By Andrew Lipsett
Note: Thankfully, this post has absolutely nothing to do with the current team, season, or series. You’re welcome.
“In most sports the ball, or object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he’s out; sometimes unintentionally, he’s out… in football,basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball, you score with the ball and in baseball the ball prevents you from scoring.”
-George Carlin
Baseball is a fairly unique sport in many ways. George Carlin, in a brilliant stand-up routine from which the above quote is taken, famously pointed out many differences between baseball and football. Some of his observations, though, can be extended to team sports in general. Of those, I??m most fascinated by a somewhat obscure topic: the role of the actual ball in the game of baseball. In this game, where everything has a record and everything is meticulously defined, the ball itself has a fairly fluid identity. I??d like to take a bit here and try to actually define the purpose of the ball in baseball. I think you??ll find, if you consider that question for a second, exactly how complex a task that really is.
Think about how you explain a team sport to an outsider. In most sports, getting at the essence is fairly simple: one team tries to get the ball into a specific area ?
