What do you just love about baseball?

That when I go to a game with 30,000 people there’s a good chance I’m in the higher percentage of people that actually know what’s going on. Other than that, the fact that there is so much more that happens week-to-week and pitch-to-pitch. I guess I just love the complexity of a game so simple.

Really any baseball diamond anywhere does it for me, but especially the big parks with all that green grass, the white chalk lines, the symmetry of the bases, the pitching mound, the outfield walls. I remember the first time I walked into Royals Stadium. That was awesome. I love watching the grounds crew at work.

There something about the baseball, too. I love throwing a ball or just having a baseball in my hand.

It’s not like most games. There’s no goal or endzone. The pitcher wants to get the hitter out, and the hitter does anything to prevent that. It has a one-on-one element but in a team game. Just love the way the sport is played and how it separates itself from the other mainstream sports.

.. how I can spend like eight consecutive hours talking about the game, and yet still manage to realize how little I’ve really covered.

It’s just one of those things where I can keep reading and learning and everything, but in the end there is just so much about the game that I still don’t know. The depth of the game itself, how it works and it’s exceptional history, as well as the variety of viewpoints that one can take the game in from.

Baseball is like no other sport in the world, and the constant exposure to it is probably one of my favorite parts of being an American, outside of the perks of living in the US and such.

Plus, I mean, look at everything that’s been created because of baseball. If it wasn’t for this sport, I’d have to find a new way to spend A LOT of my time.

I love that it is the only big sport without a clock which for me adds a lot of suspense. You can’t back your way into a win.

Anything can happen. The “you can’t predict baseball” line is such a cliche, but it’s so true and it makes the game so beautiful.

To me, baseball is like this tiny observable universe with its own order and logic that we can measure and record. We may not quite understand everything about it. I love that predictability of what certain stats should be: good K/BB ratios and HR/FB ratios.

I also love the visceral roar of the crowd in a big moment. Watching the game on TV and seeing a game-winning or game-changing hit and seeing the camera shake because the crowd is so loud and boisterous.

elements which comprise any sport or game better than any other athletic event.

It contains the most nuanced skills, as no other sport is so complex that athletes can only rarely break in to the highest levels earlier than 23 and do not typically peak until 27 or so. Yet, for all the refinement of skill, luck and chance still plays a major role.

The action is easily projected (i.e. we can foresee most possible outcomes before a given play) but it is highly unpredictable (the specific events can always surprise and amaze us).

Individual achievement is easily measured in isolation of team achievement, but individuals cannot dominate play entirely (even a pitcher throwing a 27 K perfect game could only control a maximum of 50% of the game).

Further, because we can isolate the individual so well, the stats are meaningful and can bring insight and meaning to real time events, unlike most other team sports where individual stats are highly influenced by team performances (such as the linemen’s effect on rushing yards in football).

Baseball features probably the most even odds on a game to game basis, but the season filters out the best teams for post season play extremely effectively.

In baseball, the defense must end the offense’s scoring chances, rather than simply delay them from scoring until the clock runs out.

All sports combine similar elements, but in baseball the combination is both simple enough for a child to follow and complex enough to provide grown men with material for millions of pages of analysis. We can consider its history in direct comparison with the present day and grow in appreciation for both. It is simply the perfect game.

The sheer length of the season and amazingly high number of isolated events over the course of a season lend themselves to analysis, which is really cool. It is much harder to pin down something like soccer with numbers due to the free-flowing nature of a soccer match (at least I would think so).
Also, and this has been touched on, baseball is interesting in that it is both a game of specialization and a game of diverse skills. Hitting the spheroid ball with a roughly cylindrical bat is a difficult thing to do. Then you have to be able to tell accurately when the ball is in the strike zone so you know when to lay off it. But then for half the game you have to put on a wacky oversized leather glove and run around and catch the ball and throw it to specific places around the field. Everybody must do this (in the NL at least). But wait, pitchers have yet another unique task that they must learn.

When I’m doing dishes and the radio comes back from commercial early before the announcers start talking, all you hear is 20,000 people having a good time.

the sounds …. the crack of the bat (even a ping in the right context), the smack of a heater on leather … Vin Scully … vendors and crows
the smells …. fresh air, hotdogs, beer
the simplicity and complexity that are constantly juxtaposed