22 Reasons Why Baseball is Best

Okay, so I realize opening day more than three weeks ago, but I am finally getting around to celebrating the start of our national pastime. With that being said, I present to you the following 22 (although there certainly could be many more) reasons why baseball is the best game in the land.

1. The movies. "People will come, Ray. People will most definitely come." These words come from Terrance Mann (played by James Earl Jones) in the 1989 movie, Field of Dreams. (You can see the whole clip here.) In addition to Field of Dreams, baseball has been the subject of many other movies. Eight Men Out, The Pride of the Yankees, The Rookie, Major League, Bull Durham, Little Big League and *61 are just a few of the great baseball movies. As a whole, baseball movies are by far the best sports movies.

2. The announcers, both local and national. Baseball has produced the finest group of announcers of any sport. Ernie Harwell, Jack Buck, Jon Miller, Pat Hughes, John Rooney, Marty Brenneman ("and this one belongs to the Reds"), Curt Gowdy, Vin Scully, Bob Costas and Bob Uecker are just a few of the ones worth mentioning here. This could (and probably will at some point) merit a post of its own.

3. The Seventh Inning Stretch. It might seem a little on the corny side, but baseball is the only game that has its own song that gets played at every stadium during every game. As corny as it may be, I think that's pretty neat.

4. Keeping score. Paul Dickson, the author of The Joy of Keeping Score, put it best, when he said, "The world is divided into two kinds of baseball fans: those who keep score at the ballgame... and those who have never made the leap." Baseball has a unique version of keeping score (although there are many variations), and it is a fantastic way to get involved in the game. I'm pretty fanatical about scoring, and I even managed to convert my sister. All I really need in a member of the opposite sex is someone who knows how to score. The rest of the details can be worked out later.

5. Oakley sunglasses. I will be perfectly honest, a large part of the reason why I wanted to start buying Oakleys is because a lot of the baseball players were wearing them. Special mention goes out to Nate Robertson and Francisco Rodriguez who wear Oakleys but with regular lenses.

6. Flip-down sunglasses. Where else are flip-downs cool? Only on the baseball diamond. In fact, I bet you would think someone walking down street wearing flip-downs was an idiot, but it is perfectly acceptable (and downright encouraged) for the left fielder to wear them.

7. The team nicknames. The Dodgers (for trolley dodgers in Brooklyn), the Lugnuts, the Loons, the Padres (much better than Friars), the Brewers and many others are unique to baseball. The best team names are in baseball.

8. The individual nicknames. The Babe, the Splendid Splinter, the Say Hey Kid, Iron Man, Hammerin' Hank, Joltin' Joe, the Georgia Peach, Oil Can, Catfish and so many others I don't have time to name. What's the best football nickname you can think of...that's what I thought.

9. The minor oddities. The White Sox wear black socks. The foul pole is in fair territory. The on-deck circle. The fact that home plate is not shaped like a plate. The weighted donuts and the rosin bag.

10. The statistics. Baseball is awash in stats. Batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, on-base plus slugging (OPS), hits, runs, home runs, RBI, pitches per plate appearance, value over replacement player (VORP), strikeouts, strikeouts per nine innings, walks, walks per nine innings, ERA, WHIP, fielding percentage, and a few dozen others that you can check out here.

11. The consistency. There are 212 stitches in every baseball. It is always 90 feet between bases, and it is always 60'6" from the mound to home plate.

12. The differences. The short porch in right field at Fenway, as well as the Green Monster. The ivy at Wrigley. Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. The train tracks and the hill in center field at the Juice Box (Minute Maid Park). Bernie's slide at Miller Park. The cavernous dimensions in Oakland. The fountains at Kaufman Stadium. The palm trees at Dodger Stadium and the swimming pool at Chase Field.

13. The rivalries. Cubs-Cardinals, Yankees-Red Sox, Dodgers-Giants, Cubs-White Sox, Mets-Yankees. These are among the fiercest rivalries in sports.

14. The specialization. Lefty specialists, righty specialists, the designated hitter, defensive replacement, pinch runners, set-up men, closers and switch hitters. Max Weber would be very proud.

15. The way a wins, losses and saves are determined for pitchers. In what other sports are their requirements for who gets designated with the win? Did the pitcher go five innings? Did he leave with the lead? Was he still the pitcher when his team took the lead? Don't even get me started on the save rules.

16. Other scoring issues. What constitutes an earned run? Was that a hit or an error. Why does a fly ball that scores a runner from 3rd count as a sacrifice, but a fly ball that advances a runner from 2nd to 3rd does not?

17. The lack of time constraints. The Padres and Rockies played for more than six hours last week. Regular season games in other sports rarely last longer than three hours. A nine inning game can last as long as four hours, or can be done in an hour and 45 minutes (especially if Mark Buehrle is pitching).

18. Wall-to-wall games. On a really good day, and this usually happens at least once a week, baseball can be watched (or listened to, thanks XM) from noon in the Eastern Time Zone until 1 am. The only other sport that can come close to matching that is college football.

19. The smells. There is nothing better than walking into a stadium and taking a whiff of freshly mowed grass. Add cotton candy, pine tar, hot dogs, beer and chalk to all that, and it does not get any better.

20. Ken Burns likes baseball. Renowned documentary maker Ken Burns, an Ann Arbor Pioneer graduate, makes documentaries about topics that mean the most to the American people: Jazz, the Civil War, Chicago and World War II. He also made one about baseball, and if he loves baseball, so should you.

21. George Will. We could not be farther apart politically, but he likes baseball, so he must be a decent human being. If you have not read it, I strongly suggest reading Men at Work. It is a fantastic book.

22. The simplicity. To quote Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh from Bull Durham, "This is a very simple game, you hit the ball, you catch the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains."