Quotes & Notes: Excited About Baseball

■ The Knights of the Rock M Roundtable are underwhelming in their interest in Mizzou Baseball:

Q: Which sport has you more excited/intrigued, Mizzou Wrestling or Mizzou Baseball?

ZouDave:Well, quite honestly I really can't see me watching a second of either team. But given that I know NOTHING about wrestling, I'd have to say baseball. If Mizzou makes it to the College World Series, I'd probably find time to watch.

■ As a remedy to that ringing endorsement, I took another look at Why I Like Baseball, Cecelia Tan's blog. Among the many offerings there, I'm fond of Why Baseball is Better than the Movies. Of course, most of her thoughts apply to sports in general as well:

But baseball is real. Sports drama is real.

You don’t have to suspend your disbelief because these are real actual guys whose job it is to go out there and compete every day. And they are amazing at what they do. Believe it. And the back story? The baseball season is like a soap opera. On any given day, nothing earth-shattering may seem to happen. But who will rise above? Who will slump? Who will have the clutch hit at the critical moment? Who will get tagged out at third to end the rally? Who will get injured? Who will recover from injury?

■ In the same vein, Why is Baseball So Much Better Than Football?

9. Baseball has a bull pen coach blowing bubble gum with his cap turned around backward while leaning on a fungo bat; football has a defensive coordinator in a satin jacket with a headset and a clipboard.

10. The Redskins have thirteen assistant coaches, five equipment managers, three trainers, two assistant GMs, but, for fourteen games, nobody who could kick an extra point.

11. Football players and coaches don't know how to bait a ref, much less jump up and down and scream in his face. Baseball players know how to argue with umps; baseball managers even kick dirt on them. Earl Weaver steals third base and won't give it back; Tom Landry folds his arms.

12. Vince Lombardi was never ashamed that he said, "Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing."

13. Football coaches talk about character, gut checks, intensity, and reckless abandon. Tommy Lasorda said, "Managing is like holding a dove in your hand. Squeeze too hard and you kill it; not hard enough and it flies away."

■ And whilst I'm waxing poetic over the Great Game of Baseball, let's not neglect Bart Giamatti's Green Fields of the Mind:

The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide.