It's a game I don't like or understand - over here, all we have like it it is a girl's game called 'Rounders' - yet so many of the movies about it are among my personal favourites! just yesterday, I watched a movie I had never heard of (hey shut up, I haven't kept up with movies at all since I discovered binge watching TV) called Moneyball and damned if it wasn't the most enjoyable film I have seen in a long, long time. Add to this Bull Durham, A League of Their Own, Field of Dreams and particularly for me, Major League and For Love of the Game, which would both be somewhere in my top ten or twenty personal favourite movies of all time.

So what is it?

Tell me.

Because you're intelligent with refined tastes and want more out of athletic competition than just mindless violence between hulking brutes. Baseball is a thinking person's game. A strategist's sport.

I love the aura of history around the game. Movies like Bull Durham and Field of Dreams feed that feeling, for me. Just thinking of the names of the all time early greats does it for me. Yet today I can't stand watching a baseball game on TV and seldom even watch the World Series. But damn if that feeling of nostalgia for an era that will never be again doesn't hit hard, when I start thinking about baseball. Essentially, this:

It’s Baseball, the day to day game. Win or lose there’s another game tomorrow. Following your team, hoping they win. A game most Americans boys have played and wish they could still play. The strategy of it, the difficulty of it, the history of it, the legacy of it. Going with your Dad and brother to Yankee Stadium. Where Babe Ruth played, where Lou Gerhig played, where Mariano Rivera played. The game that is uniquely engrained in fabric of America and spread all over the world It’s spring, it’s summer. It’s Baseball.

I guess I have several reasons why I like baseball.
• much of it is nostalgia:
— listening to the game on a cheap crackling AM radio was one of the things a kid could do in the early 1970s
— I also played a lot of baseball and softball, sometimes in leagues and for one of my companies; coached a little
— my Dad had a small softball field in the backyard and kids from across eight blocks would play there on Sundays
— owning a team pennant, sundae cup baseball cap, bobblehead doll, or a team poster was one of those things I coveted
— I am a collector at heart, so baseball cards are intriguing to me, though I never owned many (and still own the ones I had)
— plus, watching games with my Grandmother in her otherwise isolated bedroom in our house, gave me some time to connect with her
— likewise, my Mother turned to watching Twins games in her declining years; so we could share that time together, too
• I like rooting for home teams, even if I don't follow their sport
• much of my baseball enjoyment comes from knowing the statistics, strategies, and potential moves that can be made
• I had drifted away in my college years, but I came back strong when professors in my English department started a Fantasy League
— this ended up giving me knowledge of other teams and their players, which gave me some conversational clout as I traveled
• as Ian says, there are many great baseball movies; even my brother Jim likes those but he won't watch real baseball
• I prefer listening to games on the radio instead of watching on TV or in personal; it's good to have in the background

This sums it up perfectly for an American, I think - but why for me? I think the answer lies in this, though - the fact that the sport conjures up such feelings in you guys perhaps means that those feelings and emotions - particularly those to do with heart and loyalty and passion - shine through in the movies and therefore speak to something higher than the sport itself. Like with Rocky - you don't have to be a boxing fan to love Rocky Balboa.

I have completely given up MLB in favor of Minor League Baseball. Its pure and teh perfect aspirational game. Everyone wants to move up a level so everyone is working as hard as possible cuz every moment matters.

I am sure you know of Fever Pitch, a great book about an unhealthy relationship with Arsenal. It was remade in America with the Red Sox as the team. I think there is a universality to rooting for a team, and seeing the underdog overcome the favorite. There is the father son relationship in field of dreams that resonates. and TBH i loved the father daughter relationship in Moneyball (as well as all the analytics and underdog stuff).

I have become a huge fan of soccer because of the similarities w baseball. The FA cup is brilliant, there should be something like that here.

Yeah. I'm not and I do.