Baffoe: Don't Kid Yourself After Last Night, Fans, Football Is Still King
By Tim Baffoe-
(CBS) Baseball is perfect in its imperfections and contrasts.
Its quirkiness and randomness and combination of old school tradition-drum-beating and new-school mathematical analysis and dorkbaggery (both of which I am guilty of), coupled with association with placid nature and fine architecture, make it chicken soup for the human soul.
But football is the superior American sport.
Wednesday night's pseudo-playoff games provided perhaps the greatest ninety or so minutes in baseball history. Save for the Cardinals easily dispatching of the Houston Colt .4-Cap Guns, three games, all finishing within minutes of each other and all of which decided who was in and who was out of October baseball, had producers scrambling to keep up with the sudden dramatics in scattered across three cities in the eastern U.S., play-by-play guys and sports anchors quickly changing their premade and polished final calls and catch phrases as if they were a baby fed a Mexican fiesta platter, and TV viewers flipping channels back and forth like a politician on crystal meth… or just a politician.
And football sat back, nodded and clapped politely, and then went back to sleeping with baseball's girlfriend.
The American Pastime is not without consistent excitement. The many walk off wins throughout the season. Announcers routinely coming close to embolisms with their final at-bat calls. The joy and heartache of Wednesday night reaffirmed that baseball is great, baseball is righteous, and baseball is fun.
But it is not football.
The former is practical, sensible, repetitive. Long in duration. There is comfort in the game. For most of the year, every day, it is there. Even when we grow tired of it, we miss it the comfort when it is away.
Football is once a week. It's violent. It's quick. It's flashy. It's a narcotic. It's the strip club. When the Sunday game ends, reality looms. We have to go back to work. Back to repetition.
Baseball is cerebral, the thinking man's game. Strategies roll through the heads of the fan, player, and manager at all times. Chess.
Football is blood lust. And while man has an innate desire for knowledge, the cerebral, he has a greater innate desire for the savage, the mania, the uninhibited (despite Herr Goodell's marshmallowing of the rules) violence of the arena. We know the red meat is bad for us, but damn if we don't rip our teeth through it anyway.
Remember those really long exams in high school and college—the ones that were at least three hours long? Your brain hurt during those, and your body felt drained. You wanted to nap, to decompress. That's a baseball season, and that can often be a baseball game.
During a football game you want to suplex a velociraptor on a Bowflex.
Those Wednesday Game 162's were great, a real treat to take in. I read a tweet last night where someone predicted that years down the road there will be a documentary titled "September 28, 2011," and it would be fantastic. There was an avalanche of tweets from those sounding the horns for the glory and superiority of the game of baseball.
Baseballeristas and their game were having a moment, a glorious one, full of excitement and awe and surprise and, most importantly, conversation. And in autumn nonetheless—the time the game is supposed to fade away and give it its lunch money to the menacing football. I read several tweets and debates from those who believe that baseball is greater than football and that Wednesday night was evident of that.
Guess what? Come Sunday, who will still be talking about September 28, 2011—nobody. Because football will be back. Sweet, sexy, oooh-I-shouldn't-look-but-I-just-have-to pigskin.
Ozzie Guillen and the White Sox parting ways was huge news Tuesday. Within twenty-four hours, Chicago sports radio was back to focusing on what the Bears should do against the Panthers. The face of an organization, one of the most colorful, impactful characters this city has ever seen, was eclipsed by a regular season football game between two teams with losing records.
Oh, football, you nasty slut. Sure, we had a lovely evening with baseball last night, but we can't wait for you to take advantage of us again this weekend. And next.
Tim Baffoe attended the University of Iowa and Governors State University and began blogging at The Score after winning the 2011 Pepsi Max Score Search. He enjoys writing things about stuff, but not so much stuff about things. When not writing for 670TheScore.com, Tim corrupts America's youth as a high school English teacher and provides a great service to his South Side community delivering pizzas (please tip him and his colleagues well). You can follow Tim's inappropriate brain droppings on Twitter @Ten_Foot_Midget , but please don't follow him in real life. He grew up in Chicago's Beverly To read more of Tim's blogs click here.
