I have been going to baseball games since I could walk and I plan on going to baseball games until I can no longer walk. When people first learn how much I love the sport they usually respond with some form of, “I don’t mind baseball, but it is pretty boring.” Let me tell you why they’re wrong.
I am a firm believer that the more you understand baseball, the more you will love it. So much so that I made my friends a Baseball 101 PowerPoint before I took them to a game. Admittedly, they didn’t enjoy the slides about different pitch types as much as they enjoyed the slides with pictures of hot players, but even I can’t fault them for that. When you learn the intricacies of baseball, the beauty of the game becomes clearer. Understanding the game beyond balls and strikes adds both meaning and excitement to the game.
This leads me to my next point: numbers. No sport is as fun to analyze as baseball. Sabermetrics, or the application of statistical analysis to baseball, has developed a way to scrutinize every aspect of the game. You can learn about DIPS (Defense-Independent Pitching Statistics), VORPs (Value Over Replacement Player), WHIPs (walks and hits per inning pitched), and more. In short, you’re only scratching the surface by looking at the final box score. Yes, stats can help to show the value of one single player, but they also hold the athletes accountable and make baseball the most meritocratic sport.
It is 90 feet from home to first in every park, but each park has something different in store for the players. Houston’s Minute Maid Park has a hill in center field. Boston’s Fenway Park has the Green Monster. Some parks are know to favor either the pitcher or the hitter. Each professional sport has its fair share of interesting stadiums, but baseball is the only sport where the difference in the stadiums affects how the game plays out. The inconsistencies between all of the parks keep the game interesting and provide unique challenges for the players in every game.
I think the most beautiful thing about baseball is that it is not defined by a clock. Major League Baseball is making an effort to pick up the pace of games by limiting the time between innings, but there is no running out of bounds to stop the clock or committing fouls to get the ball back. Baseball demands a certain integrity that gives each team 27 outs to best their opponent, and the game won’t stop until they do so. The long seasons provide the drama of a comeback or the heartbreak of a fall from grace. And with 162 games in a season, there is always tomorrow.
I could go on and on about the way I feel when I walk into a ballpark or the excitement that comes from watching my team, but Annie Savoy said it best in Bull Durham, “The only church that truly feeds the soul day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball."
