Ronaldo, part II

In the midst of the FIFA World Cup fever, there are about a gazillion newspapers and magazines that contain (predictably) witty articles about how football (soccer…) is not popular in the United States. And although I have not read all gazillion of them (I read two), it seems that most write about how football is a low-scoring game and therefore it cannot capture the attention of an average American.

Clearly the writers of these (two) articles smoke crack. Because last time I checked, baseball, an American favorite pastime, is a low-scoring game, too.

I like playing softball, the girlie version of baseball. It’s fun. And it’s fun mostly because there is a lot of drinking involved while waiting for your turn to bat. Being a girl, I am usually the catcher and the consumption of alcohol contributes to the antics behind the home plate. Most the antics involve falling down when attempting to catch the ball. Also, since I grew up amidst boys, I have minor athletic skills so when I swing a bat, it actually hits the ball. Which, of course, doesn’t mean much because most of the time, the ball doesn’t travel far.

Contrary to playing softball, baseball is the most boring thing in the world. There is a lot of waiting, gigantic ass-scratching, and spitting. It takes forever for teams to change field (or whatever that is called), it takes forever for a batter to bat, and, most of the time, there is a lot of looking around. Not to mention that there aren’t that many home runs.

In football, there is tons of running up and down the field. All the running (which, as I established before, contributes to rock hard bodies) builds to a stressful suspense for the observer who hopes that someone will get the ball close enough to kick it into the field goal. Yes, most of the time, the ball is either high or wide or both, but to anyone who is watching football, it looks like the ball might just make it. It’s also cool to watch some of the amazing footwork that is required to avoid an opponent trying to steal the ball. Is there a bicycle kick in baseball? No, sir! It’s also amazing to watch an economically “underdeveloped” (have you noticed that no one says Third World anymore?) country (Ghana) kick the ass of a “world power” (US). For once, a country’s GDP does not correlate to its athletic ability like it does in the Olympics.

Football is also a lot more civilized game. The referee has the power to kick a player off the field for something minor as a hand flip protesting a referee’s call. In baseball, it is acceptable to throw chairs and bats onto the field or, even worse, onto fans.