A serious and sophisticated game

I watch a lot of baseball during the season, which runs from April to the end of November. I enjoy the other televised sports, but with the disinterest of a cat looking out a window; they're just figures moving around behind a pane of glass.

But I take baseball seriously. As chess is to board games and bridge is to cards, baseball is the most sophisticated version of field sports. The other major sports are quite simplistic and unsophisticated, and in almost all of the other sports there is a clock to tell the teams when they can quit.

Cricket is similar to baseball, but not even the players understand that game. They just stand around in white suits while a batter hits the ball with a board. A match can take a couple of days, and I've heard the beer consumption is formidable.

Football consists of little more than 22 testosterone-crazed giants running about on a field, trying to knock each other to the ground. The point of the game is to get an oval piece of air-filled leather bladder across a white line before the players that have been knocked down can get up and knock the ball carrier down. No wonder football is a game of downs.

Albeit a sport enjoyed mostly by the effete, tennis is an aggressive game, and possibly the simplest. Two players (sometimes four) hit a fuzzy ball across a net in a way that the opponent is unable to hit it back. In the major tournaments of intimidating sophistication (e.g. Wimbledon), the players hit the ball while emitting visceral grunts and groans which don't seem to belong in such a regal ambiance.

Back in the day, the players' rackets were strung with the intestines of domestic animals – catgut. Savages, they were back then. Still, they're wonderful athletes, but the game itself is wanting for a bit of variation – maybe an alligator on each side of the net.

I respect the basketball players for the long season they put in, and also the intensity of their play. But their game, like the rest, involves nothing more than running down a hardwood floor and throwing a ball at an iron hoop with the ubiquitous net hanging from it. Whoever does it the most wins the game.

Simple.

Soccer is another simplistic sport, and the most popular in the world. It consists of kicking a white leather sphere past the opponents and into a net. Players are expected to crash to the ground as if gutshot, writhe around as if dying, and then get up and run away like nothing ever happened. And it didn't.

All of the above sports have a time clock to tell the players when they can quit and the fans when they can go home. Baseball doesn't demand a clock, it demands a winner to end the game.

The biggest and most valid complaint about baseball is the length of games. They last over three hours, and extra-inning games can run much much longer. There has to be a winner, no matter how long it takes.

The better baseball players command huge salaries – some as much as 30 million dollars a year. They work hard for their money, reporting to training in February and playing until the end of November if they go to the World Series. They play 162 regular games a season, beginning in the first days of April, or about six days a week, and travel coast to coast for extended stays. Their family lives must suffer.

Both the game situations and strategy change with every pitch, and every player has his individual responsibility, which differs greatly depending on the position he's playing at the time. This isn't so in football. The only responsibility in football is to knock the opponent to the ground, strut around like a banty rooster, then do it again – and again.

Baseball has a lot of tacit rules for team and individual behavior on the field. The other sports must have them, too, but given the complexity of baseball, it undoubtedly has more.

Grandstanding and showboating are condemned during a game. If a player demonstrates too much exuberance over a hit or another triumph, he'll get a ball in the ribs the next time he's up to hit.

If a player makes an astounding play and the crowd wants a curtain call, the hero is expected to climb the dugout steps and raise his hat in a calm and gentlemanly way. Anything more is considered crass.

The divisional playoffs are going on now. Some days of the week will offer two games, or seven to eight hours of the sport – maybe more.

That's about right for a tired old man.