I wasn't much of a baseball fan growing up. Since I wasn't terribly coordinated as a kid, the precision that baseball requires escaped me. On top of that, I was something of a chunker, so I was naturally drawn to sports where I could throw my weight around. I ended up playing football, learning the game, and becoming an avid NFL fan. Baseball was outside my realm of interest throughout middle school and high school.
Over the last four years or so, I've become more and more interested in baseball. Two factors contributed to this development. The first was the rise of the Philadelphia Phillies, my hometown team. Nothing dials up a sport's interest level than a wildly successful local franchise, and I gladly hopped on the Phils bandwagon. The other factor was my circle of friends, which has included a number of serious baseball fans during the last half-decade. It's a lot easier to decipher a sport's logic and lingo when you have well-informed guides at your disposal.
Whenever I mentally compare the two sports, I instantly think of the famous George Carlin sketch on the subject:
When you think about baseball and football in this light, it's pretty incredible that baseball is still technically the national pastime. As Carlin points out, baseball is pastoral and rooted in the 19th century, while football is technological and a product of the 20th century. Baseball is (mostly) a gentlemanly sport that emphasizes tradition and camaraderie. Football is basically an organized, highly regulated form of squad-level melee combat.
America is currently engaged in two wars, both of which have run for longer than any other wars in its history. The national mood is grim, combative, entrenched. And we're more obsessed with technology to a degree that's unprecedented even during the technocratic Cold War era. Is it any wonder that even some major-market baseball teams suffer from attendance problems, while football attendance remains strong?
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