A reader writes:
Another reason why inactivity is an integral part of watching baseball was summed up by Robert Benchley: “One of the chief duties of the fan is to engage in arguments with the man behind him.” Watching baseball by yourself is entertaining only in proportion to your understanding of the subtleties of the game; but watching in a group or crowd inevitably turns into conversation, and it becomes the most convivial of spectator sports.
On that note, another sends the above video to defend the sport’s stasis:
At 300 feet away from the batter and the pitcher, you can have this interaction with the right fielder.
Another reader:
Here’s something that drives me crazy when people complain that there’s too much inactivity in baseball, and that it is thus boring. There are far fewer “time outs” than people realize, especially when there are runners on base. When the catcher tosses the ball back to the pitcher? Time’s in. If the catcher overthrows the pitcher, or throws it back too slowly, or the pitcher drops the ball, the runners will advance. When the pitcher is looking in at the catcher to get the sign? The runners can take off. If there’s a runner on second and the third baseman is playing too far from the bag to cover a throw from the catcher? Again, there goes the runner.
And all the while, infielders are shifting from one spot to another, to induce the runner to take too big a lead so that he can be picked off, or to hold him closer to the bag. Plus, the batter and runners take signs from the third base coach that are flashed too quickly for spectators to take notice, and the pitcher and catcher are changing sign sequences to keep their communications secret, often with instructions from the dugout.
Nothing going on? Bullshit.
Another:
Lowen Liu asks, “What other sport teases your attention in this way, dares you to look away, to yawn … ?” The answer is professional football.
There is almost 60% more action in a three-hour baseball game than a three-hour football game. According to a Wall Street Journal study of four games from week 16, the average NFL game features just 10 minutes 43 seconds of action. Commercials account for nearly 60 minutes of the three-hour affair. And when the networks are showing the game, the bulk of the time is spent either on replays or shots of players huddling, in pre-snap formations or “milling about.”
Another adds:
Sometimes the NFL game clock continues counting down while bunches of players or referees get together to have a chat. And then in a close game, just when the drama should be at its peak, the offensive team with a lead (and sometimes even a narrowly trailing team with the ball) is given an incentive to stand around doing nothing for half a minute every time it starts a play to run down the clock. Stand around, stand around, wait, count 35 seconds, then snap! And then 22 men spend 10 seconds sprinting maybe 40 feet each. Usually less. Then walk around a bit, get back in line, and wait for it, wait for it, have we counted to 35 yet? And repeat.
Ugh.
As a born-and-bred Midwesterner, I never questioned the constant action of the game my family watched every Sunday … until I caught games from the 1998 World Cup on TV. When the NFL season began a few weeks later, I couldn’t stop noticing, and being hopelessly bored by, the long stretches of nothingness that actually characterize the American game. Not that I became some huge soccer fan, but American football, with its endless committee meetings and appellate court proceedings and “athletes” who often play only a few dozen seconds per week, quickly became too boring for me to watch. When I kept a stopwatch of actual game-playing action a decade or so ago, I kept coming up with a figure of about 1/8, or about 88% downtime.
Don’t get me wrong – a football game is great background noise for a party. But to sit down and spend three hours paying attention? Give me a baseball game any time, or hockey, or even, yes, the one-and-a-half soccer games that can be played in the same span.
Another looks to another sport:
Lowen Liu claims that part of the beauty of baseball is the down time. So I guess Test Match Cricket, played over five days; with meal, drinks and sleep breaks in between; where attending any one day of play does not guarantee you will see all the players on the field (or even see the match reach a conclusion); and a two-hour nap wouldn’t matter a jot; then Test Match cricket must be THE beautiful game!
Of course the five-day limit is a modern adjustment – they used to play on until there was a winner. In Durban 1939, England played South Africa for ten days, until they were forced to call it a draw because the ship was leaving to take the England team back home! Now there’s a game with down time …
The Dish 