awesome vs. awful
AWESOME vs. AWFUL: baseball is a WAY better sport than soccer
welcome to the second installment of AWESOME VS. AWFUL, featuring the ironclad arguments of josh and john!
today, our two debaters will be facing off on the following Highly Controversial statement:
baseball is a WAY better sport than soccer.
due to the incendiary nature of this topic, today’s post is kiiiinda long. but trust me, it’s well worth the read. by the end of this debate, i guarantee you will feel more enlightened than you’ve ever been before on sports, culture and our great nation of america.
let the fighting, i mean, highly classy discussion between two gentlemen BEGIN!
(GONG SOUND!!!!)
Awesome! Because it is. Baseball is the National Pastime. It was Made In America in the 1800s by Abner Doubleday, and in this time of economic crisis, don’t we owe it to our fellow countrymen and our GDP to support this fine sport? Sure, baseballs themselves are made in Costa Rica and most of the players are Dominican, but that’s not important right now. We’re at war, people. You don’t ever hear any Chevy truck commercials about God, Country, Apple Pie, and Soccer, do you?
Which brings up an important point. The first sporting experience of just about every kid in this fine country is coed pre-K soccer. My 4 year old niece is in just such a league right now, and my brother is their coach. Here’s how their games work. While adorable, a gaggle of 15 four year olds fuse into a clump of yelling, whining, wildly kicking beasts. Occasionially, but rarely, the ball moves a few feet in one direction. Every 2 minutes a four year old is kicked in the shins, and there’s a timeout for crying. They run around a bit, no goals are scored, and eventually all of the players sit down to pick their nose or wander off the field to do something more interesting, like cry.
And this is why every American’s last soccer experience is from age 4. We all move on to other things. Like baseball, or recreational drugs, or twitter.
Another reason why baseball is awesome: CC Sabathia looks like this. He’s three hundred pounds of cookie dough in a 250 pound uniform. And he just signed a guaranteed contract for 161 MILLION DOLLARS. Even if he gets face gout, which is entirely possible, he gets $161 millers. David Eckstein looks like this. That scrappy 4 foot tall albino weighs less than my four year old niece. Career to date, he’s made $18 million in salary alone. Where else but in baseball, can one’s American dreams of fame and riches come true without having, you know, athletic ability?
Baseball: As Awesome as America Itself.
Josh, Josh, Josh.
Why do you make my argument for me? Baseball is AWFUL, at least in comparison with football, because it’s so American. American in bad ways.
You’re celebrating an America that celebrates profit, raw capitalist exploitation, and Chevy trucks that are singlehandedly destroying the planet. You’re celebrating an America that likes to see its athletes either grossly overweight or indulging in drugs to the point that they look like Hulk Hogan circa Rocky III. How can you do that, Josh? Really?
Football is the real sport, with real heroes. Pele, Maradona, Cruyf, Charlton, Best, Dalglish, Platini, Baggio, all great players that achieved success without cheating, all men that can run thirty metres without passing out. The Brazil team of 1970 gave the world the finest sports team that has ever existed, the eleven best players on the planet playing as a team, and not as a bunch of spoilt prima donnas, an apparent issue with this New York Yankees team I hear so much about.
Speaking of Brazil, we’re talking about a country where young boys growing up in the filth and danger of the favelas have a slim chance at superstardom if they prove to be good at a game they play with others using a scrunched up newspaper for a ball and rags for goalposts. It puts all the money for those mitts and baseballs in perspective, doesn’t it?
Come on, Josh! Celebrate the America that can be, and not the negatives of the America that is! Look at the president! Yes you can, America! Show the world you’re not about gas-guzzling planet-murdering ego-boosting motor vehicles! Show us all how much you care, that the American dream still lives! That people like Ronaldhinho can drag themselves up from virtually nothing to become one of the most famous people in the world. That America believes that it can happen.
And stop calling it soccer. The rest of the world is making fun of you.
We call it soccer because there’s already another sport that America was kind enough to share with the world that happens to be called Football. If you want, though, please continue to call your sport “footie.” That’s always good for a chuckle.
Why is it awesome that America celebrates athletes that are grossly overweight or indulging in drugs? Because that means they’re just like us, only spectacularly famous and wealthy. We’re a generation weaned on tv and raised on reality tv, absolutely convinced that we’re just one chance encounter with the right casting director away from the fame and fortune that is our birthright. In baseball, you don’t have to be in great shape, you don’t have to be massive. You just have to be freakishly good with hand-eye coordination. Steroids don’t help you with that.
You do mention cheating, however, implying that this is something that only dirty baseball players do. I’ve watched some footie (snicker) in my life, enough to know what flopping is. Soccer is lousy with fakers and divers and whiners. “Oh, someone breathed hevily on my shoulder, now it is dislocated! Please pull out a little colorful card from your pocket to punish the bad man!” Which is why when you do a youtube search for “football flops” or dives, you get many adorable videos such as this one of “athletes” rolling around on the grass clutching various appendages, pretending to be grievously wounded. This is maybe the main reason why soccer is AWFUL and nobody can take it seriously.
Which also leads to the embarrassment that is “injury time.” In every real sport, you know exactly when the game ends, and how much time you have to try to make a comeback. But not in soccer. Every time a player flails wildly on the ground after someone looked at them the wrong way, the referree adds extra “injury time” that is tacked on to the end of the game. Only nobody knows how much injury time there will be and it doesn’t seem to correspond to anything. You might keep running around for a few minutes, or the game could be over before you even have a chance to run down field and not score again. Sports that don’t suck allow players and the fans that last dramatic push, or that last defensive stand. In soccer, it’s like they’re just making it up as they go along, until a whistle is blown and everyone sits down for some orange slices and maybe tea n’ crumpets.
Also, mankind was given arms and hands for a reason. God wants us to use them to do awesome things, like hit 102 mph fastballs and throw things really hard at people’s heads. If God wanted us to just play games like soccer, we would just have little stumps at our shoulders. Or possibly horns. That would be cool too.
Ah, Josh, so much aggression. You clearly know deep down that football is AWESOME. As for being grossly overweight or indulging in drugs, I’m not sure you’re in a position to speak for the poshdeluxe audience if that’s how you spend your weekends!
In baseball, these players clearly do benefit from using steroids. Let’s go down the list, shall we? Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez. Yeah. They’re not any good.
As for ‘footie’, first of all it’s spelt ‘footy’, and it’s a term used mostly by Australians to describe their own brand of football. I think a drunken Englishman once called it ‘footy’ in front of an American and the rumour has spread. I’ve never heard the sport called footy in my life.
You’re only backing up what I’m saying, Josh! It’s not about America, it’s about the world! I’m not going to start arguing about cheating, I think the entire population of professional baseball players injecting themselves and taking pills is slightly worse than a minority of footballers occasionally falling over for no reason. It’s worth pointing out that football fans despise diving, while baseball fans keep making excuses for their cheats.
America giving the world American Football… yes, ok. I hear the game is huge in Mexico. Cough, cough.
I think I’m going to continue calling it footie just because any sport that even could be called footie is clearly awful.
You list a bunch of guys who did steroids, but the point with these guys is that they’re all the most hated people in the sport. Barry Bonds had his own private locker room so that he wouldn’t have to interact with his teammates. Roger Clemens is a backstabbing cock who, when confronted with evidence that he received shipments of HGH, threw his own wife under the bus by claiming they were hers. Alex Rodriguez is hated by everyone but a few Yankees fans – his own teammates nicknamed him “Bitch tits.” Manny Ramirez inspired the phrase “It’s just Manny being Manny” to explain why he never appears to play hard or care or make any sense. The point being, baseball fans don’t just shrug and embrace jerks who cheat, they hate them, while realistically acknowledging that it’s been allowed to happen for far too long.
By the way, if you think soccer players aren’t doing the same thing, you’re delusional. Anything that allows them to pretend to trip and dive further, and clutch the phantom knee injury harder, they’re taking. With the money involved in all pro sports, the incentive to cheat is huge and the risk and harm of it pale in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars. A sad fact for all sports.
Another reason baseball is as awesome as soccer is awful? The skill and strategy involved. Soccer involves endless running back and forth and kicking. I can do those things. Ball goes up the field. Ball goes down the field. Maybe, before 2 hours is up, someone scores. Baseball is an elaborate chess match of skill versus skill. A pitcher may throw 6 or 7 different pitches ranging from a 100 mph fastball streaking towards your head to a 70mph curve ball that at first looks like the former, but bends 4 feet to cross the plate at your knees for a strike. As a batter, your job is to identify what that pitch is from the moment it leaves the pitcher’s hand, based on his arm angle, the rotation on the seams of the ball, and your knowledge of what pitch that guy has thrown in the past in the same situations to get you or anyone else out. You have to begin your swing as the ball is leaving his hand, otherwise you’re not catching up. Hitting a pitch, which looks like the simplest thing on earth, involves a hundred split second judgments and physical adjustments. There’s always more that I’m learning about the game. Baseball is designed for thinking and analyzing.
One thing soccer does have all over baseball: hooligans. In baseball, a few guys in the bleachers get drunk and take their shirts off. Woo. In soccer, a game is not over until thousands of brutish, loud, angry drunks shouting nationalistic slogans break beer bottles over the heads of their rivals in a battle of sovereign and ethnic superiority. It’s not just a game, it’s a race riot! In America we only have those over silly things like police brutality and segregation.
Oh wait, that actually is another reason why soccer is awful, and baseball is awesome. Silly me!
Whoah Josh. Whoah.
Footballers aren’t taking drugs. We know this because unlike American professional sports, football associations test and punish their players. I still can’t believe how many Americans make the argument that drugs weren’t technically against the rules in the 1980s and 1990s. Yup, that magically makes it right. Please, don’t make the American mistake of considering the four sports popular in your country as “all sports.” The fact of the matter is that performance-enhancing drugs are a huge problem in American professional sports and not in football. Even in sports like track and field and cycling, American involvement with performance enhancing drugs is embarrassing.
Ok…. it’s 2009. Hooliganism is nowhere near the issue it was, and in the vast majority of countries where football is played is virtually a non-issue. If anything the American-style corporate neutering of the sport’s culture is a bigger threat. Don’t talk to me about hooliganism, you’re just being ridiculous.
What you have stumbled on is the fact that people actually care about football. Unlike in baseball, where one can waltz in during the third inning and head out in the fifth, having spent the intervening team drinking a beer and paying little attention to the actual game, football fans are expected to sing, cheer, and commiserate during the entire game. Leaving early is not considered acceptable unless your team conceded three goals in the first ten minutes, in which case you may leave three minutes before the end. For football fans, caring about your team means going a little bit further than buying a t-shirt and telling people you hate the Yankees, Cards, whatever.
As for skill and strategy, are you joking? I politely endure Americans’ claims that baseball is strategic, but you’re talking about a guy throwing a ball really fast at another guy with a stick while everyone except the catcher and the short stop scratch their behinds. I admire you for continually learning about a glorified version of rounders, but I do wonder how and why.
In football, where are there are no time-outs and very little opportunity for a break and virtually no opportunity to communicate with your players outside of half-time, managers have to make their choices regarding formation, defensive tactics, attack plan, and player motivation really count. Substitutions can be massive, and to top it all off, a truly successful team needs a strong-minded player on the pitch to lead the team according to the plan. Football swings with momentum in a way that only college football in the US approaches.
Strategy is the wrong stick with which to try and beat football, my friend. The fact of the matter is that strategy is inherently more important in a sport where every game counts, unlike baseball, which one can pretty much ignore until mid-September.
Over to you!
FINAL STATEMENT (GONG SOUND!)
In conclusion, baseball is AWESOME because if you feel otherwise, you’re clearly a communist or a terrorist or a commerorist who hates puppies and Obama and life itself. Footie is awful because nobody likes being bored until their prayers for a merciful death are finally answered.
Football is AWESOME and baseball is AWFUL because Josh has succeeded in lowering my respect for baseball in the course of this debate. Clearly, football gives people the potential to display evidence of the best qualities of the human race, whilst baseball reflects the worst aspects of human nature. According to Josh.
END OF DEBATE!
(MAJOR GONG SOUND!)
whoah, that was a nail biter!
so, pants world, who’s the winner?!! VOTE WITH YR PANTS!!!!
Discussion
23 comments for “AWESOME vs. AWFUL: baseball is a WAY better sport than soccer”
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This debate is decided EASILY. Sorry, John, YOU LOSE.
Let us enumerate the many reasons in which soccer is possibly the shittiest sport of all time, except for perhaps Cross-Country Skiing, and maybe Fly Fishing:
1) it is hella boring. Why is everyone running up and down the field for no reason? Why can’t they manage to put the ball in the goal? Why is it that their major form of celebration seems to be whipping their shirts above their heads and making weird faces at one another with their veins sticking out?
2) You can’t drink at a game. Say what you will about Hooliganism being dead, but I’m pretty sure that’s still why they don’t allow beer in the stands of a match, or a game, or whatever the hell it’s called. WHAT KIND OF SPORT DOES NOT ALLOW SPECTATOR DRINKING?
3) Baseball, unlike soccer, does not require an antecedent. Seriously. Why does everyone call it “THE football?” Is there just the one?
4) Those baggy shorts. Baggy shorts are for 17 year old boys stuck mowing their parents’ lawn. No adult should ever wear baggy shorts. (Basketball players, that goes for you too. Back to the 70s sports shorts, if you please!)
5) WAGS.
6) There is no strategy involved in the game at all. You run up, you run down, you kick, it gets blocked, rinse, lather, repeat until one of the Spanish dudes throws a hissy fit and headbutts someone.
7) Even the fights are boring. I’m sorry, but when soccer can produce benches-clearing brawls, it’ll catch my interest. Two grown men playing slapfight and pulling each other’s hair is ridiculous.
9) FFS. This is an acronym for For F***s Sake AND Fun, Fair Soccer. COINCIDENCE? I think not. Any sport that allows, nay, encourages children to run around and “just do their best” is lame.
10) For every douchetastic baseball “star” you just named who pumps drugs (and they are douchetastic, you’ll have no argument from me), there are tons more who are active in their communities, who inspire their teams and their fans to quietly and competently get the job done, and get it done well. Who lead the team by example and perseverence, not by grandstanding, and who were damn good role models for kids like me.
11) there are no hats to toss off and throw on the ground before storming off the field. what’s with that?
Thanks to everyone who reads to the end. You’re the true heroes here! USA! USA!
John, you’re stepping into a world of pain here. Its kind of like arguing over what’s better, a cool refreshing beer or a swift kick in the junk.
Soccer is a sport, I’ll grant you that much. Anyone that can run back and forth for 90 minutes w/o any real purpose and not completely lose their mind has some sort of athletic ability, maybe. But its an awful sport for spectators and given that nobody in this debate is under contract, that’s what this argument is based on.
1. Flops – to say that a minority of players do this is laughable man…dios mio. There are players on every team that have this down to an art form and anyone watching the replay in slow motion and still considering this part of the game should be ashamed. If this was an argument against the NBA, I’d say it was almost a draw.
2. Stoppage time – you know why they implemented stoppage time? b/c some douche of a goalkeeper in the 1800’s kicked the ball as far as could with a couple minutes left in the match. The other team was due a penalty shot and by the time they retrieved the ball, the game was over. So no, its not a “necessary convention” so much as it is an ambiguous, shady means of ending a game based on a cheater.
3. Scores – 2.17, the average number of goals scored in any given soccer match. Spectators are there to see goals/runs. They aren’t there to watch the other 89 minutes of running back and forth. Its boring, it monotonous and worse yet…it could end in a tie. That’s unamerican (and before you throw the 02 MLB Allstar game at me just know that myself and 100% of baseball fans out there consider that an abortion of a decision).
I honestly could go on but there’s day baseball to prepare for which means knocking out a little actual work this morning. To each his own, but this here is America, take your opinions to Dublin if you want validation.
-Oh, and one of your “heroes” took 26 years to finally admit that one of his and his country’s greatest soccer moments was actually illegal and in no way a Hand of God.
Josh made soccer look like crying nieces FTW.
this comment is actually Daniel’s; for some reason he isn’t able to login or post comments:
I feel bad for John because we are in fact a biased audience of mostly American readers. Naturally we are going to vote that our National Pastime is awesome compared to a sport chock full of flopping with a dearth of scoring.
Josh forgot to mention one more reason why baseball is the mayor of Awesometown and footy is on the city council of Awfulopolis—STATISTICS. Baseball is great and somewhat different from other American sports in that you have an infinite number of stats at the ready to compare today’s players to ones from over 100 years ago. Baseball statistics are so vitally important to its awesomeness, which is why we all cringe at the idea of having to put asterisks on some of the more recent inflated numbers. You want to determine who was a great pitcher? You have ERA, wins, strikeouts, pitch speed, strikeout to walk ratio, and WHIP to name a few stats for every pitcher for over 100 years. And that is just one position! But footy statistics? Goals? Assists? Shots? Penalties? Hairiest legs? What other significant stats are there? The abundance of statistics leads in to another great phenomenon—Fantasy Baseball. You know what is not fun? Fantasy Footy. Your forward scores one goal in one game. And your fantasy team wins for that week 1-0. Game over, hooray.
dude, john, you need to email yr friends and tell them to comment for you, just like josh did!
it cracks me up that poshdeluxe is like, all ESPN for a day. this is something i never, ever would have imagined in my wildest dreams.
also NO ONE IS VOTING WITH PANTS. WTF.
John, I love you, and I do tend to vote for the underdog, but I’ve got to go with Josh here. Not because I give a shit about either sport, as I’m a basketball and American football fan (if either of you yells at me I WILL bust out the fake crying to make you feel bad so don’t try it), but because Josh was funny and John took himself so seriously that I alas could not.
But again, with the loving!
Oh sorry, Sarah, pants to Josh, shorts to John.
Clearly I may seem biased because I did marry baseball, but there are some obvious factors here that nobody has taken into account yet:
1. The result of all of that aimless running around for 2 hours or so is a bunch of soccer players with smokin’ hot bodies. Baseball players wear those funny pants so I don’t even know for sure, but I don’t think there’s much going on under there in most cases. As a spectator, the eye candy factor is huge. 1 point soccer.
2. I admit that a game ending in a tie is somewhat anticlimactic, but with a time limit, you at least get a guarantee that the game will END within 2 or 3 hours. With baseball, you might be signing yourself up for 7 or 8 hours of game-watching. I know that for some serious fans this is not such a grave sentence, but I have to a agree with John that there are better things to do. Another point for soccer for letting me get on with my life.
3. As American as a sport can get, the World Series does not actually include the rest of the world. The World Cup? It’s like the Olympics, and everybody gets to love their country and wave flags and stuff. I still love America, so don’t take away my flag pin, but I’m a big fan of the world too. Another point for soccer.
4. A bonus eye candy point for soccer. Have you seen their legs??
Sorry, Josh. I’ll still watch baseball with you sometimes.
Dang, Erica, HOW COULD I FORGET ABOUT THE SMOKING HOT BODIES?! Make that capri pants for John. Also, because John would look hilarious in capri pants.
I just read the whole thing and as a lover of both sports can clearly conclude that Josh is the superior (master) debater.
Also, guy with hat’s child-like naivety regarding PED’s in world football is sweet, but very, very wrong. I think we all know the competitive nature of the culture and individuals involved in professional sport and that in itself is enough to know people will be taking short cuts. Beyond that, rumors of nearly universal blood doping (Lance Armstrong style) and injury recovery-accelerating steroids and drugs are rampant.
Also baseball is just better.
Something to consider though, the main benefit of footy, beyond the poetry in motion, passion and delayed gratification of the build up to a goal is this: NO COMMERCIALS.
Oh, and I also forgot to mention the rampant match-fixing corruption in soccer. At all levels.
When I can’t watch a Champions League semifinal between Chelsea and Barcelona without wondering if the referee is corrupt instead of just freaking blind, your sport loses it’s credibility.
@erica, you know you’re getting yr own “awesome vs. awful,” right? you’ve got some mad debate skills!!!
i blame the fact that josh and john are both guys for the omission of this MOST VITAL TOPIC: hotness.
i mean, just the soccer legs alone! GAH!!!
@meredith capri pants, hee hee.
It really depends on whether you are at the stadium watching in person, or watching it on T.V. They are both fantastic to watch in person (I would watch either one if in person), but when watching on the tube, I want to watch football because I get 45 minutes (plus stoppage time) each half of totally uninterupted play (no stupid commercials). On the tube, baseball gets so boring. Too many commercials!!!!!
Dear God.
You’re all misguided.
Meredith, I essentially made football=world peace a major part of my argument and you think I was taking myself seriously?
I’m not naive about drugs, I’m just not American; drugs in sport is an American disease in the way that hooliganism was once an English one. FOOTBALL ORGANISATIONS HAVE BEEN TESTING FOR DRUGS FOR YEARS, UNLIKE BASEBALL WHICH JUST STARTED!!!
Match-fixing is a fair point, though it’s not at “all levels”. What about basketball?
Football is incredibly strategic.
I’m genuinely terrified that you all like baseball so much and now believe in the power of brainwashing through state education and media.
I also forgot to mention the World Cup is awesome and the World Baseball Classic is lame.
Flops are called dives, and please watch more games before you conclude that everyone does it.
MARADONA IS AWESOME THE HAND OF GOD WAS ONE OF THE COOLEST THINGS I’VE EVER SEEN!!!
Thanks for reading and commenting everyone! I’m in awe of your support for your national game of glorified rounders.
Also, in light of my last comment, I’m still only taking myself half-seriously, though I have been genuinely shaking my head in disbelief at the comments here. I am actually getting into baseball, but it’s nothing on the beautiful game.
So, I award myself awesome corduroy flares, and all of you American Flag-adorned huge puffy shorts (so you can lend them to your sporting heroes with the large posteriors).
just make sure your manpris don’t have cargo pockets in them, John.
Josh, I like how you felt like you had to announce that it was Daniel’s comment. Anyone who’s met Daniel knows that no one else routinely elects people as chosen leaders of made-up villages and cities. One time he elected our friend Bill Mayor of Cockopolis, and I think Bill wept and asked for a key to the city.
[...] I’m still reeling from my mauling at the hands of baseball apologist Josh yesterday, but it’s only fair to admit that I was well [...]
Pants to Josh for mentioning Cookie Dough. Yum.
Pants to John for making me laugh when he changed the spelling of “footie” to “footy”
And two pants to Josh for winning.
Final (soccer-sized) score, 3-1.
Go DisAstros!
Ok, this is kinda late..but I totally vote for John! And there is definitely no contest in the hotness arena, soccer players win every time!
wow thats too funny guys – that made my day!
Soccer is with out a doubt the better sport. the ball is only in play for like two minutes in a game of baseball. Soccer there is unstopped play for an hour and a half! plus baseball is gay
It’s true. Baseball has sexual relations exclusively with members of its own gender.