Classic Baseball Writing: "99 Reasons Why Baseball is Better Than Football"

The Heart of the Order (New York: Doubleday, 1990) | First published: January 1987 | Thomas Boswell

[BluesDuke]

I thought Carlin was actually saying baseball has the better of it. But I suppose anyone can read it any way they wish. That said...

Football is played in any kind of weather: Rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog...can't see the game, don't know if there is a game going on; mud on the field...can't read the uniforms, can't read the yard markers, the struggle will continue!

That was true especially of the 1958 game in which the Giants advanced to the league championship game said to have put the NFL on the nation's map once and for all: it snowed at Yankee Stadium that day and when Pat Summerall kicked the winning field goal, the field was so blanketed that it was almost impossible to tell from where Summerall was kicking. I've seen films of the game over the years and I still don't know where he began!

[BluesDuke]

Carlin may have been reading A. Bartlett Giamatti when he dreamed up his routine: Baseball teaches us that, long as you travel and far as you roam, the purpose is to get back home, back to where the others are. (From "Men of Baseball, Lend An Ear," published in The New York Times during the 1981 baseball strike.)

[My2Cents]

Thanks much for posting the George Carlin routine. It is classic, because it is so true, and so beautiful.

The only cloud is what the current Commissioner, "Bud Lite" Selig, may do to ruin this glorious game. Rumors of contraction -- eliminating franchises -- abound. A nasty labor dispute looms (remember, it was Selig who cancelled the end of the 1994 season over a labor dispute). Deference is given to the big money clubs, and for franchises struggling to survive in smaller markets, Selig's answer is to eliminate them.

I fear for the game, when it's in the hands of someone like Selig: so much power, so little imagination and vision.

[Nate505]

Don't get me wrong, I like both sports. But your original post automatically made me think of that routine....and that's a very nice quote.

[BluesDuke]

College Football is the Only remaining sport that 'Pride' can ever be considered as part of the game.

If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you. (If you think baseball players don't play it for pride, you sure weren't watching this year's World Series, for openers...)

In 'Pro (Insert Game here)'....money has taken over almost every aspect of 'Pro (Copy Name of Game Here).

And what the hell did you think "pro(fessional)" meant...inspired amateurism? (If you think money hasn't taken over college football, you're living in a dream world. Either that or you're not much associated with how many alumni or alumni associations laying bucks and goodies onto college football players until they get caught with their hands in the cookie jars...) Remember, as George Will reminded us: No fan in the history of organised sports has ever paid admission to see a team's owner. (Mario Lemieux and Michael Jordan don't count.) Except, maybe, for Yankee fans of the 1980s who had become fed up with the antics of their team's owner. (Memory runs to the chants: Steinbrenner Sucks! Steinbrenner Sucks! And, to the Banner Day parades dominated by phalanxes of anti-Steinbrenner signs - Steinbrenner actually tried to have anti-Steinbrenner signs banned at the House That Ruthless Rebuilt, until the ACLU threatened to step in - and, one year, a rather inspired soul who came to the parade dressed as a monk carrying the sign, Father, Forgive Him, For He Knows Not What He Does...)

[BluesDuke]

Forget not, too, that it was with no little help from Bud Lite that Chicago White Sox czar Jerry Reinsdorf was able to bring off the putsch against baseball's last legitimate commissioner, Fay Vincent.

[RussP]

If I were a baseball fan, I'd also be a bit concerned about the fact that the Yankees have won -- what is it? -- five of the last seven World Series, or something like that. And they damn near just won this one too.

How long will the fans of other teams put up with this crap? Thirty something teams in the league, and the same fricking team wins almost every year? Hell, the yankees have won more Series in one decade than any other team has won in the entire history of baseball, I think. Come to think of it, I think the Yankees have won it on average about once every three years since the beginning of major league baseball!

I'd feel like quite a fool if I continued to root for, say, the Cubs or the Red Sox!

[harbinger of doom]

So I guess you had trouble with the curve, the yakker,the Uncle Charlie, the pitch that had the 'bottome fall out' of it?

It's a hard game. The problem is these guys make it look like anyone can do it. That just isn't the case.

As for trotting, you rarely see a baserunner trotting when the ball is in the gap or hit in the hole b/w short and third. For that matter, when a ball is hit in the gap, no one on the field is trotting. Everyone has a job to do.

In football, once a back has cleared the hole, the fat lineman on both sides of the ball turn and watch while pulling up their pants. (Broad stroke w/ a paint brush comment, just like yours :).

[harbinger of doom]

So I guess you had trouble with the curve, the yakker,the Uncle Charlie, the pitch that had the 'bottome fall out' of it?

It's a hard game. The problem is these guys make it look like anyone can do it. That just isn't the case.

As for trotting, you rarely see a baserunner trotting when the ball is in the gap or hit in the hole b/w short and third. For that matter, when a ball is hit in the gap, no one on the field is trotting. Everyone has a job to do.

In football, once a back has cleared the hole, the fat lineman on both sides of the ball turn and watch while pulling up their pants. (Broad stroke w/ a paint brush comment, just like yours :).

[BluesDuke]

I tuned in just in time to see the winning run driven in. Looked like a bloop hit to me. What a dud of a way to decide the winner of the World Series.

Any hit resembles a bloop when you have your outfield pulled in a little much. I have always thought that if the team in the field is dumb enough to pull the outfield in in the ninth inning, they're all but saying take me, I'm yours! Very bad strategy. I would have put the infield back to double-play depth in that situation and kept the outfield in standard alignment. But what do I know? That's baseball. You never know until you know. This Series assuredly was not over until it was over.

I actually think baseball could be a lot more exciting. That's not saying much, of course, but what the heck. I'd start by doing something to reduce the number of home runs. Watching guys trot around the bases is a complete and utter DUD.

Ain't gonna happen. You want a guy who just shot one into the seats to run like Secretariat? Reality check, folks. He's just hit himself a free ride around the bases. Save the steamrolling for when it matters, like if you're trying to take the extra base ahead of an outfielder with a howitzer for a throwing arm.

Watching a guy slide into third base or home plate on a close play, on the other hand, is exciting -- but it hardly ever happens.

That's what you think. Happens more often than you realise. Oh, yes - I forgot. You only watch the highlights.

The field needs to be bigger, or the ball needs to be softened up or something. Whatever it takes to make those overpaid bastards RUN instead of trot around the bases!

Baseball on the field isn't broken. (Well, maybe just one place: make the umps start calling the real strike zone - the one in the rule book - between the shoulders and the knees.) Don't try to fix it.

[harbinger of doom]

George Brett did have the gap double trot down to an art. However, he was no loafer.

Oh yea, sorry for the twin posting as opposed to a twin killing.

[BluesDuke]

So I guess you had trouble with the curve, the yakker,the Uncle Charlie, the pitch that had the 'bottome fall out' of it?

Memory recalls Dwight Gooden calling his curve ball Lord Charles. (Small wonder - when it worked right, that curve ball was dangerous. I'd never seen a better pure overhand curve since Koufax.) Not to mention what George Bamberger called his Staten Island sinkerball. (Translation: spitball. And, yes, I'd like to see the pitch re-legalised.)

[harbinger of doom]

I like Daryl Kile's curve and Mussina's knuckle curve. Gooden was nasty, what with the measly heat he brought. How about Ryan's curve?

[BluesDuke]

Gooden was nasty, what with the measly heat he brought. How about Ryan's curve?
more arm and shoulder miseries than the pure power pitchers do; Stottlemyre was finished with such miseries after ten respectable seasons).

Ryan's curve ball was a decent curve ball. But for awhile, he was also throwing a changeup that was pretty nasty, had an interesting little break on it where it looked like it would turn down but then kind of jump as it reached the plate. He threw it for a couple of years when he was with the Astros, as I remember...

[BluesDuke]

Gooden was nasty, what with the measly heat he brought. How about Ryan's curve?

. Gooden's heat didn't become "measly" until Mel Stottlemyre, then his pitching coach, and in the one big mistake he ever made in a distinguished career as a pitching coach, counseled Gooden in spring 1986 to knock it off with the strikeouts and get some more "finesse" in the repertoire. Gooden's heater was never quite the same again and, sure enough, in short enough order Gooden began having to deal with shoulder miseries. Which showed what Stottlemyre learned from his own career (the finesse/junkballers usually deal with more arm and shoulder miseries than the pure power pitchers do; Stottlemyre was finished with such miseries after ten respectable seasons).

Ryan's curve ball was a decent curve ball. But for awhile, he was also throwing a changeup that was pretty nasty, had an interesting little break on it where it looked like it would turn down but then kind of jump as it reached the plate. He threw it for a couple of years when he was with the Astros, as I remember...

[Sicon]

Baseball, apart from being an elegant, beautiful game, is the AMERICAN past time!

Whenever someone says "I don't like baseball", I always say, "What are you, a communist or something?"

Football is brutish, ugly, violent, impersonal, and often boring. I know lots of people think its the best thing since sliced bread, but I just don't see it.

And while there are exceptions, most baseball players are pretty humble, down-to-earth guys. Many football players are flashy, egotistical braggarts with an inflated sense of self-importance, not to mention a tendency towards violence, drug abuse, etc.

The biggest reason baseball is better than football (or basketball, for that matter), is that you don't have guys doing stupid dances, or grandstanding whenever they make a play (in other words, whenever they simply do their job).

Baseball = class, tranquility, individual responsibility and achievement.

Football = low-brow, thick-skulled, Roman Colisseum circus, designed to satisfy the blood-lust of the ignorant masses.

[iranger]

WAIT...baseball is so much fun they made a girls version of it, softball. Of course, you've got chick basketball too and now there is no checking chick hockey. But there is only one original manly man's sport. Football is 4 quarters testosterone laden fun. As Peggy Noonan so wonderfully proclaimed a couple of weeks ago, Men are BACK!!!

[RussP]

I know baseball is a hard game to play well. Believe me, I tried very hard as a kid. My point is that baseball just isn't exciting enough. Then again, I probably haven't watched more than one complete inning for years, so who am I to say. I do know that the highlights bore me to tears. On the other hand, I enjoy watching football highlights -- when my wife lets me.

[poet]

Whether it's played at night or dawn
baseball is still a yawn

[BluesDuke]

Football is 4 quarters testosterone laden fun.

You need more than testosterone to be a manly man, my friend. If I want to see gang warfare, I don't have to shell out for a football game - I live only 45 minutes from south central L.A.

poet: Baseball, as a wise man once posited, is a yawn only to people with yawning minds.