the national pastime

[rone]

The vast majority of sports are, at their core, the same: you or your team want to score, and to deny your opponents in their own pursuit of a score.  The way to do that is to get possession of the ball.

Baseball (yes, and cricket) is different.  When your team "possesses" the ball, it's actually delivered by your opponents, and your job is to put the ball out of their reach while you try to score.  In baseball, you don't want the ball anywhere near you when you score.

There is no clock that ticks away; no time can be burnt or wasted in an effort to deny your opponent a chance to score again.  Each team has the same number of chances to score in the game, no matter what (yes, the home team foregoes its final 3 or fewer chances if it's ahead).

Another difference in baseball is that the teams don't face each other at full strength.  It's always the batter versus nine fielders, modulo any baserunners, whose impact is minimal (unless they're exceptional base-stealers).  In geekspeak, the game is asynchronous.

One thing i've read about baseball that i like a lot is, "You have to let the game come to you."  Patience is rewarded in baseball more than in any other sport.

Comments

[vatine]

Well, there is a clock, of sorts, in cricket. It's not commonly measured in hours, though (international test cricket games usually last five days, that's about 8h of play each day, IIRC). If the batting team of the last inning hasn't managed to exceed the score of the fielding team and is not out, the game is a draw. I guess it's a bit more of a stress in 1-day cricket.