John Miller, player/coach of the Brussels Kangaroos and a reporter for a major American newspaper, is back chronicling his team’s 2009 season in his weekly column that will appear every Monday on mister-baseball.com.
In Belgium, the clubs took off this weekend, one of the only breaks before the 42-game trek resumes. That leaves this column to continue its meditative quest to name 100 reasons why baseball is better than soccer.
23. Baseball is an easy game to follow on the radio. Every action has a name you can say aloud. “Ground ball to shortstop” is as precise as “Exit Hamlet”. After the play, the announcer has time to catch his breath and tell stories. Then, between innings, you can go to the bathroom and not miss anything.
24. Speaking of bathrooms, ever peed at a soccer match?
25. Stadium organizers trust baseball fans to drink beer while watching the game. At the pro soccer games I go to, we rush to the beer stand during halftime.
26. The home and away system in European soccer’s Champions League leaves teams playing for 0-0 draws for the equivalent of a World Series win. What kind of sport doesn’t make its champion win the ultimate game?
27. Soccer players are all 5-foot-10 175 pounds. Baseball has Brian Roberts and Ryan Howard.
28. Soccer fans think the offside rule is the epitome of the mysterious stricture only they understand. It’s their test of whether a foreigner/woman/space alien gets it. Way too pretentious.
29. Speaking of offside, complicated rules can be beautiful if they make the game more logical, fun, and exciting. For example, the force-out or hit-by-pitch. OK, soccer needs an offside rule to make sense, but can anyone seriously say the way it’s applied make the sport more exciting?
30. Soccer keeps changing the rules about what happens at the end of a tied game. It should be sudden death, with, maybe, penalties after 30 minutes. Baseball has had the same tie-breaker for 150 years.
31. There’s no crying in baseball.
32. Soccer players go mano a mano with silly hand gestures and the occasional headbutt. Baseball players do it with lethal weapons: a bat and a hard sphere travelling at 90 mph.
33. There have been some great baseball movies (OK some crappy ones, too). But what’s the Bull Durham of soccer?
34. They call ballgames for rain.
35. Soccer teams carry 22 players but only allow three to sub during a game. Baseball managers can use all their pinch-hitters and lefty specialists.
36. Jim Abbott. Was there ever a soccer player who overcame a true physical handicap so heroically?
37. Soccer trainers are overweight blowhards in trench coats yelling from the sidelines. Baseball coaches are erudite statisticians and psychologists.
38. The ritual of an apoplectic baseball manager arguing with an umpire, followed by the crowd-pleasing and cathartic climax of an ejection, doesn’t exist in soccer. The players and coaches bitch and moan from the side. The referee takes it on the chin. And nothing happens.
39. When great pitchers and hitters face each other, the game stops for a few minutes. The drama builds. In soccer, such confrontations are serendipitous and ephemeral. Over in seconds.
40. Baseball scores can range from 1-0 to 19-17. Truly, every game is unique. I’ve been to my fair share of professional soccer games. (Almost always to see Anderlecht here in Brussels.) I’ve never seen more than five goals.
Where are you bi-sport fans out there? Tell me why soccer is the Beautiful Game at oldworldpastime@gmail.com
Why Baseball is better than Soccer:
Numbers 1-10
Numbers 11-22