there is a Japanese name for this, but I have forgotten what it is).
I have not watched or followed sumo in nearly 30 years, but I retain a respect and appreciation for it that no other sport commands.
Kudos! What a well-written and compelling monologue for a sport most of us know very little about.
I came to baseball as a spectator sport very young. My grandfather loved the game and had actually coached in the old Florida State League back in the late-40s, early 50s. So when I was staying with him for the summer, we drove around and watched a lot of minor league games.
In addition to the reasons mentioned above, I like baseball because it’s such an optimistic game in spite of the long odds. The most successful hitters in history got out more often than they succeeded, but every time they strode to the plate, that next one was going to be a hit! They were sure of it.
For the guys I used to watch with grandad, every one of them was a future MLB player - at least in their minds. Of course, most of them weren’t, but they still showed up every day and tried their asses off.
Speaking of which…Ice hockey. Because of the speed, because of the tradition, and because hockey overtime is, to me, to most edge-of-my-seat excitement in all of sports.
Also, the skill required to skate at that level, while playing the game, is very much unappreciated.
Ice hockey, soccer, lacrosse, hurling, handball and water polo all have goalies, i.e., a player whose primary responsibility is defense and who typically plays no significant role in the offense. This differentiates them from basketball, as per my original (hyphenated) comment.
Rugby and volleyball do not use goalies, however, the latter is a bit different from basketball in that the ball is only played by both sides at the same time at the net and no where else on the court. Neither volleyball or rugby are major sports in the U.S. like basketball (and if you want to accuse me of moving goalposts and being culturally elitist on this point it’s okay, because I did and am).
Your comment was ambiguous, although with context clues I suppose that makes sense.
Ok, so your comment is that out of basketball, American football, and baseball, baskeball is the only one where the players play both ways even though they also play both ways in baseball?
I’m biased; sure, on the one hand, what you’re saying here — and, a lot of the time, what folks say about boxing — resonates with me pretty much the same when it comes to fencing: I’m watching them try to outmaneuver each other, with deft footwork setting up clever feints to play a chess game of expectations and momentum in between one of them flicking a blade at the other guy’s wrist or eyes or what have you.
But on the other hand, watching a bout doesn’t always take me back to my own windmilling efforts during my college days or whatever; it takes me back to slack-jawedly thrilling to the adventures of Zorro. I’m watching someone try to bat the other guy’s sword aside for to lunge forward while thrusting his own sword’s point heartward; and, well, I’m enthralled, is all.
If you never slip into seeing it as like unto a swashbuckler parrying and riposting his way through an adventure, then I guess it’s only on a par with other such sports; but to the extent that you wind up engaging in something like unto suspension of disbelief, the fencers might as well be a hero and a villain matching wits and steel in a dramatic duel…