One of the more common argumentative subjects found within my group of friends revolve around sports. It is very easy to argue about sports because there are so many things that are included inside it. Arguments always include which team, sport or athlete is better. However one of the more hysterical battles we had involved questioning baseball’s title as a sport or just a game. This was concluded mainly through analyzing different parts of the “game” to other “sports” such as football, rugby and even soccer. I personally sat out this argument and let my friends duke it out because I am currently on the fence about the matter. We did have friends who absolutely love the game so we were able to have a good argument.
Claims
- baseball is full of leisurely play, people of all shapes and sizes can play, it is not physically demanding, no athletic skill required
- baseball requires a lot of strategy, extremely difficult to make it to the big leagues, lots of competition within playing time, hitting a 90 mph fastball is one of the hardest things to do, the pressure of high stake situations
Evidence
- Since there are 162 games in a regular season, players don’t have to hustle every game, each game means less, allows room for error. Just by watching a game mid season you can see the lack of hustle (i.e running to first base).
- Also by watching you can observe that people of all shapes and sizes can play (i.e David Eckstein, San Diego Padres; Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco Giants.)
- The World Series is won by winning best of seven games. Whereas other sports have one championship game in which there is no room for error.
- baseball players are constantly being moved around the minor leagues and moving from AAA to major leagues and vice versa. There are tons of people in farm leagues, triple A, so the competition is for playing time or even a spot on the team is always present
- pitchers throw the ball so fast that if the batter blinks, the human eye can’t even register that a ball has been pitched. In other words a baseball can be thrown faster than a blinking eye
- baseball fielder are constantly shifting in the field to take advantage of any situation
- imagine the pressure of game seven of the world series, in your home stadium, bases loaded, down by 3 runs, bottom of the 9th, 3 balls, 2 strikes, 2 outs.
Assumptions:
- short or fat people can’t be athletic
- sports require fast paced, full contact, athletic players
Strengths/Weaknesses
- the whole argument that baseball is not a sport was entirely based off of opinion and no credible sources. They tried to turn the argument in to a football vs baseball argument. Although using the comparison to other sports in a good strategy.
- since there were people involved in the argument that played in high school and follow baseball very closely, they seemed to have more solid evidence and were able to counter very well. In other words it was their personal experience that was their strength
