Top-10 Reasons Why Baseball Is Better Than Football

After reading the brilliant article from the Queen of Bleacher Report, I felt compelled to remember the words of that late, great, American philosopher George Carlin. I feel as though his spirit possessed me to answer on behalf of the great American pastime.

Here is a cupping of a featured monologue from the first broadcast of Live! It's Saturday Night! in 1975. And all apologies and/or thanks to Lisa, George, and NBC.

1) Baseball is different from other sports. The ball is put in play by the defensive team and is allowed to be touched only by the defensive team.

2) Baseball is a pastoral game. Football is a technological struggle.

3) Baseball is played in a park and the dimensions could be vastly different from setting to setting. Football is played upon a regimented gridiron of the same size in stadiums.

4) Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life and renewal. Football begins in the fall, when everything is dying.

5) Baseball has no time limit; we don't know when it might end. We could even have extra innings lasting until tomorrow! Football is rigidly timed and will end, even if we have to go to sudden death!

6) In football, you receive a penalty. In baseball, you make...an error!

7) Football is concerned with downs—what down is it? Baseball is concerned with ups— who's up?

8) Football has unnecessary roughness, spearing, clipping, piling on, late hitting, and personal fouls. Baseball has the sacrifice.

9) In football, you wear a helmet. In baseball, you wear a cap.

10) The object of football is for the field general to march his troops down the field using an air or ground assault, often in defiance of a blitz, while punching holes in the wall of the enemy's defensive line. In baseball, the object is to go home...and be safe.

Now that's as good a description as I've ever read of the difference between the two sports. And that's not even mentioning the picture of the sausage races in Milwaukee!