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

[sandollar17.livejournal.com]

I so frustrated a good friend of mine with my apathy toward baseball that he has taken it upon himself to bring me to a baseball ball and educate me about the glorious game. "It's actually quite complex, when you really understand the game," he tells me.

But as far as "different" (ball-based) sports go, I have to do my volleyball plug: it's a game of mistakes, where you try to a) force an error from the other team (usually by your team doing something clever or fast), or b) hope for the other team to screw up before you do in a rally. One team serves, but the ball keeps going back and forth between the two teams until someone screws up (or someone does something exceedingly excellent or crafty).

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Volleyball is six-person racketless badminton.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Ooops, i realized i ripped that off from George Carlin: "All racket games are nothing more the derivatives of Ping-Pong. Even volleyball is, technically, racketless, team Ping-Pong played with an inflated ball and raised net while standing on the table."