We received this question as part of last week’s mailbag and I thought it was a great idea so this is part one of a two-part series on what we love about baseball.
What do Talking Chop writers love about baseball?
Ivan: It’s a dizzying combination of things I love. It’s never the same anything twice — not the same PA, not the same game, not the same season. Combine that with the fact that if games are series of interesting decisions, baseball is the most game-y of them all, with the array of interesting decisions extending from pre-season roster construction, to in-season roster moves, to lineup constructions, tactical decisions, and even to pitch-by-pitch stuff like pitch choice, location choice, swing/take choice, etc., and it’s already pretty fantastic. But then top it off with the third factor, which is that baseball hasn’t been “solved” yet, and we’re all just hurtling together in a vortex of figuring out how to win the most baseball games, and it’s just the best. Well, it’s either that, or it’s just a giant, really effective Skinner box.
Brad: I think it’s a combination of growing up in it — both playing and watching — and the decisions and actions that take place during the game. I love sports in general, but baseball is different in that almost everything is measurable and the drama can build between moments. It can be overwhelming in some ways and, honestly, I get why some don’t prefer it in the modern age, but I’ll always love baseball.
Gaurav: It’s not just baseball to me - it’s family. Growing up as a first generation immigrant my parents worked constantly while they strived for the “American Dream” which meant I didn’t get to see them often. Almost one Wednesday a month during baseball season my dad would take off, meet me at school for lunch, and take me out to go to a Braves game. It was then that I absolutely fell in love with the sport. As time went by I began to love the various aspects of it — the competition between pitcher versus battery on a pitch-by-pitch basis, the personalities that began to develop, the camaraderie over the course of 162 games that the players showed to one another, to something as simple as watching the perfect 12-6 curveball.
Scott: It’s been my favorite game from the days when the mound was 20 feet away from the plate. The slow buildup. The heavy focus on statistics. A couple of inches being the difference between a win and a loss. The human element. It’s a beautiful game — and the fact it’s on every single night for 6+ months is pretty amazing — and it will forever be my first love in sports.
Daniel: There are a few factors that make me love baseball the way that I do. Perhaps the biggest is not only the focus on statistics, but the unique accuracy of the analytics in comparison to other sports. By nature of baseball, there are just not as many variables that need to be accounted for relative to sports like football or basketball and the sample sizes are huge with 162 games, which make baseball statistics far more representative of reality and more accurately predictive than other sports. I am a very analytical person, so this obviously appeals to me. Another big factor is the pure quantity of games. The fact that there is a game on nearly every day during the season makes it really easy to be immersed in the sport, avoiding big breaks between games. Finally, I really enjoy the subtle changes in the game depending on which teams are playing and where. The differences in ballpark dimensions add some intrigue throughout the season.
Matt: Its hard to really say what it is that makes me love baseball since I loved baseball before I could ever start to think about the answer to this question. Going to tons of games a year in the minor leagues and watching even more on TV before the age of 10 had me following the game and the Braves at an early age. It’s hard to say if it’s the tradition/history, the numbers and matchups, or just watching the great individual talents of certain players, but all of that is what contributes into it for me.
Dillon: My love of baseball stems back to my early childhood. Oddly enough, nobody in my family really cared about sports before I came along. I changed that pretty quickly and once I was old enough to play, I would annoy the hell out of my dad to play catch with me on a near daily basis. When he’d had enough, I would go to the basement and throw a racquetball against a concrete wall for hours. To fine tune my offense, I would hit rocks from the driveway with a wiffle ball bat until we barely had a driveway left. I had to create my own love of baseball, but I never ran short of support in fostering it along. With each layer of gravel that disappeared from my parents’ driveway, another load would come, and the next day I’d be back outside switch-hitting rocks into the woods.
McCartney: While I love the game itself, and how it can at once be so simple and so incredibly complex, what I truly love about baseball is its ability to be a through line that connects generations. In my case, that was strengthening a relationship with a grandfather I was never especially close with when I was young. A diehard Detroit Tigers fan, I sat with him in old Tiger Stadium in 1993 and watched Cecil Fielder hit two home runs — one of which, off the Rangers’ Matt Whiteside — landed on the roof of the old stadium. Years later, when I had made covering the game my profession, I met Hall of Famer at a signing Al Kaline in Cooperstown. I had him sign a ball for my grandfather, and upon seeing my press credential (I was there to cover John Smoltz’s induction), he suggested we take a photo together. Being able to send my grandfather that ball and photo, and seeing its place in the Tigers shrine in his living room, were gifts that made me love baseball that much more.
Demetrius: Mostly it’s the fact that the game has a comforting sense of steadiness — whether it comes to the game’s relative lack of revolutionary change from a fundamental standpoint over generations and generations of baseball or we’re talking about the fact that it’s just very nice to know that on any given day from April until September, if I turn on my television at 7 PM, 1 PM, or 10 PM there will be a baseball game on and it’ll very likely be my favorite team playing. Weirdly enough, summer is my least favorite season of the year but I always look forward to it because at the very least it means that I get to enjoy my favorite sport throughout the hottest time of the year. Even if the Braves are absolutely terrible, I’ll tune in for nearly every single inning of every single game because of the comfort of familiarity that comes with watching a baseball game on a nightly basis. I’m a big fan of consistency in all facets of life and one thing that has been extremely consistent since the 1870s has been baseball’s presence in American culture. Also, I love seeing monster dingers being sent all the way to the freaking moon.
Kris: This is a great question because there are so many things. Like a lot of people, I grew up playing the game but I don’t think I came to love it from playing it. It was just something that the rest of my friends did. I fell in love with the game by watching it and collecting baseball cards. As fun as it is watching the game on TV, there is nothing like being at the ballpark. I have probably watched more games in person over the last two seasons (mostly at Rome), than I had in my life previously. Whether I’m working on something for the site or just going, sitting and enjoying the game is something that I am missing a lot right now. I also have always been drawn to the numbers and I think some of that goes back to baseball cards. I was the kid with a spiral notebook that was tracking stats of me playing a baseball video game because back then they didn’t do it for you. I came to find the new analytical stats later in my life but they have had a similar effect on me. There is so much about this game that can be explored and I think that is what is most appealing.
"Love" - Google News
May 12, 2020 at 09:13PM
https://ift.tt/3ctFbaf
Talking Chop Roundtable: What do you love about Baseball - Talking Chop
"Love" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35xnZOr
https://ift.tt/2z10xgv
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Talking Chop Roundtable: What do you love about Baseball - Talking Chop"
Post a Comment