The Appeal of Baseball
Dave Winer has some wonderful insights at mid-World Series time into what baseball means to its mostly male adherents.
For me, while it is certainly cliche to say it, baseball is attractive because it is a thinking man's game and I am a thinking man. But there are other, less often stated, reasons, too.
First, one can be less than a superb athletic specimen with a finely chiseled body and still play this game well. Guys like Livan Hernandez and Randy Johnson and David Wells and Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb were mere physical mortals who have excelled at this sport. That gives guys like me hope, and hope is something palpably important to the human spirit.
Second, baseball is the only one of the major sports (the others being American football, basketball, and hockey) in this country of which hard physical contact is not part of the very fabric. It is a peaceful game which nonetheless satisfies that deep inner itch for a competitive exprience, for the staging of the battle between good and evil, my team and your team. As such, baseball stands dignified and alone as a non-combative solution to conflict and disagreement. And in this sense, too, it creates hope.
Finally, it is the game itself and not its less-than-godlike gladiators, that is the important focus of attention. There is always something going on for a deeply engaged and knowledgeable fan. But there are also lots of breaks in the action for the less-involved fan who wishes to combine sports spectatorship with social intercourse.
These are the principal reasons why, even when it betrays its fans, even when its business side becomes more apparent than we might prefer, even when the off-field conduct of its superstars tarnishes its image, I keep coming back to baseball as my Sport of Choice. I've grown to love pro football over the years, but given a choice between a baseball game and a football game at the same moment, I am far more likely to watch baseball.
It is for me a more spiritually and emotionally satisfying experience.
8:13:21 AM 
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