They always play that song “The Most Wonderful Time of Year” in December.
I don’t get it.
This is the most wonderful time of the year. The start of baseball season
Nearly every day for the next seven months there will be baseball. If you think that’s too much you just don’t appreciate the game.
Football, basketball and hockey are all great sports, they all provide their own kinds of thrills (we won’t talk about soccer). But baseball is the greatest, wonderfulest, specialist game of all.
Baseball is unique. Let us count the ways:
Baseball is the only sport where the defense controls the ball.
Other sports are played in a straight line, baseball is played in a circle. The object is to get back to where you started.
Baseball is the only sport where the fields vary in shape and size. Football fields are all the same, so are basketball courts and hockey rinks. Every baseball field is different making baseball way more interesting that those other games.
Baseball is the only sport where you can use up a player. Football and basketball coaches can put players in the game an take them out willy-nilly. In baseball once a player is out of the game he’s gone, lost until the next game.
But the absolutely, positively, undoubtedly the best thing about baseball is this:
There is no clock.
Nooooooo clock.
A game could last forever. One at-bat could last forever. You can never run out of time. No matter how far behind you get you always have time to catch up because there is no time.
If a football team is four touchdowns behind with two minutes to go, the game is lost. No matter how well the team plays in the last two minutes it can’t catch up, there simply isn’t enough time.
If a baseball team is ten runs behind in the ninth inning it can still catch up. If it takes three hours to do it that’s okay because THERE IS NO CLOCK.
Slow? Yes, baseball is slow. So what’s your hurry? I’m tired of being rushed here and rushed there. I appreciate a game that takes it’s time. Baseball gives it’s fans time to savor it. Swish it around in your mouth and taste the sweetness.
For me this is the most wonderful time of year. And I’m enjoying the heck out of it.
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