I also love that much of the psychological battle is based on PERSONALITY. For instance, some players are real aggressive meatheads with borderline emotional problems (like Yasiel Puig), so pitchers will throw fastballs near their head or upper body to make them angry, knowing that they’ll want revenge, and start swinging at anything.
Or they’ll know a pitcher is an anxious person. So the hitter doesn’t swing at anything, and the pitcher starts freaking out “What’s this guy doing?”, now the pitcher loses concentration, starts throwing wildly, then over-corrects and throws a pitch down the middle, BOOM, home run…
That’s one reason baseball has always had great “characters”. So much of the game is personality-based, you kind of fall in love with the personas.
I grew up in L.A. so I used to go to Dodger’s and Angel’s games quite frequently. When I moved to Seattle I attended their games quite a bit. Weird, my favorite team is the Detroit Tigers. I used to love baseball, but the older I have gotten its attraction diminishes. 162 games in a season is about twice as long as it should be. True story, when I was in the 5th grade our neighbors across th street whose children were our friends invited us to a night game at Chavez Ravine to watch the Dodgers and NY Mets. We were sitting about 10 rows in just behind 3rd base. Rusty Staub was at bat, if anyone remembers ol’ Rusty and he hit a foul pop up into the lights. Eveyone stood up instinctively and as kids we all took our ball gloves to catch any balls that may come our way. Everyone was standing up looking up into the lights but there was too much glare. Thinking the ball went past us we all sat dawn. As soon as I sat down my friend who invited us sat down and a split second later the ball came out of the lights and popped him right in the eye. It hit him so hard it bounced back onto the field. It broke his ocular bone and his nose. He was in the hospital for a couple of days. But the Dodgers gave him a bat and baseball signed by the whole team. Davey Lopes and Ron Cey came to the hospital to visit him. Ah, good times!
One of the things I think is special about baseball is that in any given game, anyone playing that day has a chance to have a major impact on the game. In most other team sports this simply isn’t the case. Anyone can be the hero.
And I’ve said this before, but I think it bears repeating- baseball is the heart of gold. It produces extremely improbable outcomes as a feature.
Great story, I loved Rusty Staub when I was a kid. (RIP Rusty) He’s a perfect example of a great baseball “character”… a chubby looking guy, with a big shock of red hair and freckles, super nice guy, smiley, friendly, but he could hit like a BEAST. You would NEVER expect it.
Also, nerves of steel. Just steady as a rock, wouldn’t get scared with two strikes against him. Would come through in the clutch constantly.
Then he’d donate half his salary to a children’s hospital.
Baseball isn’t boring, it’s just very slow. You may as well say “chess is boring.” I appreciate the zen-like aspect of baseball, which is a lot more interesting to me than the constant-action-but-somehow-no-score of soccer/football (all sound and fury, signifying nothing.)
Ugh. Went to 6 or 7 mandatory “fun” team building outings to baseball games with my former employer. I tried to convince them for years that it would be better to just go to a park and hang out, play games, etc., but management didn’t want to. Can you guess who the biggest baseball fans were?
I finally put an end to it by bringing bourbon to the tailgate and got a bunch of people completely blitzed on mint juleps so they’d just stay in the parking lot with me. The next year, we went to a park.
… okay, here’s the thing though. To me, baseball IS boring. And to others who have commented here it is boring as well.
To you (and other commenters) baseball ISN’T boring. It’s the best game in the world.
Okie dokie.
But you cannot state empirically that baseball isn’t boring as though that applies to everyone, when as I watch it my brain is doing everything it can to will itself and the rest of me to gtfo. Go anywhere else, do anything else.
If you want to decide you are right, and I am wrong, so be it. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. If I find myself starting to, I’ll turn on a baseball game.
I don’t understand baseball that well, but singling out people that are behaving in a way you don’t approve of and then ridiculing them on national television seems neither gentle nor gentlemanly to me.
