Re: baseball

[ianb@sun670.telecom.tandem.com (Ian Bui)]

Cha`o ba'c Ha` Le^ va` ca? la`ng,

Maybe you don't understand the game of baseball
enough to appreciate its beauty and intricacies.
IMO, it's one of the finest sports there are. In 
terms of complexity and strategy, football, basketball
and hockey don't even come close. Watching it may be
boring sometimes, but playing it is quite a lot of fun.

Baseball is about a lot of things, not just swinging a 
bat at a ball. And even doing that is not as straightforward 
as you might think. Good hitters must be able to put the ball 
in various parts of the park, depending on the game situation. 
Sometimes they have to be able to make sacrifices to advance 
other runners, other times they might be called on to bunt.

On the defensive end, there's simply too much about baseball 
to cram into one short message. The most obvious component of 
the defense is, of course, the pitcher/catcher duo. (Pitching 
is an art, to say the least.) Fielding is another important 
component that requires a lot of coordination among the players 
and a keen awareness of the rules and the situation at hand. 
One fielding error sometimes can decide the outcome of an entire 
game.

Probably the most important important person on a baseball 
team, however, is the manager. Baseball, after all, is more 
about strategy and probability than many other sports and
relies a lot less on star power than, say, soccer or basketball. 
One miscalculation by a manager at a crucial moment in a critical 
game can mean the end of a season for the whole team even when 
the season is not yet over. I've seen it happen before.

While managers must rely heavily on statistics in their
decision-making process, the game itself is as unpredictable
as anything else in life. Speaking of which, the main reason
I love baseball is that it teaches me many things about life.
First and foremost, it's a constant reminder that no matter
how good you are, you can't expect to get a hit every time
you come up to bat. In fact, even if you can do it only once 
in every three tries, consider yourself better than most!

Cheers,
Ian