Why Football Isn't Baseball

The Fan loves football. It's a great game and fun to watch. But it will always come in second to Major League Baseball. It's the difference between U-2 (insert your favorite artist here) and the Beatles. U-2 is the world's favorites, but the Beatles hold the passion longer and that passion is deeper ingrained somehow. It's definitely a personal preference, but if you see the Fan's friends over at sportsblogs.org, and sort blogs by sport, there are twice as many baseball blogs than football blogs and three times as many as NBA blogs. So it appears the Fan is not alone.

It would be fun to include a list of differences between the two games. Actually two lists would be better. One list is how baseball is better than football and another in how football is better than baseball. The Fan will strategically list those things better in baseball in the hopes that you will get tired of reading before you get to the bottom and miss the many ways that football is better than baseball. Here goes...

Reasons that Baseball is Better than Football

- Baseball players don't crawl on the ground or do the Hulk flex when they make a great play. Football players will do so even when their team is down by 35 points.

- Baseball playoffs give your favorite teams five or seven chances to succeed rather than a sudden death format where in one three hour blink, your favorite team could be done.

- The umpires are professional and full time instead of part time referees in football. Of course, there is still plenty of bad calls. But at least they are made by people devoted year round to the sport. Poor Mr. Hoculi will never get a break again, will he?

- Baseball records have more magic in them. A pitcher reaching 300 wins has much more glam factor than a quarterback getting to 60,000 yards passing. The only thing close in football is a rusher getting to 15,000 yards or something.

- Baseball has better single performance juice. A player can hit for the cycle or get four home runs in a game or throw a no-hitter or get an unassisted triple play. A quarterback gets 400 yards passing in a game? meh. The only thing close is 200 yards gained by either a rusher or pass receiver.

- Every baseball game (except for rain outs) gives each team an equal opportunity to win. In a typical nine inning game, each team will bat nine times. If the game goes to extra innings, each team will still have equal opportunities. In football, you have that terrible overtime rule where a team winning the overtime toss can be the only team to touch the ball in overtime when they win.

- There are no ties in baseball. As Eagles fans know real well, a football game can still end in a tie. Well, there was a tie in the All Star Game. But that was a once-in-a-century thing and the game didn't count.

- Speaking of All Star Games, the baseball All Star showcase is way cooler than the Pro Bowl.

- Spring Training games are much more interesting than pre-season football.

- The yearly off season or Hot Stove League is much more interesting than off season football (unless you lived in Green Bay for the last five seasons).

- Fantasy leagues give you 162 chances to win instead of 17.

- Baseball cards are much cooler than football cards.

- A Joe Montana football will never sell as much as a Mickey Mantle baseball.

- In baseball, you don't have to wait seven days for the next game.

- At a baseball game, at least one player will be somewhat near you no matter where you sit. In football, you could be 80 yards from any action.

- Baseball is played in the warmer months so you don't have to get frost bite to see a game and bare chested guys with letters on their stomachs aren't as necessarily crazy at a baseball game.

- There has never been a football mascot even close to the San Diego Chicken.

- The baseball Hall of Fame seems more meaningful than the Canton equivalent.

- Baseball gives you at least five to six articles a week from your favorite sports writer and not two or three like in football.

- The one on one match up between the pitcher and the batter can only be somewhat matched by the match up of the quarterback and middle linebacker. And the latter match up still depends on 20 other guys to determine the outcome.

- Related to a previous reason, at a baseball game, the fans wear much less clothing than at a football game (except in Tampa or Miami or San Diego) which is better for members of either gender.

- There is no football equivalent to the seventh inning stretch.

- Baseball players seem to have less tattoos than their football counterparts. This is purely a personal difference.

- Only Pat Summerall and John Madden even come close to legends like Harry Carey, Phil Rizzuto, Curt Gowdy, Joe Garagiola, Jack Buck and on and on go the examples.

- Except for Japanese players, you can pronounce most baseball player's names. There are few African names in baseball...yet.

- If you are in a real hurry, a digitally recorded baseball game can be zipped through faster than a football game. Try it some time. Nine innings can go by in about 12 minutes.

- Pitchers can throw 100 MPH or 60 MPH and be just as effective. Quarterbacks (just ask this year's Cowboy fans) cannot have weak arms and be consistently effective.

- Baseball players can get their own drinks in the dugout. For some reason, football players' hands don't seem to work and assistants need to squirt liquid into their mouths for them.

- No baseball player in view will be riding an exercise bike.

- There are no cheerleaders in baseball.

Ways that Football is Better than Baseball

- There are cheerleaders in football.

- There are more 'Oooh' moments in football. There are probably six to ten good hits a game in football and there might be one time a week where the runner crashes into home plate. Big and cool plays happen much more often at a football game than at a baseball game.

- A Barry Sanders run is oodles more fun than a Vince Coleman triple.

- There is no baseball equivalent to a perfectly executed long bomb from from a quarterback to a deep running receiver.

- Half time give you the opportunity to go to the bathroom and still make it back in time. Plus you may get a good act that performs (unless it's Janet Jackson 0r something).

- Baseball doesn't have anything like NFL Films and that guy with the great voice doing the narration to that really great music. The best baseball ever had was Mel Allen saying, "How about that" to a syndicated show on Saturdays. Not even close.

- The World Series never gets really cool and funny commercials like the Super Bowl.

- Really bad teams only make their fans suffer for 16 games instead of 162.

- Football reviews more plays via video tape. It took an act of Congress to get baseball to simply review foul pole if-scenarios.

- Football doesn't have glaring rule weak spots like baseball's strike zones. You may have one out of every five umpires that will call a letter-high fastball a strike, which is terrible.

- You always play football no matter the weather (except for hurricanes and the like).

- The head coach in football can run up and down the field and keep coaching. If the manager did that in baseball, he gets thrown out of the game.

- Officials in football get to throw yellow flag bombs at offending players. How cool is that?

- Football games are probably better television.

More will probably come to the Fan once this blog is published. If you would like to add your own reasons one way or another, drop a note.

The Fan would like to give a big welcome to his first follower, Josh Borenstein. Josh publishes a blog called Jews in Baseball, which is a pretty cool idea. The Fan is half Sicilian and has always theorized that Italians were the lost ten tribes of Israel. After all, our mothers give us the same guilt and we both get blamed for all the crime in America. Nice to have you, Josh, and continued success and fun with your blog.