Easy. Football is several orders of magnitude more complex and intricate than baseball. Not to insult baseball fans – I used to be one as a child, and I still care mildly that “my” team just missed the playoffs for the first time in about a decade and a half – but baseball is an all-around pretty simple sport (all the complexity is in the compilation and analysis of statistics, which is tangential to the sport itself).
At any given moment, there are approximately a dozen guys on a baseball diamond. Although they all need to maintain some level of alertness, no more than five of them can possibly be doing anything relevant to the game, while the rest only need to check in periodically and readjust themselves physically (by which I mean, realign their positions on the field). Compare with football: 22 men on the field and every single one of them matters. Sure, some guys matter less than others, but I think every football fan has seen games where one minor mistake – an offensive lineman’s missed block, a five yard penalty, a quarterback’s two second delay in finding his receiver downfield – cost the game.
Football has a hell of a lot more rules than baseball. I can reasonably explain baseball to an Israeli in less than an hour, and that includes getting into some strategy. How much football can I explain in an hour? How much football can I explain in entire 17-week season? Not enough to figure it all out. I don’t get to watch very many games, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a football game in my life where I could have explained the entire game – all the plays and all the refs’ calls – to a football-ignorant viewer.
Also, fewer games. If a baseball season is still 165 games long (it is, isn’t it?), that means every football game is more than ten times more significant than every baseball game. I don’t mean to suggest that baseball players don’t play hard during May, June, July and August, but just that a football player can expect to suit up fewer than 20 times over the course of a year, which means that a tremendous amount of mental conditioning is devoted to those occasions. More mental conditioning means more strategy at every level, down to the tiniest motions, which necessitates more analysis.
Finally, parity. In baseball, talent matters most. In football, talent is distributed relatively evenly and coaching therefore matters most. More weight on coaching means more strategy, which necessitates more analysis.
While your general assumption may be correct, I think it is a bit ignorant to discount the strategy of baseball as much as you have. I compare baseball to learning the English language. Many non-native speakers say that English is a catchy language and easy to learn. Well, I say that it’s very easy to speak, but very difficult to speak well. The same with baseball: it’s very easy to watch the game casually, extremely difficult to recognize and understand the intricacies of what is taking place on the field.
One baseball player can ruin a game just as well as one football player. See: Buckner, Bill.
Many non-baseball fans use the long season as a reason to discount the importance of individual games. But every season (this one being a particularly good example), the playoff race always comes down to a game or two. The teams that make it are the ones who are able to be consistent over a very long haul. (And it’s 162 games.) Imagine the mental conditioning that’s required to suit up at LEAST six times a week for five or six months!
You are right on your final point about talent distribution, however. Why baseball has not learned the benefits of parity from the NFL is beyond me. I leave you with some great Earl Weaver quotations:
“The job of arguing with the umpire belongs to the manager, because it won’t hurt the team if he gets thrown out of the game.”
“A manager’s job is simple. For one hundred sixty-two games you try not to screw up all that smart stuff your organization did last December.”
“A manager should stay as far away as possible from his players. I don’t know if I said ten words to Frank Robinson while he played for me.”
“Coaches are an integral part of any manager’s team, especially if they are good pinochle players.”
Oh, OK, and one from Jim Palmer:
“The only thing Earl (Weaver) knows about big-league pitching is that he couldn’t hit it.”
Of course he can. Or he can win it with a home run, just like a running back can win it by turning a three-yard run up the middle into a dash for the end zone. But the home run requires the batter to read the pitch right and swing just right for it – while the running back’s break for daylight requires expert blocking by five other guys and his ability to read what the entire defense is doing.
That’s a game or two separating first place from second place. In the NFL it’s not uncommon to see a game or two separating first place from last place, especially in the old-new NFC East.
That’s mental endurance, and very few baseball players are able to endure it.
I think baseball has learned the benefits of parity, but they’re also wise to the detriments of it. Parity saves a sport as it ruins it.
B”H
Ever see a game here?
http://iflfootball.wordpress.com
Not sure if it’s coming back for another season.
I used to go to baseball games in the U. S. but the idea of baseball being in Israel irks me. It seems like it’s just another way for Americans to pretend like they’re still in America.
I also used to go to baseball games in America, and enjoyed it a lot. But I couldn’t bear to watch them on television because, removed from the park, the game became incredibly boring. I think trying to watch a baseball game in Israel would be something like trying to watch one on television.
I think I’d love to play football here, if only I were even remotely athletic.