For a lot of people, baseball season is kind of the "meh" time of year where we just wait for football season to start up again. I almost never watch the games on TV even though with the advances in technology the game has become more entertaining and easy to follow. Regardless of these changes and attempts at making it more watchable it still can't hold my interest and mostly I'll just catch up on the scores the next day online.
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My situation is a strange one because I live in Chicago and we have two professional baseball teams here. I live within walking distance of Wrigley Field where the Cubs play, but I am a White Sox fan. Unlike the people who grew up here (I didn't) I don't hate the cubs even though there is a rivalry, I cheer for them as well when they play.
The reason why I am a Sox fan instead of the Cubs is because Cubs tickets cost dramatically more than White Sox tickets by virtue of the Cubs for some reason being a much more popular team and the massive amount of season tickets that are sold out a decade in advance means that the number of tickets that are available to the general public is normally very limited.
For some reason or another the White Sox are much less popular and their stadium located in arguably one of the most dangerous parts of Chicago, the United States, and perhaps the world. Therefore you can normally pick up Sox tickets for around $20-$30 whereas if you want a Cubs ticket, you will pay significantly more for them if you can find them at all.
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The White Sox stadium is one of the more modern stadiums in the country (by virtue of being one of the newest) and it is a pretty amazing experience going to one of the games. It's crazy to me how dangerous the south-side of Chicago is, and this is evident to anyone that visits because from the Red-Line train stop all the way to the stadium there are police and yellow-jacket wearing ushers that are strongly encouraging fans to not stray from the path and to head straight to the stadium. It's the friggin wild west down there.
Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that I absolutely love going to a baseball game. I love the slow pace, I love the fact that you don't really have to pay full attention and even though you can't really even see far enough to even know if it was a strike or not, you can tell by the roar of the crowd what is going on and the energy of being in a stadium is pretty damn electric. Also, it doesn't hurt that ball park hot dogs are amazing and you are never very far from a cold beer thanks to the roaming vendors.
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Now as much as I love going to the games and consider them to be a great value, I find watching baseball on TV to be absolute torture. All of the electricity from being there is missing when you are watching on TV and even though the announcers try their best by injecting the game with statistics and you have a much better view of the strikezone, it just isn't interesting to me and millions of other people who don't tune in for the games.
Also, the games tend to be nearly 3 hours long and whatever I am watching better be Lord of the Rings entertaining if I am going to sit and watch something for that long. I choose not to. If I ever even pay attention to live game that I am not in attendance for, it will just be an open tab on a browser that makes a "beep" sound anytime someone scores. I would much rather do that than actually watch the whole game.
Does this make me not a real fan? Probably and I am not even afraid to admit that this is most likely the case. If I had to choose to lose one sport out of football (of the American variety), basketball, or baseball - the choice would be pretty easy for me. However, out of all those games to watch live, and Chicago has all of them, I would probably choose to go watch baseball first - but mostly because the games cost very little to go and see.
How about you? Do you like watching baseball on TV and if so, why?
It's hard to watch a full game on TV but i don't mind watching highlights from the games. The games seem to drag when watching on tv somehow. When i go to an actual game either if it's pro or minor league the games seem shorter. I guess with the commercials and the ability to make the game "longer" by showing replays and then going "back to the game" in reality the "live" play happened maybe 3 minutes ago. I don't like that. I rather watch from start to finish with no interruptions. If i missed out on something interesting then i will see it later on the news. One other thing when it comes to watching on TV is I tend to want to just listen to the game and sometime the commentating is bad. I only say this cause when my local baseball team is away their games are only shown on the away teams channel wether it's youtube or if your lucky their game is on the leagues website. You get to see the action but the people commentating either don't do any at all where it's just the game or there is a guy talking and he can't comment worth a shit! This is why i hate watching our local team's commentator when watching the sunday home games. I can't go cause I work 3rd shift and while 1pm is normally a good time for anyone i can't attend since i have to work that night. I try to watch the whole game at work later that day but like i said either they have no one talking unless they have that one guy that just babbles and never call the plays properly. I am forced to watch when i am trying to listen while i work and i can't enjoy the game and work at the same time somehow. At lest the local TV station does highlights i can catch that on the 11pm news.
Recently ESPN or it might be Fox started having condensed games where they skip all the BS and just show you the action. This is something I can get behind and enjoy on TV. It is also true with American Football. Especially for the games where I don't really have a horse in the race I like how they can take a 3 hour game and make it 30 minutes long.
Commentary is such an essential part of most games and this would annoy me as well. Sometimes I enjoy the bizarre statistic more than I do the actual game and the absence of such commentary would make a boring situation unbearable.
This video is one of the games i was talking about that makes it unwatchable. The funny thing is i made a comment in person to the people in charge of the livestream. I told them they need to do something to help track what inning it is. They just added the scoreboard to "make things better". Finally from June onward they used the audio from the radio broadcast.
I agree. This is one of the few sports that when it is on TV that I don't really even have a glance at it and move on. 3 slow hours where for the most part nothing happens? No thanks :)
I think most people agree with this. Have you ever been to a game and watched it in-person though?