Do baseball historians drool over a players stats because they never had the ability to compete in baseball?
Baseball historians & fans lіkе drooling & comparing players stats
more thеn аnу οthеr sport.
Whο dο thе historians & fans fall іn lіkе wіth thе stats οf a ball player instead οf really playing thе game fοr fun?
I really played baseball аt thе small league & high school levels & іt wаѕ аll аbουt having fun & nοt аbουt stats.
Iѕ іt safe tο ѕау thаt thе historians & ѕοmе fans thаt never hаd thе ability tο play baseball delight іn drooling over a players gaudy statistics?
No
Stats have been a part of baseball since the beginning . I too had fun playing and was a halfway decent player but that has not anything to do with it . Keeping stats is a part of baseball and a way to remember just how excellent players were . For instance “Babe Ruth” . By keeping stats you can see when the steroid freaks started cheating . For instance “Barry Bonds” .
Really, yes. The daily sports writers are so obviously wanna-bes, but they be converted into vindictive and hag-like when the players don’t fulfill the fantasy.
Ahem, I played baseball in school too. I loved stats then, I like stats now. I loved playing then. I want to play now if I knew of an adult league around here. I wouldn’t generalize dude.
Ahhh – the smell of stereotypes in the morning!
Just because you delight in the statistical side of the sport doesn’t mean you’re a frustrated rightfielder or a wannabe quicker. Baseball is BY FAR the most documented sport in terms of statistics. Kind of seems natural that people would take advantage of all that information, doesn’t it?
Read Chapter One of “The Summer Game” by Roger Angell. He clarifies the allure of stats in baseball far better than I do.
People like stats because they like the game and want to be able to know it better. It’s nice to be able to compare players without just relying on biased gut instinct. Just because someone is interested in the statistical part of the game doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate the beauty of a well-turned double play or a huge sweeping curveball.
I reckon most baseball fans doubtless dreamed of being fantastic players when they were kids but hopefully most adults have went past that and aren’t frustrated by it.
Ha! It’s an fascinating question, even if obviously an unfair generalization. Certainly there are baseball historians who drool over stats because they compare those stats to those that they accumulated themselves while playing.
But I do reckon that there’s a lot of excessive stat-slinging that goes on. I’m guilty of it, too, because it’s simple to do. “Oh yeah? My player is better than your player because he hit .317 and yours only hit .304 in late-August Sunday afternoon games where the wind was blowing at 15mph, following a rainy Friday night, and had a runner on following in the 3rd inning.” We’ve got stats for everything, but most of them don’t tell us anything useful.
I’m not sure if baseball fans do more stat comparison than in any other sport, like you said. It’s possible, but it seems that football fans do this quite a lot as well.
Just because someone keeps stats doesn’t mean that they suck. Maybe they’re retired or they would just rather keep stats because stats are the whole game. Without stats you would never know how excellent a pitcher’s certain pitch is, where the batter’s weak spot is, etc.
Baseball stats hold more meaning than other sports really. It’s just the way people dive into them and study them. You don’t see that in other sports. People know Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the all-time leading scorer in basketball history, but how many can say how many points he scored without having to look it up? Ditto with Emmitt Smith as the all-time leading rusher in football.