The best of all games?

The thing speaks for itself.

At the time he wrote the letter baseball’s rules had been static for under a decade.

And I thought that I couldn’t like him anymore than I already did.

I’m trying to think which Nobel Prize winners (a) have Yorkshire accents, (b) may have talked to Harry Brighouse about basketball. It suggests a tyke relocated to North America, of course. But who and what discipline? Michael Smith (Biology) was from Blackpool, and had a broad Lancastrian accent, but surely you would know the difference?

He’s wrong about basketball – nothing happens till the last minute if the score is close. If it’s not close, nothing ever happens at all. Either way the last minute takes fifteen minutes what with all the time outs and intentional fouls and the resulting free throws – and surely the free throw is the most exciting play in sports with the possible exception of castling.

Insufferable and racially and socio-economically compromised it may be, but golf still reigns supreme.

my name is a clue of sorts

I have a dog from Yorkshire who is hairy. She went to the States last year. No prizes, though.

Nice to know Rawls agrees with me. See my comment #12 about cricket and baseball here.

There are different ways a sport can be good or bad: basketball and soccer are insufferably boring to watch, but a lot more fun to play. The “played by physical freaks” aspect only really applies at the highest levels, as does the problem of the game constantly stopping for fouls, so ordinary people can have a perfectly enjoyable pickup game. And though I love the clockless aspect of baseball and tennis, it doesn’t really matter when you have an effective time limit of “when everybody has to leave.”

And of course, the real advantage of these sports is how cheap they are: fields (in a rural setting) or basketball courts (in an urban one) are pretty easy to find, and then all you need is a ball. There’s no need for gloves, rackets, etc., and you can play even if you only have two people (baseball requires lots of people, and for golf, as I understand it, you need hundreds of dollars of equipment, acres of land, a full staff of domestic servants, and a little car).

On the other hand, I think that letter misses one of my favorite aspects of (professional) baseball: sort of the opposite of the “played by physical freaks” problem. In other sports, the best players are either freaks who belong in in a sideshow, or great athletes who belong among classical Greek statues: only in baseball (and this isn’t as true as it used to be) do some of the greatest players look like ordinary shlubs with beer guts.

There are different ways a sport can be good or bad: basketball and soccer are insufferably boring to watch

The NCAA Final Four tournament is the most exciting sporting event televised.

The NCAA Final Four tournament is the most exciting sporting event televised.

There’s obviously no arguing with this kind of statement; and in the end, what we find exciting has a lot to do with what we’re used to. I’m used to watching pro baseball and football, so that’s (mostly) what I like.

But I still think, in terms of their essential characteristics, basketball and soccer are pretty bad to watch. I grew up occasionally playing, though hardly ever watching, both basketball and soccer, but I can’t watch more than a few minutes without my mind wandering. On the other hand, I’ve played tennis maybe six times in my life, and didn’t even understand the rules till I was an adult, but whenever it’s on TV I find myself hooked. (Of course, maybe that’s just because I’ve been conditioned to like my sports divided into individual plays, rather than continuous.)

only in baseball (and this isn’t as true as it used to be) do some of the greatest players look like ordinary shlubs with beer guts.

Not just some of the greatest, but the single greatest.

You missed the agony and glory—for me, mostly agony—of this weekend’s FA Cup sixth round, I take it?

Sadly such events aren’t available to me right now, but I have been a devoted fan in the past.

I confess things like this sound appealing in the NCAA way.

alanm – well done. He was a postdoc in Madison in 69-71 (or thereabouts). He’s my godfather, having befriended my dad in college because, on the grounds of his name alone, he assumed he would be not posh, and ok. Or so the story goes.

only in baseball (and this isn’t as true as it used to be) do some of the greatest players look like ordinary shlubs with beer guts.

Another related reason that baseball and its gentler cousin softball are so popular as participatory sports here in the US is that it is one of the few sports that ordinary shlubs can continue to play well into their 40s, 50, and even 60s.

Go out to the softball diamonds on any spring or summer evening and you’ll find them full of middle aged men and women. There are even senior leagues for the 50+ shlubs.

American Football is the most telegenic game.

There’s something really satisfying about listening to it. I don’t care about the game but when I’m doing something else it makes it really sound like something big is happening.

I think one of the biggest reasons to like or dislike a sport is also dependent on the way you were raised. I grew up in Europe, so I’m a big soccer fan. I can see that it is boring to watch these amateurs playing soccer in the US, but if you see the best athletes compete in an important soccer match, there is nothing what comes close to it in respect of exitement.
It’s like the tension during last minute of a close basketball match, the last drive in a Superbowl match, the 9th inning of the last world series game, but for 90 min (with a 15min break).

In American Football, they play for some time ->they punt ->commercial break -> the other team attacks and scores a touchdown -> commercial break -> kickoff -> commercial break -> attack -> timeout = commercial break -> punt-> commercial break…. It’s the same for all american sports. These commercial breaks totally ruin the tension. Furthermore, all the stuff that happens in the first half or even later is more or less irrelevant, cause each time can easily fight back if the deficit is not too big.
In soccer, if your team is playing against Italy, and they score in the 5th minute of the game, it’s a big problem for your team, cause these italian guys know how to defend. So, it is excitement from the very first minute.

Also, I’d like to add that the soccer players are real athletes in my opinion. In American sports, the guys are either slow (Baseball), slow and fat (Baseball, Football) or huge steroid shaped mosters (Football, Baseball, Basketball), but very few of them are role models for a healthy lifestyle.

Are we talking games here, or are we talking sports? Because there’s a lot to be said for poker.

I have a theory. It goes that Tom Hurka is actually running a long gag (or experiment if you wish) in which he disagrees with anything coming from Rawls, supporters of Rawls, defenders of Rawls, those sympathetic to Rawls, people who cite Rawls in their papers and some guy who once bumped into Rawls walking across the Harvard yard.

It’s an excellent gag. Even card-carrying members of the church of Jack have to give it to Hurka for sheer commitment to a bit. Bravo sir.

only in baseball and cricket (and this isn’t as true as it used to be) do some of the greatest players look like ordinary shlubs with beer guts.

I don’t think there’s a caption on that pic. For the benefit of Americans and youth, it’s Colin Milburn, who I once watched score 200 in four hours.

And Milburn managed that with only one eye.

What’s more complex and why? I mean more complex than football and not football as you describe it.

Lots of sports. I like football too, but I think that announcers’ jargon obscures the fact that there really are only a few simple things going on:

Protect the passer (knock the other guys down) while the receivers try to outrun or otherwise evade the secondary, according to some complex-sounding scheme that amounts to trying to get a receiver-defender mismatch. Then throw the ball. This is a little more sophisticated than back-yard touch football players saying “Jimmy go long and Tommy go short to the right,” but not much.

Or:

Open up a hole in the line (knock the other guys down) so your running back can carry the ball through without being knocked down himself for a while.

Most complex in terms of strategy: doubtful. Knocking the other guys down or outrunning them may be exciting to watch, but neither one is a complex strategy.

One of the odd things about football is that the greatest quarterbacks may be just not that great as pure athletes — not as big, fast or strong (or strong-armed) as others at their position. What a quarterback needs to be able to do is to be able to perceive and evaluate complex action unfolding down the field in the midst of a swarm of bodies struggling around him which swarm could collapse on top of him momentarily. And he must perform this evaluation without looking directly at the players of interest (to avoid giving his intentions away). In fact, to be effective, he must, in fact, direct his gaze elsewhere to freeze a defender just long enough to create space to complete the pass. And he must effectively balance risk and and reward — determining when to try to squeeze a throw into a crowded area, or to make a safe (but low value) play, or throw the ball out of bounds, or even allow the rushers to tackle him. Many who are spectacular successes at the college level (where the game is only marginally slower and simpler) fail utterly as professionals, and this has nothing to do with their athleticism.

And it’s not only the quarterback. Receivers, for example, must make the same recognitions as their quarterbacks because often the receiver is expected to choose a pass route depending on recognizing a particular defensive alignment, and the quarterback and receiver must make the same ‘read’ because the quarterback is going to throw the ball where he expects the receiver to be — before the receiver is actually cuts that way. It’s an act of trust. Often when you see what looks like a particularly bone-headed interception by a quarterback, the reason for it was that the QB and the receiver read the defense differently. And a reason for them to make such mistakes is that the defenses are, of course, actively trying to disguise their formations and strategies.

And the guy who actually decides what plays to run isn’t on the field at all and usually not even on the sidelines but is up in the press box (where he can have a birds-eye view of the action).

One of the odd things about football right now is that after the quarterback, the next highest paid player on the team is often the left tackle — a player who never scores or even touches the ball, never does anything flashy, and who the TV cameras never focus on. Twenty years ago, the left tackle was still a nobody — until Lawrence Taylor came along. The change he brought to the game made left tackles indispensable in a way they never were in the first 100 or so years of the game.

The level of differentiation by position seems greater than other sports — not only are players specialized for a particular offensive or defensive positions, but often different players are shuffled in for particular game situations (e.g. different defensive linemen when a passing play is expected vs a run). Which opens the possibility of a strategy of running plays so quickly that neither team can substitute.

And so on. I just don’t see this level of complexity and specialization in other team sports.

In soccer each player has to make split second decisions all the time. On the ball they have to decide whether to take another touch and create more space, whether to try and beat a another player or choose pass and then execute it. Off the ball you have to consider your position for helping in either attack or defence. And this is in a game with few set plays or long breaks, to pause and consider your decisions.

In rugby the fly half has to decide whether to run, pass or kick. Is having lots of specialist players a good thing? One of the biggest changes in rugby since the early 90s is that it’s fater and players have to react more quickly to the game and be able to cover different positions. But really comparing sports is silly.

slocum,

What you describe as the talents required of a quarterback are those required of players in other sports as well. They amount to an exceptional sense of the spatial relationships of the other players. John McPhee, writing about Bill Bradley, called it A Sense of Where You Are. The great basketball and hockey players, at least, exhibit this talent in their passes and movements.

As for specialization by position, surely this is just a function of the substitution rules. Football can enjoy high degrees of specialization because it has free substitution. Baseball does not, so there is a tradeoff to be made between defensive skills and batting. Aside from pitchers, and sometimes shortstops and catchers, batting usually trumps, but it remains an issue. And of course there are differences in the skills needed for different positions.

Here the substitution rules impose different tactical considerations. Put in a pinch-runner? Use the left-handed relief specialist now? Leave the righty in? Bring the closer in early?

I think the answer is that any interesting sport, to the dedicated fan, has strategic nuances that enhance its interest, but that may not be apparent to the casual watcher.

#31 Soccer hasn’t succeeded in any part of the former British empire – even less in India and Pakistan than in, say, Australia. I don’t have a theory for this, but the facts are evident.

FYI the proper name is not ´baseball´ but ´rounders´. And only girls play it.

No. Therefore football is simpler.

Are there penalties in baseball for too many/not enough guys on the field? If so, how often does that happen?

I’ve seen a bunch in the latter and none in the former. Simpler.

“First: the rules of the game are in equilibrium: that is, from the start, the diamond was made just the right size, the pitcher’s mound just the right distance from home plate, etc., and this makes possible the marvelous plays, such as the double play. The physical layout of the game is perfectly adjusted to the human skills it is meant to display and to call into graceful exercise.”

This is not right. Were the basepaths shorter or longer in length the fielders would play closer or farther away. Lengthening or shortening the field (and changing nothing else) would result in fewer or more hits, of course. But, the number of hits is a result of the overall balance of rules, and it is a matter of debate what the right balance should be. That balance has shifted throughout the history of the game, and changes in the rules, the mound, the ball etc have been used intentionally to adjust it. No reason the field couldn’t have been adjusted along with these other changes, (and in fact it has, if you count the outfield fences and the amount of playable foul terrritory)

Heh. It also might speak to the quality of individual employed to endure the head-butting of football.