The Pecan Park Eagle

Which is Closer to Real Life? Baseball? Or Football?

Not all of these observations fit easily into the question to be answered for each of the following ten questions : “Which of the following scenarios is closer to real life, baseball or football?” Just give each your best shot or go on to the next one. The Pecan Park Eagle will appreciate your own comment here on which sport you think is closer as a model for everyday life in America.

1) In baseball, you have to go out there and work your game hard everyday. You hardly ever get a day off, but when you do, it isn’t likely to be Sunday. In football, the only time  you work on the clock for your pay in an official game is once a week – and that’s usually on Sunday.

2) In baseball, you can celebrate a home run by flipping your bat in the air, taking a bow, and skipping around the bases like one of the characters from Oz on the road to the Emerald City. In football, your team is penalized after you score a touchdown,  if you then celebrate the fact by doing a little dance or anything else that hurts the feelings of the other team in a taunting kind of way.

3) In baseball, the fans may even applaud  you for walking to first on ball four. If you are caught walking during a football game, however, some 300 pound monster is going to squash you as though he were an 18-wheeler meeting up with you as he would a turtle that was trying  to cross the road.

4) In baseball, there are no tie games, ever, unless the Commissioner flubs the dub in an All Star game and makes both teams use up all their pitchers  before they go into extra innings of a tie game. During the regular season of the NFL, a game can still end  in a tie if two teams have the same score after one extra quarter of play.

5) In baseball, runs score by way of hits, walks, defensive player errors, batters hit by pitches, wild pitches, past balls, balks, and catcher’s and once in a blue moon other defensive player interference calls. In football, players can score by the deception of trick plays that surprise the defense.

6) In baseball there are no clocks, so far, on how long it takes to play each separate game. In football, the clocks control everything that happens.

7) In baseball, once a player leaves the game, he is out of that game forever. In football, a player can leave and re-enter the game as often as his coach wants him to play.

8) With the exception of batting out of order and the illegal use of pine tar on his bat, a baseball home run hitter cannot be denied his moment of glory by prior actions or the behavior of other people who may have contributed to his violation of the rules. He is on his own to celebrate. In football, however, a player may score a dramatic touchdown and still have that feat wiped out by a penalty call on some teammate for breaking a rule that often seems totally unrelated to the scoring play.

9) In baseball, management dresses identically to labor. In football, management dresses more like the fans who came to watch labor perform (although, that’s changing – as fans, not management, continue their trend for dressing more like the players or other mythical characters who support the team.

10) In baseball, most deeply red blooded fans would love to play right field on their team for one pitch against a dead-left field hitting right handed batter for the opposition – just for the sake of getting their name in the box score and the all time MLB record book. In football, however, no fan in his or her right mind would want to be in the game for a single bone-shattering possibility of involvement in the actual action.

PS: Can you find the time-traveling ringer in the following box score?