When you hit a paywall, in Chrome just enter a space after the URL, select "search for http://... in google" and click on the 1st link. No need to copy and paste headlines
Take this as a learning opportunity. Anyone who visits your site and gets irritated by something is likely to close it and leave. And even if they were only there out of idle curiosity, you've just lost a chance to convert them.
So enough with the down-votes already - I really just didn't care enough even to click twice more to see what it was about. Telling you that shouldn't be punished, and is absolutely relevant to HN.
My original comment wasn't intended to be a complaint about the pay-wall, nor a claim that it was off-topic, although I can see how it may have been taken as such. Having already spent 10 seconds on something I clicked on just out of curiosity, I wasn't then going to spend another minute or five constructing a mini blog post.
However, I will now write something - I think people don't realise the effects caused by some of the web page interactions I see. But a comment buried in thread on a topic I don't care about is not the place to create any kind of fully reasoned position statement.
Thanks for the link - I'll go read that thread when I have some time.
Didn't read it but, as a non-american, non-japanese nor venezuelan, i wonder what is the fun of playing baseball, as it is mostly a still sport, with some sporadic movement. I really enjoy watching it because I can easily read a book without paying much attention to the game, which I can't do by watching basketball. But I usually sleep over the book and when i wake up, the game hasn't finished yet.
Me too, but playing soccer is a lot more fun, even for one of the worst player in the world (myself), who can run the entire field during the whole game without ever receiving the ball. At least, I do my physical exercises.
Actually, it all comes down to whether you can see and appreciate the skills involved or not. I didn't realize that in the beginning, but now I do. You have to know that there's a lot of skill and practice involved in making the way the players pass the ball (in soccer/basketball/hockey), the decisions they make to distribute the ball (e.g., attack from the middle, from the side, one-two passes and sometimes, individual dribbling skills). These are all very difficult to do for any amateur (or even some professional) players, and it becomes to see it AND appreciate that only after you've played soccer (basketball, hockey, or any sports you name it) yourself. I could watch a soccer game without any goals being scored and yet still get enjoyment out of it.
Another somewhat related analogy would be that I was never trained in playing any musical instruments; I never am interested in learning how to play one myself. But when I see an orchestra playing a random classical music (i.e. the kind of music I personally find boring), I still appreciate that they are showing off skill that they practiced to acquire for many years.
Actually, you have no idea what my background in the sport is. I enjoyed playing it for years. I hate watching it because it's boring as hell. Baseball is boring too, but there's a hell of a lot more strategy going on in that sport.
I actually compare soccer and baseball a lot; it's useful for explaining the appeal of one sport to people who like the other. In both, it's not always clear what's going on unless you are familiar with the game. If you're familiar, though, and you understand the subtleties, there's truly a lot to do and to watch.
In both, scoring events are usually rare, which leads casual spectators to think that not much is happening most of the time. Because of the rarity of scoring events, though, it almost always feels like either team can still win. That's actually a huge appeal, and something often underestimated.
The similarities basically end there, but those two pieces are big parts of the appeal of each sport. It's not the case that someone who likes one will also like the other, but it helps people understand a little better.
Agreed, and it is quite fun to learn how to swing a bat to cut against the ball. Something very satisfying when everything is aligned relaxed and tight on hit.
Agreed. I'm a foreigner living in the US. I attended a baseball game live by curiosity and found it incredibly boring. I mentioned it the next day to my co-workers and they told me that the only reason to go see a baseball game was to get drunk, shout a little and go home after an hour or so (that is 1/3 of the game).
Popularity of the sport may depend on the region though.
While I can enjoy hockey, basketball and even a little bit of football, baseball is just unwatchable. I guess you have to be born in it.
My beloved's grandpa Fred played on Iowa Sunday afternoons. A grown man with four kids, a wife, and full time work - first on the farm and later in the factory - standing around except for those moments when in a burst he beat the opponent or the opponent beat him was part of the appeal. Baseball is not called "The American sport." Baseball is the American pass time.
1.) You need a shit-load of people to play baseball anything like for-real. At minimum 15-20 people for two teams. Pretty tough to do as a kid, unless you're free to roam free all over town to gather a crew, which approximately 0% of kids have license/protection from CPS to do.
2.) You need a big enough area for a baseball diamond, where you don't have to worry about knocking out a window with a foul ball or an errant throw. Mostly, you aren't allowed to use the actual baseball fields to just play pickup. Compare with soccer or football, where any old open area is good enough, or basketball, which needs a hoop but probably takes the least space.
3.) Everybody needs at least a baseball glove. You also need a bat and a ball or two. Compare with sports that really don't require any specialized equipment, like soccer, football(two-hand-touch or recess-tackle style), and basketball.
4.) If you live in the northern half of the US, the season for playing baseball is almost exclusively during the summer months, when school isn't in session.
5.) Baseball on TV is maybe a half-step better than watching paint dry, and you have to pay for the privilege. Since they cleaned up the steroids, it's boring as hell.
Makes me wonder why did this sport ever become so famous. It's like cricket, except there are two large competing sports (football and basketball, even hockey and tennis somehow).
Baseball, in its original form (circa 1860s and 70s) was played with a softer makeshift ball and a modified axe handle and no gloves. It was an activity a small town could play together as well as a community event where two nearby communities would come together to play. I believe the American Civil War played a part in spreading it thoughout the country in a time where news didn't travel as fast. Basketball also came after baseball and not sure if it was quite as casual in its early form.
My brothers play for a historic reenactment team of that era and the game resembles present day softball than baseball with its casual play. There's players on their team age 18 to 70 and most of the teams they play are composed of people in smaller towns doing what they did 140 years ago, today. One of the more interesting games they hold every year is played on the statehouse lawn against our state representatives after work.
Oh yeah, they're quite different. I don't believe they really count strikes unless you swing and no ground rule double means that if a ball gets caught in a hole or brush, the runners almost always end up with an in the park home run.
Basketball and tennis are high-tech sports in the sense that they require a carefully prepared playing area and balls that bounce predictably.
That makes it much harder to improvise a playing field than is the case for baseball, cricket (needs a fairly small area where the ball can bounce off, and having an unpredictable bounce is considered a plus there), or, especially, soccer.
To play soccer, the minimum you need is an old newspaper or old rags that you shape into a ball-like form, something to tie around it to make it keep that shape, and anything that can be placed on the ground to indicate where one should imagine the goal posts to be, such as the coats of four players, marks drawn in the sand, etc.
I grew up playing wiffleball 2 vs 2, with ghost runners in a friend's backyard where the patio was 1st and the garden was 3rd. If you want to play a sport, when you're young you can make it happen. Kids playing soccer in Brazil don't need an 11 X 11 game with a regulation ball and goal
When we were kids we played with as few as 3 per team. Self pitching, ghost runners (if you toss to 3rd base before the runner reaches 2nd it's an out), etc
On the space side, we played where ever - you just needed a place to put down some bases or some trees that are relatively evenly spaced in 4 corners.
We made it more fun by playing with crappy tennis rackets and tennis balls we "popped".
You're right about "pure" baseball, but kids create their own ways to play games and baseball can be changed enough to be fun and fast paced.
Most of these sound good, but aren't true. If you go to poor countries where baseball is popular, you'll see people practicing in the street, with whatever makeshift ball and bat the can find. I saw Cubans practicing with sticks and balls of paper.
However, it's difficult to get adults to organize that kind of thing. I wonder if the fact that kids need adults to drive them is a factor.
That last bit is speculation. What's true is that numbers 1-3 aren't really a bar to practice, if the kids actually care.
It solves some of your problems - you can see poor kids in India playing it in alleyways pretty much the same way rich kids in England do - and, I think, it's a bit easier to hit the ball.
You really need only 2 people to play backyard cricket and it scales well with increasing numbers from there. You only need a bat-shaped object, a ball and something to use as the wicket. Objects from the local environment make excellent stand in fielders.
I think bowling competently is the barrier for new players.
You only need 2 people for backyard whiffle ball. I played 1 v 1 a lot because even if you joined several baseball teams, that could only get you 2-3 hours of baseball a day anytime except Saturday. 1v1 baseball generally required more work since a well hit baseball covers more ground.
We also played "pepper" which was a bunting game with at least two kids. "Hotbox" and "burnout", a base running drill/game and a slightly sadistic game of catch, were two more we could play with 2+. I also practiced pitching solo via a brick wall.
I get the feeling that having so many games dilutes the quality. I can't watch regular season basketball, baseball, or hockey because you get the feeling players sleepwalk through the season until it gets closer to playoff time. The playoffs of these sports are very exciting to me usually because if you don't win you're done.
Add to that the idea of intentionally tanking your season so you can do well in a draft (happens in the NFL too e.g. "Suck for Luck") and I have no idea how people can be interested in the regular seasons of these sports.
Completely agree re: tanking a season, but ticket sales and viewership tend to drop accordingly with that strategy. 76ers tickets this year are currently less than beer in the stadium [1]. The baseball season feels absurdly long to me.
I personally only watch regular season basketball, and it's more because I love the sport than any particular game. Probably wouldn't watch if I didn't play fairly seriously once upon a time, however.
you get the feeling players sleepwalk through the season until it gets closer to playoff time
I've also had this feeling. What I think should happen (so of course it won't) is for players to only get paid their absurdly high salaries for the games they win. Lose and only get league minimum. This would give players an incentive to play hard each and every game. I'm sure there's a lot wrong with that idea, and I haven't really though it through.
I don't think that sort of salary structure would work quite as readily in the NFL. There's much less guaranteed money, and marginal players are always getting cut. So most on an NFL team do play pretty hard. Also coaching decisions affect football far more than basketball. Suck for Luck is more on management than on the players. How do you disincentivise management from doing that?
And, every so often in the NFL, an Albert Haynesworth comes along and stops playing after getting a lot of guaranteed money. But that's mostly owner stupidity at work. Probably a little of that going on this year with Ndamukong Suh. Certainly a lot lot more of that going on in baseball and basketball with their ridiculously high guaranteed contracts.
In my neighbourhood, I was shocked to learn that the little league has to actually pay the city to use the community ball fields.
This came up in a conversation during AYSO soccer game where we were discussing the rising fees associated with the game.
To add to that, aluminum bats are $100+ and kids get to keep their jerseys. When I was young, the league recycled jerseys and had community equipment bags.
You're probably right. Like w1ntermute, I find baseball incredibly boring (even though I did play baseball for a few years when I was younger and quite enjoyed it). Golf? Even worse.
Probably related, I am an incredibly impatient person. I absolutely cannot stand to be sitting around "idle" or doing something I perceive to be a waste of time. It even bothers me to be having a conversation with people who take forever to tell a story ("just get to the damn point already, I don't need to hear every little detail!"). Baseball and golf fall into that same category for me. Why would I want to spend three hours watching a game when I could be doing something productive?
On the other hand, I ride my Harley every chance I get (to the tune of almost 10,000 miles this past summer). Many days I don't even have a destination when I leave home. I jump on and just ride. I have many friends I ride with and occasionally we'll ride a few hours together just to have lunch somewhere and turn around and come back. Really, I should consider this just as much of a waste of time but, for whatever reason, I don't see it that way. People who haven't ever rode a bike can't/don't understand the allure of it or why I enjoy it so much.
Taking long drives to nowhere needs constant short term attention, so you're engaged even though in the end it was an hour you could've done something better in.
By the way, if you find yourself unable to do anything without a constant reward or threat of death if you stop paying attention, you have ADHD and should see a doctor.
If you've never managed to throw a nice curveball, or hit a homer, or make a great diving catch, you'll never understand.
I grew up watching baseball on TV. But it was only after watching my daughter play competitive softball for a number of years did I really begin to understand how much was happening. On every single pitch of every at bat.
That sounds like American football too. 3.25 hours of clock time, 60 minutes of a game, and 11 minutes of actual action (or closer to 96% of the time standing around.)
It's curious that few complain about NFL game lengths, considering they take 13 minutes longer, more time than the 11 total minutes of actual game play during an NFL game. In other words, you could fit all the action of an average NFL game into the spare time after an average baseball game ends.
Setting aside personal preference and the vast differences in play between the two sports, you also need to consider the number of games played in a season. An NFL team plays 16 games in the regular season. An MLB team plays 162. While a baseball game and a football game may be similar in duration and proportion of action to dead time, a football game carries much more weight and I think this contributes to the relative popularity of the sport over baseball.
I started to enjoy watching football a lot more once a friend explained that it's really more like chess than soccer. Really, the game is between two coaches, who have an array of players, practiced plays and assistant coaches at hand. Viewed that way, the 60-minute game time is comprised of a series of moves, with the coaches responding to each other and the time remaining on the clock.
There's still a bunch of time lost to unnecessary commercial breaks and the halftime rigmarole, though.
That's if you're watching professional sports on TV. The article is about children playing the sport themselves, so I was referring to playing baseball vs. football or basketball, not watching endless beer/car/fantasy sports commercials interspersed with occasional gameplay.
When my father was growing up, teenagers in the towns around were self-organizing and played baseball on their own, the guys from this town against the guys from that town. All summer.
When I was growing up, the grown-ups organized everything and decided who played when, and we had...maybe ten? games in a summer, with a few practice sessions before that. It's been a while, but I have the idea that if you were good enough to be in the lineup regularly, you'd get something like 25 chances to hit a baseball per year. Or wait, I think we had games that were more like seven innings. Maybe 25 was an overestimate.
PS Also, something about the death of the baseball card and how the major league strike of 1994 led a generation to move on.
PPS I remember it being fascinating to learn that teenagers were allowed -- or had the idea it was possible -- or something -- to do something so on their own.
Baseball was my favorite sport as a kid. I followed it very closely, had thousands of baseball cards, and could rattle off statistics for hours. I was about 15 when the strike took place, just old enough to understand what was going on and decide that I didn't like it -- it really struck me wrong and made me not care about baseball anymore. I stopped watching it and haven't cared for it since.
Competitive gaming (esports) is growing rapidly among the typical varsity high school sports audience. I used to run a high school varsity esports league around this: http://www.hsstarleague.com
When you fly over the US, there are thousands of baseball fields. Sadly, however, there are more options (video games, computers, etc) for how kids spend their time. Most new baseball players are in-sourced from the Dominican, Columbia, etc, too. There are still 13-15 million people playing little league in the US.
I wonder if the fact the the US is largely a sports-isolationist is part of the problem.
Growing up in Australia, the summer was defined by international cricket. Everyone grows up supporting the national team, everyone can watch the game on free TV, and an international summer comprises as little as 5 tests and 8 one-day matches, so it is tractable for kids to watch most of the games. (1990s era fixtures, things are a little different today: less one-day internationals, more 2020, and the BBL, though still on free TV). The lack of constant cricket on TV gives kids time to play it in between watching it.
Contrast with baseball without (1) season-defining international fixtures, (2) a clearly-defined pinnacle of the game, (3) a national team for all kids to get behind. Are those hundreds of MBL fixtures largely hidden on cable TV?
64 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadReprint of the article there, and commentary on the article on Forbes.
Closed.
(I wish HN would rename the link, as I see these posts several times a day and it's a useful feature).
So enough with the down-votes already - I really just didn't care enough even to click twice more to see what it was about. Telling you that shouldn't be punished, and is absolutely relevant to HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
My original comment wasn't intended to be a complaint about the pay-wall, nor a claim that it was off-topic, although I can see how it may have been taken as such. Having already spent 10 seconds on something I clicked on just out of curiosity, I wasn't then going to spend another minute or five constructing a mini blog post.
However, I will now write something - I think people don't realise the effects caused by some of the web page interactions I see. But a comment buried in thread on a topic I don't care about is not the place to create any kind of fully reasoned position statement.
Thanks for the link - I'll go read that thread when I have some time.
Another somewhat related analogy would be that I was never trained in playing any musical instruments; I never am interested in learning how to play one myself. But when I see an orchestra playing a random classical music (i.e. the kind of music I personally find boring), I still appreciate that they are showing off skill that they practiced to acquire for many years.
In both, scoring events are usually rare, which leads casual spectators to think that not much is happening most of the time. Because of the rarity of scoring events, though, it almost always feels like either team can still win. That's actually a huge appeal, and something often underestimated.
The similarities basically end there, but those two pieces are big parts of the appeal of each sport. It's not the case that someone who likes one will also like the other, but it helps people understand a little better.
That having been said, it's hard to sit still for it.
Popularity of the sport may depend on the region though.
While I can enjoy hockey, basketball and even a little bit of football, baseball is just unwatchable. I guess you have to be born in it.
You see other kids playing it, and that's where the fun is - with just about any game.
Growing up, we liked to play fast-paced games like soccer and tag, and games that emphasized skill like baseball, or even bocce.
I cannot remember a game that any of us thought was too boring to play.
1.) You need a shit-load of people to play baseball anything like for-real. At minimum 15-20 people for two teams. Pretty tough to do as a kid, unless you're free to roam free all over town to gather a crew, which approximately 0% of kids have license/protection from CPS to do.
2.) You need a big enough area for a baseball diamond, where you don't have to worry about knocking out a window with a foul ball or an errant throw. Mostly, you aren't allowed to use the actual baseball fields to just play pickup. Compare with soccer or football, where any old open area is good enough, or basketball, which needs a hoop but probably takes the least space.
3.) Everybody needs at least a baseball glove. You also need a bat and a ball or two. Compare with sports that really don't require any specialized equipment, like soccer, football(two-hand-touch or recess-tackle style), and basketball.
4.) If you live in the northern half of the US, the season for playing baseball is almost exclusively during the summer months, when school isn't in session.
5.) Baseball on TV is maybe a half-step better than watching paint dry, and you have to pay for the privilege. Since they cleaned up the steroids, it's boring as hell.
My brothers play for a historic reenactment team of that era and the game resembles present day softball than baseball with its casual play. There's players on their team age 18 to 70 and most of the teams they play are composed of people in smaller towns doing what they did 140 years ago, today. One of the more interesting games they hold every year is played on the statehouse lawn against our state representatives after work.
It was pretty neat to watch, although it took me a bit to understand it as the rules then were significantly different from present day rules.
That makes it much harder to improvise a playing field than is the case for baseball, cricket (needs a fairly small area where the ball can bounce off, and having an unpredictable bounce is considered a plus there), or, especially, soccer.
To play soccer, the minimum you need is an old newspaper or old rags that you shape into a ball-like form, something to tie around it to make it keep that shape, and anything that can be placed on the ground to indicate where one should imagine the goal posts to be, such as the coats of four players, marks drawn in the sand, etc.
1. It's difficult to play without least a couple midfielders, a goalie, and some defenders
3. Everyone needs at least a lacrosse stick, and a ball (although lacrosse balls are small and easy to lose, so it's better to have a few on hand)
4. Same
It's also one of the most expensive sports to play, and few schools (high schools at least) subsidize it like they do with American Football.
On the space side, we played where ever - you just needed a place to put down some bases or some trees that are relatively evenly spaced in 4 corners.
We made it more fun by playing with crappy tennis rackets and tennis balls we "popped".
You're right about "pure" baseball, but kids create their own ways to play games and baseball can be changed enough to be fun and fast paced.
However, it's difficult to get adults to organize that kind of thing. I wonder if the fact that kids need adults to drive them is a factor.
That last bit is speculation. What's true is that numbers 1-3 aren't really a bar to practice, if the kids actually care.
Aside from Japan, and now apparently Cuba, I haven't heard of it being played anywhere.
Most of the world plays football (soccer for the US folks here).
http://espn.go.com/mlb/latinosrise/columns/story?columnist=s...
It solves some of your problems - you can see poor kids in India playing it in alleyways pretty much the same way rich kids in England do - and, I think, it's a bit easier to hit the ball.
Plus breaking for tea is part of the game...
I think bowling competently is the barrier for new players.
We also played "pepper" which was a bunting game with at least two kids. "Hotbox" and "burnout", a base running drill/game and a slightly sadistic game of catch, were two more we could play with 2+. I also practiced pitching solo via a brick wall.
Add to that the idea of intentionally tanking your season so you can do well in a draft (happens in the NFL too e.g. "Suck for Luck") and I have no idea how people can be interested in the regular seasons of these sports.
I personally only watch regular season basketball, and it's more because I love the sport than any particular game. Probably wouldn't watch if I didn't play fairly seriously once upon a time, however.
1: http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2015/12/8/9870812/sixers-tick...
I've also had this feeling. What I think should happen (so of course it won't) is for players to only get paid their absurdly high salaries for the games they win. Lose and only get league minimum. This would give players an incentive to play hard each and every game. I'm sure there's a lot wrong with that idea, and I haven't really though it through.
I don't think that sort of salary structure would work quite as readily in the NFL. There's much less guaranteed money, and marginal players are always getting cut. So most on an NFL team do play pretty hard. Also coaching decisions affect football far more than basketball. Suck for Luck is more on management than on the players. How do you disincentivise management from doing that?
And, every so often in the NFL, an Albert Haynesworth comes along and stops playing after getting a lot of guaranteed money. But that's mostly owner stupidity at work. Probably a little of that going on this year with Ndamukong Suh. Certainly a lot lot more of that going on in baseball and basketball with their ridiculously high guaranteed contracts.
This came up in a conversation during AYSO soccer game where we were discussing the rising fees associated with the game.
To add to that, aluminum bats are $100+ and kids get to keep their jerseys. When I was young, the league recycled jerseys and had community equipment bags.
If you've never managed to throw a nice curveball, or hit a homer, or make a great diving catch, you'll never understand.
You do something like that once, and you can easily get hooked on standing in line for another chance to replicate it.
It's kind of like golf, but it sounds like you probably don't like that game either.
Probably related, I am an incredibly impatient person. I absolutely cannot stand to be sitting around "idle" or doing something I perceive to be a waste of time. It even bothers me to be having a conversation with people who take forever to tell a story ("just get to the damn point already, I don't need to hear every little detail!"). Baseball and golf fall into that same category for me. Why would I want to spend three hours watching a game when I could be doing something productive?
On the other hand, I ride my Harley every chance I get (to the tune of almost 10,000 miles this past summer). Many days I don't even have a destination when I leave home. I jump on and just ride. I have many friends I ride with and occasionally we'll ride a few hours together just to have lunch somewhere and turn around and come back. Really, I should consider this just as much of a waste of time but, for whatever reason, I don't see it that way. People who haven't ever rode a bike can't/don't understand the allure of it or why I enjoy it so much.
Different strokes for different folks.
By the way, if you find yourself unable to do anything without a constant reward or threat of death if you stop paying attention, you have ADHD and should see a doctor.
I grew up watching baseball on TV. But it was only after watching my daughter play competitive softball for a number of years did I really begin to understand how much was happening. On every single pitch of every at bat.
It's totally different than "standing around".
http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/64441086/nfl-statistica...
Good quote:
It's curious that few complain about NFL game lengths, considering they take 13 minutes longer, more time than the 11 total minutes of actual game play during an NFL game. In other words, you could fit all the action of an average NFL game into the spare time after an average baseball game ends.
There's still a bunch of time lost to unnecessary commercial breaks and the halftime rigmarole, though.
When I was growing up, the grown-ups organized everything and decided who played when, and we had...maybe ten? games in a summer, with a few practice sessions before that. It's been a while, but I have the idea that if you were good enough to be in the lineup regularly, you'd get something like 25 chances to hit a baseball per year. Or wait, I think we had games that were more like seven innings. Maybe 25 was an overestimate.
PS Also, something about the death of the baseball card and how the major league strike of 1994 led a generation to move on.
PPS I remember it being fascinating to learn that teenagers were allowed -- or had the idea it was possible -- or something -- to do something so on their own.
...But I do wonder if there may be a reversal of the trend on the horizon as the backlash against football grows.
And the same decline is happening on Brazil and some European countries (for soccer).
I'd suggest another reason: computer/phone games and internet.
Want to see decline - take a look at US Slow Pitch Softball - http://www.athleticbusiness.com/Recreation/slow-pitch-softba...
Growing up in Australia, the summer was defined by international cricket. Everyone grows up supporting the national team, everyone can watch the game on free TV, and an international summer comprises as little as 5 tests and 8 one-day matches, so it is tractable for kids to watch most of the games. (1990s era fixtures, things are a little different today: less one-day internationals, more 2020, and the BBL, though still on free TV). The lack of constant cricket on TV gives kids time to play it in between watching it.
Contrast with baseball without (1) season-defining international fixtures, (2) a clearly-defined pinnacle of the game, (3) a national team for all kids to get behind. Are those hundreds of MBL fixtures largely hidden on cable TV?