I'm the son of a former Major Leaguer, and I never grasped the post-season atmosphere (in person) before last year.
At times it gets to a point where your heart is literally in your gut. It becomes excruciating as a fan, hanging on every pitch.
I still disagree that there is a greater knowledge of the "subtleties" of the game in soccer or any other game, than in baseball.
Fans are fans.
It's the game itself that you don't want to discuss, which is the reason the article is being lambasted - because it's the GAME that has the flaws, not us sports fans.
It's not a greater knowledge of subtleties, it's a greater desire to pay attention to them. And really in sport's like soccer and hockey it's a greater need to understand them to enjoy the sport.
You can be a fan of football and baseball and quite thuroughly enjoy the games without being a student of the game. With the modern era of basketball it actually helps to NOT be a student of the game because the modern NBA has ruined the sport for people that actually understand it. Hockey and soccer simply don't make sense until you're at least an elementary level student of the game, you see it over and over where people complain that the sports seem to be a lot of pointless movement with nothing happening.
I'm perfectly willing to discuss the game. All games have flaws, Alberta's Child and I already had a quick discussion of some of the flaws of soccer, and I can do two hours on the flaws of my favorite sport hockey. I'm not saying the fans have flaws, it's perfectly OK to not be into the subtleties of a sport, no hit on the fans at all. I'm an old school Chicago sports fan, I'll watch any game at anytime for any reason, and I love to study them, I've even watched shuffleboard because the basketball courts were closed for repair and I was desperate to watch SOMETHING while eating my parkdog. I realize not everybody grows up in that kind of environment and it's probably better they don't (who would write the great novels if we were all watching sports every waking minute).
It's not a hit, it's just a fact. Most fans just aren't interested in the subtleties of their game. They don't want to hear about how Jerry Rice taps a cornerback before making his break to make the guy think he's running a different route, they don't want to hear about the importance of the plant foot in a blocking scheme, they're barely interested in hearing about why you run on first down 5 times in a row to setup the play action touchdown pass on the 6th. There are subtleties in every sport, but most fans don't care which is their perogative, it's their brain space if they don't want to fill it with useless sports trivia I'm not gonna say they should; but in some sports those subtleties are closer to the heart of the game, more necessary to understand to be able to understand the game. It takes years of watching hockey to be able to spot a set play coming over the blue line, it takes one quarter of a football game to understand that they're all set plays, it takes about 6 people getting on base to understand there are set plays in baseball.
Different sports for different people. Just because a sport isn't popular in America doesn't mean either the sport or the fans are at fault. American sports fans have a distinctive character, and that means their not going to like all sports; American games have a distinctive character too, and that means not all the world is going to like them. Such is life.