MLB Tickets - Baseball vs. Football
Which sports is better, baseball or football? The question has been asked by many a sports fan over the years. In 1987, a Washington Post baseball writer by the name of Thomas Boswell penned a list of the 99 reasons why he believed baseball was better than football. The list, “Why Is Baseball So Much Better Than Football?,” has been reprinted numerous times in different forms over the years, and is now a part of the definitive lists section of the online Baseball Almanac.
While some of Boswell’s comments sound silly given the change in the nature of the games since the late 1980s, others are poignant comments on the legitimacy of baseball as the national sport. For example, Boswell lists his 19th reason as “Pro football players have breasts. Many NFLers are so freakishly overdeveloped, due to steroids, that they look like circus geeks. Baseball players seem like normal fit folks. Fans should be thankful they don’t have to look at NFL teams in bathing suits.” While this might have been true at one point in history, baseball has certainly overtaken football as the sport most dominated by illegal substances, at least in the court of public opinion.
Other reasons listed by Boswell are thought-provoking and logically sound. For instance, Boswell contends that the game of baseball is much harder to master than the game of football. He writes as his reason No. 31, “Baseball is harder. In the last 25 years, only one player, Vince Coleman, has been cut from the NFL and then become a success in the majors. From Tom Brown in 1963 (Senators to Packers) to Jay Schroeder (Jays to Redskins), baseball flops have become NFL standouts.” Some instances after Boswell’s article shine light on this astute comment. For instance, the greatest two-sport athlete of the past two decades, Deion Sanders, chose to play football after he couldn’t cut it in Major League Baseball. Well, that’s what many people believe anyways, that Deion Sanders was a much better football player than a baseball player. When Michael Jordan gave baseball a swing during the height of his basketball career, he struck out miserably.
Boswell also asks about the legitimacy of the rules in football at several instances. Number 47 says, “Baseball has no penalties at all. A home run is a home run. You cheer. In football, on a score, you look for flags. If there’s one, who’s it on? When can we cheer? Football acts can all be repealed. Baseball acts stand forever.” And he has a point. In football as many good plays are called back because of penalties and instant replay as there are that get allowed. In baseball it’s very rare that there would ever be a home run called back or a call overruled.
Will it ever be determined whether baseball or football is the greater sport? The debate will go on endlessly it seems, and you can engage your fellow stadium-goers with this fascinating question when you purchase either MLB tickets or NFL tickets online.
This article was written by Brent Warnken and sponsored by http://www.stubhub.com/. StubHub sells http://www.stubhub.com/mlb-tickets/, as well as many other kinds of sports tickets, concert tickets, special events tickets and theatre tickets.