The MLB All-Star game is tonight and I could care less. I'm not a baseball fan. I don't hate the sport, but I don't follow it. Baseball is kind of boring and rather tedious. That being said, I've often kept a distant eye on it. I'm usually cognizant of who's in 1st place, who has the most HR's, and so and so forth. Nevertheless, this season has been markedly different. I'm totally in the dark about everything, well except for A-Rod. Maybe my baseball apathy has completey caught up with me. At any rate, I thought this might be a good time to re-post a piece I wrote for The Big Lead last year. Please remember that these are reasons that I am not a baseball fan, not black people in general. I can c-walk on the back of an SUV[inside joke] but I can't speak for an entire race.A-Rod is the shit. That’s about the extent of my baseball knowledge. OK, that’s a lie. I know a little bit more. I’ll save you from my laundry list of known baseball facts, because I don’t care enough about baseball to list them all. I’m about as emotionally attached to baseball, as a meth head is physically attached to his teeth.
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the dearth of black baseball players and the subsequent lack of interest from the black community. I can’t speak for the entire race, so I figured I’d give some personal experiences on the matter.
It all leads back to childhood. I could never get into the game as a kid, so I never really built a good relationship with it. Here are a few reasons why.
Too many players – You need way too many players to get a good baseball game going. Six people per team is the minimum. You need a pitcher, 1st-3rd basemen, and two outfielders. Where the hell are you going to get 12 kids who are really interested in playing baseball? We usually only had 4-5 total people which led to really short and boring games, once every six or so months.
Now take football or baseball. All you need is six total players to have a good game. Which sport do you think we picked, nine times out of ten?
No fields – Whenever we did happen to play, it was in a backyard. We used trees for bases. We couldn’t use real baseballs for fear of broken windows, so we used tennis balls. Not exactly the requisite tools for an optimum sporting experience.
Shit talking – Don’t underestimate this one. “Hey batta batta! Swing!” Just doesn’t have the same ring as “I got your game in my back pocket. I’m eating you for breakfast. I’m pissing on you.”
Basketball, of course, is the best game for trash talk. You can get served in one moment, then do the serving in the very next. You start mouthing off, he starts mouthing off, that false bravado rears its ugly head, and you start having fun. And fun is what it’s all about.
BOOORING – Baseball just isn’t all that exciting. Playing a baseball game is like shooting a movie. There’s a lot of standing around and waiting for something to happen. When it does, it usually lasts only a few moments.
We would play football for a couple of hours, then head to the basketball court and play for another few hours. I can’t remember spending nearly that amount of time playing baseball. Usually someone would say, “Hey this is boring. Let’s play football.” There was never a disagreement.
So there you have it. Baseball just didn’t resonate with me as a kid. Maybe if I was forced to join little league, I would’ve felt different. But the shitty backyard games we used to play turned me off to any organized aspirations. I played plenty of basketball and football as a kid, and hence became an avid fan of both. Read more!
