10 Reasons Soccer Is Better Than Baseball

Full disclosure: I'm a huge baseball fan.

I played Little League.  I made All-Stars.  As a rather plump kid, I was an automatic choice as catcher.  And I was pretty dang good—as a defensive player.

Offensively?  Not so much.  After compiling a lifetime batting average somewhere south of the Mendoza Line, I eventually retired from baseball around the age of 13 with two bum knees.

I never gave up soccer, though, and that's in no small part because I think it's a better sport.

Don't misunderstand: My bum knees and horrible batting average (I think I once struck out 12 times in a row) aren't the reasons I think soccer is better than baseball.

So what are the reasons?

I'm glad you asked.

1. Baseball Players Are Often Really Rotund

And not just the scrubs, either.

That dude?  He's Prince Fielder.  He weighs 275 pounds!

And he's supposedly a vegetarian.

Fat or not, he hit the most homers in the National League in 2007, and led the league in RBIs in 2009.

And it's not just Prince Fielder.  There's also his dad, Cecil Fielder, who hit 51 homers back in 1991.

And there's C.C. Sabathia, the 2007 AL Cy Young winner.

Other fatties include Lance Berkman (2011 World Series champion), Pablo Sandoval (2010 World Series champion), Bobby Jenks (2005 World Series champion), Miguel Cabrera (2003 World Series champion) and David "Big Papi" Ortiz (2004 and 2007 World Series champion).

And, um, Babe Ruth.

What kind of sport has great players who are fat?  Oh, nevermind.

2. Stupid Baseball Stats

Some baseball stats are really, really cool.

For instance, some baseball geeks actually found ways to quantify how many wins a player contributes to his team, how valuable a player is to his team, and how good players are defensively.

Those are all cool, but did you know that Paul Konerko was the American League’s top hitter last year, with at least one runner on base, in day games played on artificial turf in Canada?

I just made that up.  That may or may not be true.

But this much is true: There are real baseball stats (putouts as a first baseman?!  Come on!  What does that really measure?) that are kind of like that.

3. The Unbalanced Schedule

In a true league format, each team plays every other team an equal amount of times.

That way, you can accurately determine which team is best.

In baseball, the schedule isn't like that at all.

Pick a team, any team.  We'll choose the Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals because they were involved in a heated playoff race.

When combined, the Atlanta Braves' opponents won 50.1 percent of their games, while the Cardinals' opponents won 49.3 percent of their games.  The Cardinals had an easier schedule.

The Cardinals also claimed the National League's wildcard by one game over the Braves, and then won the World Series.

Something doesn't quite seem right about all that.  If you're going to let razor-thin margins decide which teams make the playoffs after a 162-game schedule, every team should play the same schedule.

Speaking of the schedule…

4. Too Many Games

Major league baseball teams play 162 games.

Give me a break.

5. The Regular Season Isn't Meaningful Enough

If you're gonna have an endless 162-game schedule, the regular season needs to mean something.

In baseball, it doesn't.

The following is a list of teams that finished with the best record in the National League since the year 2000, along with how they fared in the playoffs.

2011: Philadelphia Phillies—lost in divisional series (first round).

2010: Philadelphia Phillies—lost in league championship series (second round).

2009: Los Angeles Dodgers—lost in league championship series.

2008: Chicago Cubs—lost in divisional series (swept).

2007: Arizona Diamondbacks—lost in league championship series.

2006: New York Mets—lost in league championship series.

2005: St. Louis Cardinals—lost in league championship series.

2004: St. Louis Cardinals—lost in World Series.

2003: Atlanta Braves—lost in divisional series (to a team that finished 13 games behind them in the standings).

2002: Atlanta Braves—lost in divisional series.

2001: Houston Astros—lost in divisional series.

2000: San Francisco Giants—lost in divisional series.

That's 12 seasons with one team (the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals) advancing as far as it should have based on its regular-season record. 

Half of the regular season champs lost in the first round.  None won the World Series.

Here's another stat.  Since baseball introduced the wildcard to the playoffs for the 1995 postseason, five wildcards have won it all and five more lost in the World Series.

What does that tell us?  In baseball, you're more likely to win it all if you're not the best team in your league.

Why even play the regular season?

6. The All-Star Game Decides Home Field Advantage in the World Series

The St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series last month by defeating the Texas Rangers in a seven-game series that went the distance.

The Cardinals trailed three games to two before winning Games 6 and 7 at their home stadium.  In other words, their championship had at least a little to do with their home-field advantage in the World Series.

For those who don't follow baseball, if a team has home-field advantage in a seven-game series, that means it hosts Games 1, 2, 6 and 7.

How does Major League Baseball decide which team gets home-field advantage?  Does it go to the team with the better regular-season record?

Nope, it goes to the team from the league that won the All-Star Game in July.

By the way, Texas had a better record than St. Louis in the regular season.

7. The DH Rule

Two leagues make up Major League Baseball: The American League and the National League.

You'd think that the two leagues would play by the same rules, but they don't.

In the AL, pitchers don't have to hit.  AL teams get to use a designated hitter (DH) in his place.

That's not the case in the National League, where pitchers have to take their turn in the batting order. 

This makes a big difference because NL pitchers who intentionally hit a player with a pitch have to face possible retribution in the batter's box, whereas AL pitchers can bean guys all night long and never have to answer for it.

8. Strikes

I've been complaining about the World Series (more of that to come), but the truth is that I love it.

Autumn just isn't complete without the Fall Classic in October.

That's why the Fall of 1994 never really happened.  There was no World Series that year because the players were on strike.

The players also declared strikes in 1972, 1981 and 1985.  Why?  Because work stoppages are popular in American sports.

Jerks.

9. Baseball Doesn't Have Relegation

In world soccer, the worst teams in leagues around the world get sent down to a lower division at the end of every season.

It's called relegation, and it gives teams an incentive to try hard on the field.

In baseball, the worst teams just keep on doing their thing, year after year after year.

Exhibit A: The Chicago Cubs.

10. World Champions?

It's called the World Series, but only teams from the United States (and sometimes Canada) play in it.

The winners love to call themselves world champions even though they only play non-Mexican teams from North America.

So are they really world champions?

The counter-argument is that no one else plays baseball at the level of Americans.  But the World Baseball Classic has twice shown that to be false.

In world soccer, there's something called the World Cup.  Every country from around the world has a chance to enter a team.

After years of qualifying, a final tournament is held every four years.  There, soccer crowns a true world champion.