Rusty Saber: Unique aspects of baseball explain sport's longevity

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.

This is being written while the World Series is in progress. I am a big fan of the game. The baseball of my youth truly was the "National Pastime", and the players were bigger-than-life heroes.

Back then the World Series was a kind of national celebration, with the collective eyes of the nation glued on baseball. There was no TV, only radio coverage of games played during the day.

Baseball must now share the spotlight with football, basketball and hockey. Soccer also is growing in popularity, although it hasn't yet gained much television coverage. It is television that has caused other sports to supplant baseball as a favorite among many fans.

Baseball moves slower than basketball, hockey and football.

Except for the collision when a catcher blocks the plate to try to keep a base runner from scoring, baseball isn't a contact sport. No advantage is gained from whacking another player.

Other sports feature a lot of contact, which is attractive to today's fans. I know, basketball isn't supposed to be a contact sport; watch two players go after a rebound and it will be obvious that contact is an integral part of the game. Of course, the goal of football is contact; blocking and tackling are football fundamentals.

I don't know much about hockey, but the intent of the game seems to be the creation of prodigious mayhem. The old cliche "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out" seems to fit the sport like a glove. Baseball is a finesse game.

It has been said that hitting a fast-moving round baseball with a round bat requires more hand-eye coordination than any other athletic accomplishment.

I don't believe any of us can grasp this unless we stand with bat in hand at home plate while a big league pitcher throws a 95 MPH fastball our way. While picturing that scene in the mind's eye, note how far the fence is from home plate; try to comprehend what it would take to hit a home run. That is a long way to hit a ball.

This World Series is especially interesting because none of the usual suspects are there.

If a baseball writer had predicted last spring that the Anaheim Angeles and San Francisco Giants would meet in the series, he would have been locked up in a padded cell so he couldn't hurt himself.

The New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves or Arizona Diamondbacks were the picks of most experts. Another reason I like this series is because neither the Angels or Giants are high payroll teams. Well, the average major league salary is $2.38 million, I doubt that any of the players are on welfare, but neither's payroll exceeds the gross national product of third-world countries. They can't be accused of buying a championship.

Baseball may have lost some of its popularity to other sports, however, you wouldn't know it from the capacity crowds averaging between 40,000 and 55,000 fans in the playoffs and World Series proves that a bit of life is left in baseball.

I am a dyed-in-the-wool baseball fan, because it is unique. It doesn't resemble any other game. No clock dominates, which makes more astute Yogi Berra's quip that in baseball, "it ain't over until it's over." The game doesn't end when the clock expires. As long as one batter is at the plate with one strike left, there is hope, regardless of the score. The optimistic fan can say, "Two grand slams, and we are right back in this game."

Baseball is the only sport I know of where the coaches wear the same uniforms as the players. I sort of like that. Can you imagine football coaches wearing pads and helmets on the sidelines? How about basketball coaches dressed in fancy shorts like the players? No way. Football coaches wear casual athletic gear, but not uniforms. Most basketball coaches prepared for the TV cameras, look as though they just stepped out of the pages of Gentlemen's Quarterly. Baseball managers and coaches look like the players, only older.

All other sports have head coaches and assistant coaches. Not baseball. The head man is a manager, his assistants are coaches. Why manager? Well, managers manage, coaches coach.

Makes sense to me.