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or Why Latin America Made Me Appreciate Baseball All the More

Troll that I am, I've been following this website religiously even during the off-season, rarely commenting myself. However, those few times I have commented I may have mentioned that was living down in Santiago, Chile, and managed to live outside of the Bay Area for the most exciting Giants' season in recent memory.

That said, my addiction to the national pastime has remained strong and, in between "Governator" jokes from people who find out I'm from California, I've been finding myself often debating the relative merits of professional sports with other Gringos. Well, it seems that most of the world is enamored with this strange game of "football," whereas the consensus is that baseball is "boring" and "too slow."

Fuck that.

I've made an effort, watching dozens of games and even going to games in three separate Latin American countries, and I can safely say that anybody who calls insults baseball and advocates soccer in the same breath has issues. Granted, Latin American soccer never claims to be as crazy as European soccer, but I've been etching out a short list of myths and truths about this strange sport:

1. Tie games are not fun to watch. I don't care if it's been a good, hard-fought game or if the tie has strategic importance; being blue-ballsed at the end of a 90-minute game is an infuriating experience.

2. That said, ending a game with penalty kicks, while fun, does not accurately represent the whole of the team and is based on a singular luck of the draw. The closest parallel would be if after 9 innings a baseball game were decided by a Home Run Derby, with every player on each team getting a free swing at a pitch of their choice, or perhaps if the two coaches played a very short game of Russian Roulette to decide the winner.

3. Not only can't you fake an injury in a baseball game, but even if you could it wouldn't do any good. Any game that rewards people for taking spills on the slightest provocation, clutching their legs, eyes scrunched up to keep the tears at bay while crying for mommy, only to get up and keep running five seconds later, should have known to expect it. Honestly, being a medic for a soccer team must be the most irritating and useless position, knowing that the idiot player writhing on the ground probably didn't actually just break that leg, but you have to go through the motions anyway and call for the stretcher.

4. You can't tie in a baseball game. You play until the game is over, even if you need to send your starting pitchers out to pinch run or your third-basemen behind the plate.

5. A baseball game that ends at 1-0 is usually mercifully short, capped by outstanding defense along with, admittedly, a frustrating offense. A soccer game that ends 1-0 (most of them) will most often be characterized by missed pass after missed pass and a lack of overall offense, and despite the 90 minutes on the clock will feel like an entire day has been wasted (personal experience speaking here).

6. While soccer isn't the only culprit here, I hate it when you reach that point in a game where "clock management" enters the game, which is just a nicer name for "stalling" until the point where the other team, Boise State-style natural disasters aside, couldn't possibly come back to win. You can always come back in baseball, even if you don't have Steve Fucking Finley on your team because, as I may have mentioned, you can't tie in a baseball game.

7. One of the main critiques of baseball is that "it's stop-and-start, whereas soccer is pure adrenaline. Who needs to score? It's all about the strategy!" Well, cross country running has quite a bit of running, but you don't see soccer hooligans lining up to fight in the name of their favorite runners.

8. 
   

I miss baseball dearly, clearly, and I'm excited to come home and watch what I hope will be a great season. I'm just tired of this misconception that soccer really is like you see in the highlight reel with great kick after great kick, while baseball is stop-and-start boredom;. I've tried to love soccer, I really have.

So in the aftermath of the Cy Young announcement, with everyone analyzing and re-analyzing every single stat, I'm left wondering why everyone seems to care about strikeouts.

That said...

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