This Sunday is the first good day of 2009. The camps in Arizona and Florida will open, and – finally – we can start talking about lineups, bullpen roles and infield alignments. It means we will have made it through the purgatory of another football season, and can get down to real business. Boys & girls, it’s baseball season.

Football is a fine game, I guess. Like most people who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, it’s the first sport I really loved. It’s got plenty of action, plenty of strategy, and enough scoring to keep the average sports fan happy and interested. It’s a game uniquely suited to television, which means it can be supplied to the masses without too much effort. On the surface, it’s an easy game to understand. Hell, it’s an easy game to love, which is why in the last 25 years it has become the true favorite American pastime.

That doesn’t mean it’s better than baseball, however.

Yes, I admit that my favorite game isn’t as popular as football. That speaks more to the idiots who have run Major League Baseball over the last thirty years and the massive marketing machine that is the NFL. For whatever reason, explosive hits and touchdown dances sells stuff better than Brad Lidge winning the World Series, or Torii Hunter crashing into a wall to steal a home run. (Although, don’t you think there’s a natural connection to Barry Bonds’ massive steroid engorged cranium and Cialis? Marketing gurus are missing something here.)  The NFL’s popularity also reflects the fact that as a society, we’ve become more impatient, more demanding of instant gratification. For someone raised on the idea of the ferocious pass rush and the Hail Mary, a 2-1 pitcher’s duel with three pitching changes in the seventh inning is a maddeningly boring thing. Football is something you can watch just because it’s on the tube. You have to want to watch baseball.

And that’s a sad statement, because there’s no comparing the two games. Football can’t carry baseball’s collective jock. These are just a few reasons that baseball is better than football:

  • The season is longer, and there are literally ten times more games. Instead of waiting to see your team play for three hours on a Sunday, you can watch a baseball game every day of the week. And, the slow pace allows for real bonding. Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had with my dad and with my daughters have been during pitching changes.
  • It’s summer! The weather’s better. You can watch a game and work on your tan (except of course for the poor souls in Minnesota who have spent a generation watching baseball underneath a Teflon sky). You don’t have to huddle under blankets and shiver your ass off on a cold mettle bench in some God-forsaken, ice-ridden, ridiculous little town that is anything but Green. And cold beer tastes better on an 80 degree day than a 40 degree day.
  • You want drama? You can keep the Music City Miracle and James Harrison’s Superbowl  touchdown. I’ll take Matt Holiday cutting his chin open at home plate with an entire team strapped to his back to get into the playoffs. David Ortiz destroyed an 86 year curse with one swing of the bat. Football can be exciting, but the NFL doesn’t have the sustained two month drama of a late season pennant run, or even a ten minute, 14 pitch dual between Johan Santana and Albert Pujols.
  • Major League Baseball has the best professional All-Star Game. The NFL has the Pro-Bowl.
  • Baseball is a thinking person’s game. There is more subtlety and nuance in one baseball game than in some NFL teams’ seasons. You can watch a veteran pitcher like Tim Hudson or Roy Oswalt set a guy up in the second inning to bite on a backdoor slider he’s going to throw him in the eighth. Watch the outfield when any pitch is thrown. There’s more motion in there from pitch to pitch than there is in the New England Patriot’s backfield. They know which pitch is coming, and they know how that hitter is going to handle that pitch. Unless he fools them, in which case you’ve got a ballgame.
  • In recent years, the NFL has begun to truly embrace and market its history, but it’s still light years behind MLB. Quick, name a dozen NFL players from the 1960’s. OK. Now from the 1950’s. In baseball you have Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron, Brooks Robinson, Bob Gibson, Roberto Clemente, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford, Harmon Killebrew, Frank Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. You also have Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, Stan Musial, Pee Wee Reese, Warren Spahn, Bob Feller, Phil Rizzuto, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. And while the NFL might count thousands of honorable, respectable gentlemen in its historical ranks, not one of them is named Jackie Robinson.
  • Baseball is a much more international game, which means Major League Baseball really is pulling in the best talent from the world. How many players in the NFL are from the Dominican Republic? Or Japan? Or the Netherlands? Or Cuba? Or Australia? Besides kickers, I mean. The team that wins the World Series is truly the World Champion.
  • Major League Baseball has David Ortiz, Derek Jeter, Torii Hunter and Ozzie Guillen. The NFL has Terrell Owens, Chad “Ocho Cinco” Johnson, Randy Moss, and the Oakland Raiders organization.
  • With the exception of that awful place called the Metrodome, they don’t do The Wave in baseball parks.

So, this then is an invitation to my smash mouth loving brethren; you who have no idea what you’re going to do with yourselves between the April draft and your fantasy draft.  Instead of spending your June worrying about Tom Brady’s infected knee or if Rex Ryan will be able to make the transition from coordinator to head coach, go out to a ball park. Sit in the cheap seats. Buy yourself a dog and a beer. Yell at the umpires. Try to catch a foul ball. Maybe teach yourself how to keep score. And then do it again a week later. You’ll get hooked. You’ll realize that there’s more to life than a zone blitz.