8 Reasons to Hate Basball

In just about every U.S. city, if you’re not a fan of baseball, you might as well not be American. Harboring an aversion to the sport is equivalent to burning Old Glory—especially here in Boston, where I live. What? You don’t know Big Papi’s slugging percentage? That’s an immediate flogging. Tell anyone you’d rather walk along the Charles River than spend an afternoon at Fenway Park? You’re looking at five years in Guantanamo Bay, pal. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some kind of a namby-pamby anti-sports guy. Football is a part of my DNA and most of my shirts growing up were the color of blood. But let's face it: Baseball is lame and boring. At the risk of being cuffed and detained by Homeland Security (which, by the way, is why I’m writing this article under a pseudonym), here are eight reasons why.

Schedule: Can we agree on this? One hundred and sixty two games in a regular season is 142 too many. Come on. By the time July rolls around, a game-winning home run or strike out in the bottom of the ninth doesn’t mean squat, except that it’s finally time to go to bed. Knock the schedule down to one game a week and then we might have something to look forward to, just as long as we don’t have to endure pregame interviews and press conferences all week long. Ugh.

Physical Fitness: It’s no shocker that you don’t have to be Mr. Universe to play baseball, but some guys look like they’ve been chewing on North Carolina pulled pork in the dugout instead of tobacco. Take a look back a few years and it’s even worse. Milwaukee tumors were as commonplace a generation ago as Camaros with T-tops. It’s no wonder steroids are such a problem in the league today. Why work out when all you have to do is shoot up?

Fair-Weather Sport: Ask any football, soccer, rugby, or lacrosse player what they think about rain delays in baseball and they’ll likely give you an answer we can’t print here. What they’ll imply is that baseball players are a little less manly than other athletes simply because they won’t play in the rain. What’s the worst that could happen? Slower pitching? More runs scored? A few extra scratches and bruises? (Boo-hoo.) Stealing second means sliding into left field? Sounds like we have a way to make baseball less lame and boring.

Statistics: If I want a lesson in mathematics, I’ll walk through the halls of MIT, not the turnstiles of Yawkey Way. We’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves, aren’t we? On-base percentages, opponent on-base plus slugging percentages, sabermetrics … Alan Greenspan might enjoy crunching the numbers, but for those of us who’d rather leave our brains at work, the cold-beverage-intake-to-bladder-outflow ratio makes a whole lot more sense.

Going the Distance: If a quarterback can get nearly knocked unconscious multiple times by 300-pound defensive ends for four full quarters, then why shouldn’t a pitcher have to throw a ball 60 feet for a full nine innings—especially if that pitcher is making millions of dollars a year? Instead he gets pulled before things can go from bad to worse, and fans go nutty when the song they voted for plays over the loudspeakers and their star closer comes out of the bullpen like Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn in Major League. Don’t even get me started on “The Papelbon.”

Superstitions: Evoke God in public schools, at any bar, or even on national television and you’re likely to be shown the door. Yet baseball fans collectively acknowledge a higher power that influences their favorite teams and players. A seemingly innocuous trade of a pudgy pitcher in 1920 by the Red Sox to the Yankees? Yup, that was a curse. Winning two World Series titles in three years? Fate. A Red Sox shirt buried in concrete at the new Yankees Stadium? Bad vibes, dig it up! A hawk that recently attacked a teenage girl named Alexandra Rodriguez (A-Rod, as in Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez) at Fenway Park? You guessed it, an omen. And we wonder why the Pope won’t visit our city.

Off-Season Shenanigans :Baseball is a year-round sport and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Between charity events, trades, management shake-ups, and stadium upgrades, teams and the media make it painfully clear: You will think about baseball 360 days a year—OR ELSE! But the league occasionally throws us a bone with some quality off-season entertainment like a six-hour Senate hearing. Now that’s excitement!

Fantasy Teams : Enough with the fantasy teams, already! You know who you are. You’re the guy who screams and moans about Derek Jeter blowing a play last night because now your stats are screwed up, but fortunately you have five other fantasy teams and you just traded Daisuke Matsuzaka for 10 starting pitchers, seven first-round draft picks, and three players to be named later. There is nothing as boring as getting stuck in the middle of a baseball fantasy league conversation. Usually the only way out is to start coughing uncontrollably or pretend to answer a cell phone call. If you can actually make yourself vomit, you’re golden.