Appreciate finer points of baseball’s complexity
To Nicholas Sauerberg, regarding his take on the game of baseball (“Take me out of the ball game,” Nov. 3): “Who cares about baseball?”
If you consult the Nielsen ratings, more than 22 million people care. You would have known that, but that would have required that you do research, which doesn’t appear to be a necessity to get printed at THE DAILY.
That said, my bone to pick isn’t about how many people care about baseball. It’s about how you described our national pastime.
You use words such as “painstakingly pointless” and “moves at a snail’s pace” to describe baseball. After which, you wonder, “How complicated can it get?”
Pop quiz, Einstein! If baseball’s so simple, tell me: How do you pitch to Hideki Matsui? (I should ask this same question to the Phillies.)
Before you answer that question, first answer these: What’s the score? What inning is it? Does he hit lefty or righty? How’s he hitting the ball so far today? Who’s on base? Who’s on deck? Is anyone up in the bullpen?
The art of baseball lies in its superficial simplicity and its underlying complexity. Every single play contains the potential for countless outcomes. Players shift positions in the field with each batter, with each pitch. Players make adjustments with each at-bat and each pitch. There’s constant movement going on in the game (not as much movement as the dancers in “Glee”).
This game is fun. Not only to play, but to watch: to get into the players’ minds and try to see what they’ll do next.
I’m sorry there wasn’t enough drama for you in the Fall Classic. It’s over now. So don’t worry, Nick, you can get back to your couch, bonbons and “Glee” next week. Me? Spring training is only three months away. – MIKE ROCHEWeinberg junior Vice president, NU Club Baseball
World Series not at fault for losing weekly ‘Glee’
I cannot tell whether the Nov. 3 Firing Squad “Take me out of the ball game” was supposed to be some sort of tongue-in-cheek jab at baseball or was completely serious. Either way, it was idiotic. The writer’s main complaint was it has prevented him from catching his precious new episodes of “Glee” (a show whose main goal is to create bad a cappella remixes of popular songs to sell to fans on iTunes) and other mostly terrible FOX network shows. Here’s the problem: If they had new episodes these past two weeks, they would just have reruns some other week as the amount of episodes made per season is fixed! So instead of crying about baseball, you would be crying about the reruns, much like “Lost” fans did when there would be huge gaps in the new season.
We get it, you don’t like baseball because you’re too impatient or ignorant to appreciate the intricacies of the game (as proven by saying the “statistics are meaningless,” when in baseball, statistics are pretty much everything in determining who is good and who is bad). You could have left it at that, and hey, that’s your problem. But to say baseball is somehow to blame for you losing your “Glee” episodes is just stupid, and that networks should somehow remove them so “Glee” fans don’t lose their “Glee” fix is silly, as the ratings from sports championships that aren’t hockey usually easily beat any television show ratings.- PETER McGRAINMedill junior
