What’s Slower Than Baseball?

My colleague Dinsa, who writes at Six and Out, reeled off a nice little rant the other day about one observer’s contention that Americans don’t appreciate the sport of cricket and how this is somehow an indictment of their character. Much of the latter piece is incoherent, but there’s one passage that I found particularly fascinating:

Ever since the development of baseball, the ubiquitous and simplified version of the sport, Americans have been lost to the more demanding challenges — and pleasures — of cricket. Because baseball is to cricket as simple addition is to calculus — the basic moves may be similar, but the former is easier, quicker, more straightforward than the latter, and requires a much shorter attention span. And so baseball has captured the American imagination in a way that leaves no room for its adult cousin.

I don’t pretend to understand much about the game of cricket. I know that it’s loosely related to baseball. I’ve watched cricket on television a few times and been utterly bewildered (which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it — I did, but not with anywhere near the level of sophistication that I can appreciate a baseball game). With that in mind, I’m not prepared to make any statements as to the relative merits of either sport or to categorically dismiss one of them.

As for responding to the assertions of one sport’s superiority, what can I say? This point of view offers no focal point for discussion. Someone has come to tell us that cricket is better than baseball, end of story.

Not a problem. I’ve dealt with people who have condescending attitudes about subjects far more pressing than sport. So he likes cricket and doesn’t like baseball. It’s an easy thought to have, but who cares?

What gets me is the notion that Americans’ short attention span is what keeps us fixed on baseball. If you ask anyone who has a clue, they’ll tell you that baseball is losing market share (has been for awhile) to basketball and football because kids today don’t want to sit around and watch a sport where guys spend most of their time standing around waiting for something to happen.

Condescension is one thing. Misguided condescension is quite another. I’m grateful for this perspective, though, because I doubt I’ll hear the argument that baseball isn’t complicated enough or slow enough again in my lifetime.

Not from my wife anyway…