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| Baseball | 18% | 63 votes | Total: 342 votes | |
| Golf | 82% | 279 votes |
Baseball
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Add to FavoritesThis was a tough choice. Both sports exhibit moments of inactivity. However, the question is which one is slowest to watch.
I hold the belief that baseball is the greatest sport to watch on the radio. Television just doesn't capture the true feeling of being there. Somehow, radio does.
Actually, being there live and in person the game seems a lot slower than on television. Whereas golf there is something always going on. Watching golf in person, is something I have not experienced, however, my father has. My father would play golf every single day if he could. I remember the days of my youth walking into the living room, seeing my father sacked out on the couch with Jack Nicklaus or Johnny Miller swinging a golf club on the tube.
After a few minutes of trying to wake him, I found it was easier to just change the channel. That usually brought him around quicker than anything.
Back to watching baseball.
I have been to a few professional baseball games in my time. Not a whole lot, but a few. All but one of them have been in St. Louis watching the Cardinals play the Mets, when a hot-shot rookie by the name of Dwight Gooden was tearing up the league, is one example. The only other game, was in Chicago. I got to see the Cubs defeat the Phillies on two Bill Buckner home runs. The Cubs also had some rookie on the team playing third base, Ryne Sandberg.
While attending the games was a fun experience, the actual game itself wasn't that much in the way of excitement. It was more fun to run up and down the stairs to the concession stand and then take a tour of the stadium.
Can baseball do anything to "speed up" the game. I don't believe so. The time between pitches, pitcher stepping off the mound, batter out of the batter box, changing pitchers, and quick 1-2-3 innings do not offer much to see. That is all part of the game, like it or not.
To some, it is the strategy and the play that make up for the inactivity. To many of these people, they enjoy the game in its pure form. However, for me there needs to be some spice in it.
By that I do not mean more bench-clearing brawls. That is what baseball doesn't need. But, maybe, how about, if one team is ahead by more than, say, three runs, the losing team's batter who made the last out in the previous inning gets to start on second base? Or, if the umpire feels the teams are taking too long to get ready for the next pitch, he warns both teams for delay of the game. After the second warning, every batter will start each at-bat with a 1 ball and 1 strike count? Let's put a little pressure on these guys!
These rules will never happen in the professional ranks, or most armatures either. But, it is kind of fun to see how George Stienbrenner would handle this. He would have to have his personal physician on stand by.
That is why I like baseball on the radio. The announcers are fun and lively, and actually talk about a whole lot more than just the "action" on the field.
Learn more about this author, Michael Burke.
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Golf
Slowness depends on the person who is watching the sport and on the location. A fairly astute person watching baseball from a couch would find the sport mildly titallating. The sport on television is just about right as the baby bear would say in terms of watching the game and following the action. Watching golf on television is definitely more relaxed and the announcers atttempt to encourage viewer interest by dialogue that should be in my estimation, canned. The sport of baseball with its nine innings and changing of teams is really a lot more different than the sport of golf. The sport of golf doesn't have teams and is more analogous to tennis.
Watching the game of baseball say at the Houston Astrodome is really slow, but much easier to follow than watching a game of golf at your local green. Really, it is a perplexing question but one that interested me in that comparing baseball with golf is like comparing apples with corn. Which product grows the slowest? Baseball teams are developed through the years and the players are more representative of their teams name than of their own name. Golf players train on their own and represent themselves in the game. Watching an inning of baseball with the three strikeouts being worked out is only slow to the opposite team. Watching a golf player closing his eyes and swinging at say 179 yards to the hole is only slow to the viewers on the same side of the golfer who have to wait for the announcer on the other side to tell them how far or just walk to that hole.
Now, if I had to watch a stalk of corn growing or to wait for an apple to do the same, I would say that the slowest product would be the apple and that I would have picked the ear of corn and masicated it before the apple ever blushed. Therefore, since we have compared corn to golf and apples to baseball, I would have to say that baseball is slower to watch than golf.
In the time that it takes to watch a round of golf, we would be spending two hours on the couch hoping that the baseball announcers would grow hoarse and stop sputtering out insane comments. Our golfers would be pleasantly putting on their most regal airs while our teams would be spitting out tobacco juice and substitute players.
And while on the subject of substitute players, have you ever seen a game of golf with a substitute hitter? The slowest game to watch whether on television or live is baseball and it gets even more tedious on the radio which by the way leads us to another question. Have you ever heard a golf game on the radio? To be honest with you, I think that listening to a nine inning baseball game on radio is as silly as it would be to listen to the action of a golf tournament on the radio. What an exercise in developing patience!
And, therefore, let me conclude that baseball is the slowest game to watch regardless of the place.
Learn more about this author, Nora Nick Katsourakis.
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