There's nothing inherently exciting about baseball.

"Baseball commentators always speak in hushed tones when they say that hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things in sports. But it's intrinsically difficult, like say riding a bicycle up and down the Alps. It's only difficult against a highly skilled pitcher, and against one who is less skilled it's a home run derby. That makes those sanctimonious statements laughable because all sports are difficult at the highest level. Moreover, at the high level sometimes players hit a well-pitched ball, but it goes to fielders."

You can twist words all you want, but the fact remains that if you can hit (fairly) one out of three times over the course of your career, you are a hall of famer. There aren't many sporting activities that consider failing 2 out of 3 times to be greatness.

@consider this wrote:

"Baseball commentators always speak in hushed tones when they say that hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things in sports. But it's intrinsically difficult, like say riding a bicycle up and down the Alps. It's only difficult against a highly skilled pitcher, and against one who is less skilled it's a home run derby. That makes those sanctimonious statements laughable because all sports are difficult at the highest level. Moreover, at the high level sometimes players hit a well-pitched ball, but it goes to fielders."

You can twist words all you want, but the fact remains that if you can hit (fairly) one out of three times over the course of your career, you are a hall of famer. There aren't many sporting activities that consider failing 2 out of 3 times to be greatness.

A batter has beaten the pitcher if he gets on base, by a hit or base on balls. You can't get in the hall of fame by reaching base one third of the time.

most difficult coordination wrote:

Most difficult coordination activity in all sports is to hit a round baseball with a round wooden bat. Fastball: as fast as 104 mph. Slider: as fast as 90 plus mph. Curve ball: app. 70 mph. Change-up, app. 80 mph.

Cool. Regardless of what you said being right or wrong, it is still incredibly boring for most people. The most energy used by the overwhelming majority of the players is the jog in and out of the dugout each inning.

Shohei Ohtani is exciting

No sport requires more mental acuity than baseball.

Baseball is boring. Period

Athletically nothing rivals the NBA as a whole. Individually, NFL cornerbacks are the best athletes in the world

most difficult coordination wrote:

Most difficult coordination activity in all sports is to hit a round baseball with a round wooden bat. Fastball: as fast as 104 mph. Slider: as fast as 90 plus mph. Curve ball: app. 70 mph. Change-up, app. 80 mph.

Disagree, and I played baseball my entire life.

Have you ever tried boxing. Try to punch a moving target that is trying to KNOCK YOU OUT, and you are not wearing padding to protect yourself.

Uhh, folks, different people have different tastes, likes, preferences, etc. Trying to JUDGE those things, and place them in categories (exciting, difficult, boring, etc) is trolling, and/or arrogance.

Do you tell people who they should be in love with, what faith (if any) they should be a part of, or whether they should prefer pretzels, or potato chips?

I love baseball (getting ready to watch Yankees-Tigers doubleheader)! Don't particularly care for golf, but can appreciate others being fascinated and excited by it!

By the way, am entering my 50th year as a high school cross country, and track and field coach.

I kinda like those sports also.

Limahl wrote:

most difficult coordination wrote:

Most difficult coordination activity in all sports is to hit a round baseball with a round wooden bat. Fastball: as fast as 104 mph. Slider: as fast as 90 plus mph. Curve ball: app. 70 mph. Change-up, app. 80 mph.

Disagree, and I played baseball my entire life.

Have you ever tried boxing. Try to punch a moving target that is trying to KNOCK YOU OUT, and you are not wearing padding to protect yourself.

http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/sportSkills

Yes, I boxed for app. a year and a half for a club when I was elementary school age. I boxed and played baseball at the same time. I stopped boxing because maternal great grand mother begged me to stop boxing. Hitting a baseball is difficult, more difficult than boxing from a neuromuscular coordination aspect. You say you played baseball your entire life. You had a long professional career then in baseball. I stopped playing baseball when I could not tell the difference between an 80 + mph fastball and a slider at similar speed.

Not so fast bro wrote:

Requires good hand-eye coordination, but then so do video games.

Requires little to no athletic conditioning at all. Mostly standing around or sitting on a bench.

Bull crap...

These guys have tremendous power.

Also, less about hand-eye coordination than it is about good vision.

I will push back. I would say most pitchers start at a relatively young age. What you find is that players who make the majors often were pitchers as well as position players earlier in their lives.

A lot of hitting is pattern recognition and vision. A hitter is 1) seeing the spin of the ball and 2) picking up cues like shoulder and elbow angles and release points. That is why pitchers with odd ways of pitching often do well at least early on since their technique is so different than everyone else. That is one reason why guys like Dan Quisenberry and Gene Garber in the 80s were effective as relief pitchers. They threw sidearm (or submarine) which a player rarely saw. It also explains how Jennie Finch could throw it past very good major league hitters.

most difficult coordination wrote:

Limahl wrote:

Disagree, and I played baseball my entire life.

Have you ever tried boxing. Try to punch a moving target that is trying to KNOCK YOU OUT, and you are not wearing padding to protect yourself.

http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/sportSkills

Yes, I boxed for app. a year and a half for a club when I was elementary school age. I boxed and played baseball at the same time. I stopped boxing because maternal great grand mother begged me to stop boxing. Hitting a baseball is difficult, more difficult than boxing from a neuromuscular coordination aspect. You say you played baseball your entire life. You had a long professional career then in baseball. I stopped playing baseball when I could not tell the difference between an 80 + mph fastball and a slider at similar speed.

Like ESPN is the see all know all of sports? They clearly messed this one up. MMA is clearly a much more difficult combat sport than boxing. You need to be very well skilled in a variety of disciplines, not just stand up boxing.

Baseball is a very boring sport (at the professional level) played by a bunch of overweight and out of shape men for huge sums of money. They talk about someone being fast, but baseball fast and track, football, soccer fast are miles apart. Even the fastest baseball players are extremely slow compared to the average running back, wide receiver, soccer player.

As for boring, 3-day Test Cricket is a whole new level of boredom. Makes the MLB look fast in terms of the speed of the game. One thing though, Cricket players are a lot tougher as they use their bare hands to field the ball.

"I'm not an athlete. I'm a baseball player." -John Kruk

Cricket! wrote:

Baseball is a very boring sport (at the professional level) played by a bunch of overweight and out of shape men for huge sums of money. They talk about someone being fast, but baseball fast and track, football, soccer fast are miles apart. Even the fastest baseball players are extremely slow compared to the average running back, wide receiver, soccer player.

not even close to true

Where did I say you could? Quit twisting words.

@consider this wrote:

consider this wrote:

A batter has beaten the pitcher if he gets on base, by a hit or base on balls. You can't get in the hall of fame by reaching base one third of the time.

Where did I say you could? Quit twisting words.

You said failing 2/3 of the time is greatness, but your lack of understanding of success and failure for a hitter betrays your idiocy.

So incomplete as to be laughable. This entire thread is an exercise in ignorance. Get back to jerking off, you dimwits.

mrsmartiebear wrote:

consider this wrote:

A batter has beaten the pitcher if he gets on base, by a hit or base on balls. You can't get in the hall of fame by reaching base one third of the time.

So incomplete as to be laughable. This entire thread is an exercise in ignorance. Get back to jerking off, you dimwits.

See Moneyball (the book not the movie). Are you saying batting average is a better measure than OPB?