[andyfox]

I once took my dowdy and dotty old aunt to a ballgame. She must have been 80 at the time and had never been to a ballgame. So it was my job to explain it to her.

It was hard work. It's not like basketball where it's more self-evident what's going on. Baseball is complicated and more cerebral than most sports.

First there's the battle between the pitcher and the batter. The pitcher is trying to fool the batter, to overpower him sometimes, to finesse him at others, to intimidate him too. He can change speeds, change location, change the type of pitch, change his cadence, change the movement on his pitches. The batter is trying sometimes to bludgeon the ball, other times merely to place it in play. And their history against each other comes into play as well.

All of this is a microcosm of the game in general. The managers have this same type of play vs. each other, as do the fielders vs. the hitters and the baserunners vs. the fielders. I think football is better on TV in that you generally see all the players on the field in one shot, but you lose that with baseball. I think it's the only game that's clearly better in person where you gain a perspective of everything that's happening, all the cat and mouse of it.