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Baseball is a game with plenty of time in between action. This time between pitches is available for literary description and flourishes. The feel of the bat, t

Baseball is a game with plenty of time in between action. This time between pitches is available for literary description and flourishes. The feel of the bat, the silent communication between pitcher as and catcher, etc. The tension is built and can be described in individual, well defined, moments. And while it is a team sport, the unit of competition is largely between the pitcher and batter. It’s a one on one conflict at the heart. This is much easier to write about than the chaos of motion inherent in basketball, football, soccer or hockey. The other part mentioned in the article is the way baseball has entered the lexicon through phases like “playing hardball” or “knocked it out if the park”. I think this is largely due to the pace of the game. Baseball is a sport for radio. I’ve read before (sadly, I can’t remember where), that the popularity of sport is based on how well it works with the dominant media of the day. American football is built for TV. There are set plays, where you can cut to a commercial in between. Football also has a set amount of time. Same with basketball. And both sports have “TV timeouts”. Baseball came of age during the era of radio. And there is a lot of time to fill for the announcers. It’s no wonder why there are so many phases in the English (US) language tied to baseball… the game can take between 2 and 5 hours. And in that time, there is a time gap in the action after every pitch that must be filled. In a game where the dominant medium is radio, the time must be filled. And because it is radio, it is filled with description is of the game, the sights, sounds, and tension. In sports that “came of age” with TV, you can let the picture tell a lot of the story. With radio, all of the story needs to be told by a person, converted neatly into words and expression. I wouldn’t underestimate the impact radio has had on the “literary” quality of baseball.

dTal 5y ago
>With radio, all of the story needs to be told by a person, converted neatly into words and expression Funnily enough, in the early days of radio, the presenters were not actually present at the game - they would read the raw numerical progress of the game off a telegraph ticker, and invent all those sights and sounds and tension for the benefit of their listeners.

dTal 5y ago

>With radio, all of the story needs to be told by a person, converted neatly into words and expression Funnily enough, in the early days of radio, the presenters were not actually present at the game - they would read the raw numerical progress of the game off a telegraph ticker, and invent all those sights and sounds and tension for the benefit of their listeners.