For Opposite Day, five reasons why basketball is way cooler than baseball:
1. Basketball players are winners of the genetic lottery: they have agility, speed, size, and an ability to hang in the air that dwarfs that of mere mortals. Baseball players are just guys that have worked long and hard at developing their skills. Who wants to watch people like that?
2. Basketball gives you constant action. It’s against the rules for any play to take more than 24 seconds. In baseball, tension might build over a long period of time. Booooooooooring!
3. In a basketball game, each team will score dozens of times, at least. I saw a baseball game last year where one team didn’t even get on base. Double boring!
4. Baseball doesn’t have a clock. It can go on and on and on and on. Basketball is precisely 48 minutes of play, with constant movement and energy. But in a close game, where the pressure of all that action might be too much, both teams save us from over-stimulation by calling time-out every time they get the ball. It’s the best of both worlds!
5. Baseball has a long tradition and deep roots in the American psyche. Basketball has new rules every year to keep it hip. It’s like the difference between hearing your grandfather tell stories about what life was like when he was young, and texting with your peeps. Or like the difference between old-fashioned books nobody reads anymore, like Huckleberry Finn, and Fifty Shades of Gray.
I like the cut of your jib, opposite Mike!
Opposite Day rocks. I just thought this might be the best place to say that.
It’s my favorite thing that we do and I hope to make it a tradition.
Since it is opposite day I have to agree with everything you said.
Dude: It’s weird that the defense has the ball in baseball.
There. I said it.
I remember, when I was much younger, hearing some pundit say that baseball was unique because it’s the only sport where the defense controls the ball. And I remember thinking “That’s not true, there’s one more.” What I don’t remember is what it was. (Probably something less obvious than cricket.)
Hockey. It just sits in the defense locker room, because they don’t use a ball.
One would think on opposite day I would be able to communicate exactly what I wanted, but no I got it backwards again. I meant to say “I disagree with everything you said.”
+a million
Funny, just before I read this I was thinking I should write a post about why baseball is better than hockey. That’d be a hell of a challenge, though.
Because somebody once rushed the mound and Nolan Ryan beat the crap out of him.
Robin Ventura. Ryan had previously been charged by Dave Winfield and Willie McCovey, and had the sense not to start anything with them.
As far as I can tell, there are two cardinal rules to basketball:
Rule #1: Anything any player can possibly ever do is a foul.
Rule #2: Anybody who questions Rule #1 is guilty of committing a foul.
You left out
#3 “Anything a rookie does within 10 feet of a star counts as a foul.”
#4 “’10 feet’ is a rule of thumb, not an absolute maximum.”
Foul!
If golf is a good walk ruined, baseball is a good picnic ruined. I’ve been to two Mariners games, and that was enough to convince me that there is no more boring game in the world.
I’ll stick with hockey, which has actual action.
You’re right. There is nothing in the world more boring than a Mariners’ game.