2. Football can be played by anyone, anywhere. All it takes is at least two players, and a $15 dollar ball. Baseball requires two $40 gloves, a $7 ball, a $50 bat, and so much more.
A broomstick and a racquetball and you got yourself a ball game.
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4. The average fan can pick up and understand football. In baseball, the average fan cannot tell the difference between a two-seam, a four seam, or a cut fastball.
It's rather simple actually. Breaking ball, fast ball, and change up. Without a radar gun most people cant distinguish a two seamer from a four seamer. Unless they are very well acquainted with the pitcher. Not to mention it's even harder for the batter to distinguish between pitches.
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7. The individual baseball games are meaningless. Game 34 means just as much as game 134. What you're watching has no bearing on the season.
9. In football, playoff games actually mean something. That one game decides who progresses and who stays home.
It's a game of inches folks. Not yards.
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11. Football games are lively, upbeat, and exciting. In today's world of instant gratification and limited attention spans, many cannot appreciate the finer points of baseball.
Wow, I thought baseball was for people with short attention spans. Me I usually turn it on and walk away and sometimes forget it's on. If I hear Dave Simms getting riled up, I may or may not come and see what the hub bub is all about.
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15. Every football team has a specific philosophy on offense AND on defense.
Where's the argument here? I don't see one. You don't think baseball teams don't use specific strategies on how to utilize their 25 man roster. You have your small ball teams, teams who utilize platoons, or teams who are built on great pitching with minimal or average offense etc. etc. Employing a strategy and philosophy that works well with their personnel.
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25. There is a salary cap in football.
Lesser teams have proven time and time again that's it's possible to win with a smaller payroll.
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It's a funny thing about sports: You can pick it up, or put it down.
I got all wayyyyy into the Arsenal Gunners - Manchester United Red Devils matchup yesterday. I turned on the DVR, and they kicked the ball off, and it was all downhill from there. My remedy was simple. I fast-forwarded, confirmed the loss, and then [until right this moment] vaporized soccer from my existence.
It's one of my most valuable life tricks, seriously. I just switch my realities when it comes to entertainment. One isn't working, just "cancel" it like La Femme Nikita sneaking up behind a baddie from Red Cell. Boom, pick up your new reality.
The Seahawks are 9-1, gentlemen. Their defense has the great secondary, they got FOUR pass-rushing ends, they got FOUR interior linemen, EVERY SINGLE PLAY they got a new batting order out there, swinging from the heels against a quarterback who looks a lot like Horacio Ramirez.
We don't wanna miss the next ... um ... nine games. (Docter Dee will still post more about baseball than football.)
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CBS' 25 reasons to prefer football. ... Some are stupid. Some that ain't:
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2. Football can be played by anyone, anywhere. All it takes is at least two players, and a $15 dollar ball. Baseball requires two $40 gloves, a $7 ball, a $50 bat, and so much more.
I've always loved the pitch-and-catch of football. Baseball has four types of pitches. But Russell Wilson had at least 10 ways to throw the ball yesterday ... rainbows, and 15-yard lightning bolts, and back-shoulder jump balls, and ... man, his receivers do go up and fight for the ball, don't they?
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4. The average fan can pick up and understand football. In baseball, the average fan cannot tell the difference between a two-seam, a four seam, or a cut fastball.
My wife STILL cannot, even from the CF camera, tell a curve ball from a fastball.
That's not relevant to you and me, but ... it's still true that most of the time, we do not know what Felix Hernandez is trying to do with a pitch. Nor what Justin Smoak is thinking at the plate, on a 1-1 pitch. (Wait, that's totally unfair; Justin Smoak also does not know what he is thinking at the plate, on a 1-1 pitch.)
The flow of a Seahawk game is very, very easy to understand. On 2nd-and-8 from our 40, you know exactly what a "good" result is, and the three ways they'll try to get it.
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7. The individual baseball games are meaningless. Game 34 means just as much as game 134. What you're watching has no bearing on the season.
9. In football, playoff games actually mean something. That one game decides who progresses and who stays home.
Baseball ... we DO get games, six days a week. I miss that, don't you?
But it's like six days a week of ... sleeping on a soft matress. Luxurious, comfortable, smile-inducing sleep. Football is like one day a week of ... the first night of your honeymoon. (You really needed that visual from ME, didn't you.) What's better?
Also: with the Seahawks now favored to go to the Super Bowl, every other game in the NFL with contenders in it, becomes a type of Seahawk game. So that's what, 3-4 days a week we get games now?
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11. Football games are lively, upbeat, and exciting. In today's world of instant gratification and limited attention spans, many cannot appreciate the finer points of baseball.
This is an interesting point.
As a public speaker, I am PAINFULLY aware of the way that American attention spans are changing. Watch a movie trailer. The scenes cut away Every. Three. Seconds. Flick! Flick! Flick!
Suppose it took this page four (4) seconds to load?
But ... the slow suspense that baseball has ... perhaps that serves as a foil to the spinning kaleidoscope we get everywhere else? Are our minds conditioned so that they are unable to hold attention, or are they in need of rest from the spin-cycle of information?
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15. Every football team has a specific philosophy on offense AND on defense.
I don't think we baseball fans can minimize this point. It wouldn't be fair, at least.
In baseball there's really One Right Way to Play. Don't bunt. Don't steal bases. Don't swing too hard; go for OBP. You know what I mean.
But football teams do, indeed, have styles. Baseball is like you go to the movies, and every actor is Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher, with no Harrison Fords available.
Even the quarterbacks. Russell Wilson's style, and Peyton Manning's, how different are those styles? Take Lloyd McClendon, on CBS point #17. Is he even allowed to have a style that deviates more than 6" from Standard MLB(TM) Dugout Manager? What decisions will he even have available?
(Equal time disclaimer: Brad Miller is quite a different idea from Jack Wilson or Brendan Ryan. A bat-first outfield is quite a different idea from a glove OF, and when you get somebody who does both -- Jacoby Ellsbury -- that's distinct, too.)
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25. There is a salary cap in football.
And every team wants to win.
Comments
...is ludicrous to me.
Teams shift their defenses at different rates, play different styles of offense (sit back for the longball, work the pitcher's pitch count up with a lot of pithc-taking, aggressive, free-swingers, bunt and run teams, spray hitters and pull hitters...teams build their rosters differently as well...some teams try to accumulate un-coachable skills like power and great batting eye and great plate coverage...andhope they can coach the baseball intelligence into those players...some teams try to get baseball-smart guys and hope they grow into good players. Some teams load up o pitching and defense and others load up on offense. Some teams spend 200 million, others 100 million with a focus on internal player development. Some teams come away with unified themes for the season built around clubhouse chemistry...others are made of 25 players who hate each other but work well together anyway. Some teams favor international free agency to get their talent and other prefer the amateur draft.
Need I go on?
You can tell a football fan wrote this article...more importantly...a football fan who knows next to nothing about baseball.
And oh BTW, it's also ridiculous to call a football game fast paced and lively. It's 2 hours of committee meetings punctuated by 15-second intervals of action. How is that different from baseball?
compared to the current wave of success for the local eleven (excuse me, twelve) heavily skews this conversation. Mariners games after the first month or two of the season have been largely unwatchable for a decade. If the circumstances were reversed, so would the verdict on the question of baseball versus football. It was a whole lot different when our lineup included superstar Ken Griffey, Edgar Martinez, Ichiro with a team around him. In the end we didn't win the championship...EVER...with those teams, but we did watch because we knew they might some year. How entertaining is football when your team routinely falls behind and you KNOW they won't come back?
Beside the endless committee meetings, they have turned football and basketball into studio events. I love the atmosphere of Quest field, but that's because the team is a winner. When the applause sign goes on, you are definitely working to influence the game. But put a snoozer on the field, in a cold environment, perhaps it's raining on you, and sit through those TV time outs, and you'll wonder why you bothered buying a ticket and leaving your living room. Same thing with pro and college basketball. Of course, now you also have video challenges. And people complain that a baseball manager will bring in too many relievers (and they do).
Having said all that, these Hawks are the best thing to come into Seattle since the 2001 Mariners. Imagine if Felix could pitch every game the way Russell Wilson can.
You even protested against #25. That's what I call loyalty!
You go amig-O...
You don't see a difference in degree here? :- )
There is variety in tic-tac-toe. You can start in the upper right corner, or the lower left. But is the variety as visually colorful as the variety in Monopoly?
You know, and I know, that the real differences between Hisashi Iwakuma and Erasmo Ramirez are richly nourishing to the connoisseur. (sp?) But Cindy has kind of a tough time discerning what Hisashi does that Erasmo doesn't. She doesn't have a real tough time discerning the difference between the Broncos' offense and the Seahawks'.
That's a telling point Rick-ster. Nobody said there weren't 25 points the other way. That would be #1.
Point #2, BOOM that was like a Kam Chancellor hit. There are times you'd rather be ANYPLACE but a cold, rainy football game that you're losing. I don't ever recall wishing I hadn't come to a Mariner game.
I mean, you can always head out to the CF patio ......
EUREKA!! Baseball has mastered the art of selling a lousy product!!
Was that the year? Like 1990 and 1991?
One of my friends came into work on a Monday, like the Monday after Marijuanavich said "All I saw was purple out there." Shook his head. "I'd rather watch the amateurs play. Any. Time."
Heh :- )
Here we have the Seahawks at the height of their glory and prowess. Should a dynasty ensue? Nay. In a few years, the top players, Richard Sherman, Russell Wilson, others, will be making significantly more money. Then, stars will have to be jettisoned just to keep the cornerstones around. You have teams forced to cast aside icons of the franchise in the name of the salary cap. Wasn't Payton Manning just such a case? The Colts were faced with a choice: Either 1. Plug holes in the team and hopefully win, or 2. Sign Payton Manning for nostalgia and old times sake. Payton Manning was also forced into a choice: Either take far less money than you are worth, or be doomed to appear on loser teams because you are taking up all of the payroll.
These wicked choices exacerbate the problem of the short shelf life of NFL stars (most of whom require refrigeration after opening) to the point where fans are left rooting for laundry. This might be cool if the Seahawks had better laundry. They don't. The Seahawks' logo and color patterns are undead relics of the early eighties that features a cartoonish depiction of an angry blue and green osprey. By nature, ospreys are brown and white, not green. The logo is very kitschy.
For the small market teams, those supposed beneficiaries of the salary cap and salary sharing, the system is also toxic. If a small market team wins, it is because it poached some other teams stars with a payroll derived from some other team's profit, obtained from some other team's rich owners and from some other team's fans. This is socialism at its silliest and also very un-American. Be sure to buy your season tickets, everyone. The Bengals need all the help they can get.
In the future, maybe the NFL should just reallocate wins and points to make sure that the poor teams are not disenfranchised. Or, the NFL should just abolish games altogether, and then each team will have an equal record. Perhaps each side could put on displays of skill, like a dance recital, only macho, and the crowd could clap politely for each routine during the time that used to be reserved for games.
The point is this: You will all wish that football were more like baseball when your beloved Legion of Boom is broken up and auctioned piecemeal in the name of the salary cap. Lord willing, Doc can publish a retraction letter at that time, and I can read it and gloat mercilessly.
Rant complete. You can read my rant about the silly NFL legal system here.
I *like* that baseball requires more work. Here's how I know I'll never be a diehard football fan. I can talk to any football fan...at any time...about any team...and not sound like an idiot if I've watched even one of that team's games or spent even ten minutes perusing their roster and looking at their numbers and match-ups. I can turn on a football game, see the score, the number of time outs each side has left, the current field position, and the teams playing and start calling plays and diehard football fans might have a few disagreements, but they're not going to think I'm a danged fool and should keep quiet. :)
Try that with your casual baseball fan friends!
To me...that ain't an argument for football...football is the iMac of sports. People like it because it looks pretty and is user friendly, not because they have to understand anything. I guess that makes me a bit of an elitist for sports...but I like that baseball takes commitment and passion and study to really "get"
How ANYBODY cashing a Yankee paycheck could straight-facedly declare themselves bourgeoisie, well, that beats all I've ever seen...
Except Yogi, maybe.
I get paid next to nothing by NYC cost-of-living standards (though more than every other club pays interns)...so it's not like I'm living high on the hog. But I'm not calling myself bourgeoisie in the financial sense...I'm suggesting that I am self-aware enough o recognize that some people would find my desire to follow the sport that requires the most intellectual investment an elitist position. I don't do this because I think the intellectual pursuit of sports is "superior"...I do it because it is what interests me in particular about sports (well...that and the poetic aspects of men testing their skill and striving to achieve. But I can still see how people would be irked that I can't really get super into football specifically because football is "too easy".
While Cindy can tell the difference between the Broncos and Seahawks offensively, can she tell the difference between the Chargers and the Broncos offensively beyond the fact that one is better than the other? What exactly does Peyton Manning do so much better than Phillip Rivers?
On the flip side, pretty much everyone can tell the difference between what Randy Johnson tried to do and what Jamie Moyer tried to do.
Just a joke. Trying to pay you a compliment for your sweet job.
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And you could say that Ichiro is as much different from Pujols, as one QB is from another.
Me personally, I have a lot easier time classifying NFL teams into "styles" than I do MLB teams...