For all we have to do is win just one more game

[austin_dern]

Combining thoughts of the game I saw with what I watched of the All-Star game: is it just me or is baseball really poorly served by television coverage? I know it's popular to claim that baseball's a lethargically paced 19th century sport, but watch a game in person and that's just not so. It's a short time between pitches where the action gets going really fast, and even in-between there's always somebody in motion and something happening even if it's not strategically valuable. A regular game may last three hours, but that's not all that different from how long a football game will last either.

And yet, watch a game on television, and it does seem like there's a few precious seconds of game stretched out to days of coverage. I grant some of it is that it's always more exciting to be at an event and surrounded by tens of thousands of people sharing the event and drinking in the energy of the performance, and even a modern 288-inch television set can't match a three-tier stadium around you. Counterbalancing that, though, is you have only the one vantage point to watch the game, you don't have instant replays or alternate views, you don't have commentary to describe things, and if you want to check on game statistics you have to stop paying attention to the game, however fleetingly. The endless chopping of moments into replays, alternate views, and interviews with people not playing can't help, but every sport suffers from that anytime Network Master Command thinks there isn't enough activity.

Maybe part of why baseball isn't so interesting on television is that it's a hard game to fit inside the television set: the players are spread out over a lot of real estate and if your camera uses a wide-enough angle lens to take in just the whole infield the players are going to be no more than dozens of pixels high. If you want to be able to see people's faces, the players have to be tucked into nearly isolated boxes floating free of any context. Football and soccer have similar problems in the players getting lost on the giant field, but football lends itself also to satisfying clusters of interacting players often. Soccer meanwhile ... well, I've never seen a soccer game on television that I was really interested in, but it does get better when half the field or so is on screen at once. Basketball and hockey are played in reasonably crowded arenas where you can take in half the playing field in one shot and still see the individuals. I don't know why it should matter whether one can see what players nowhere near the ball are doing, but it is some difference.

Trivia: Brigadier General William Hull began the United States's invasion of Canada in 1812 with a landing near a settlement called Sandwich. Source: Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought The Second War Of Independence, A J Langguth.

Currently Reading: Sweet and Low: A Family Story, Rich Cohen.

Comments

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

The big difference between football and baseball is that in football, 22 guys crash into each other every 40 seconds.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Every 40 seconds game time, which can take upwards of a cricket match to appear on television. But in about the same amount of game time elapsed baseball will have a pitch thrown (or a leading runner checked), a similar basic strategic unit; what is it that makes television better reflect football than it does baseball?

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

A pitch doesn't usually result in anything happening; you get a strike or a ball more often than a hit. Pitcher throws ball, batter stands there, ball one. Pitcher throws ball, batter stands there, ball two. Pitcher throws ball, batter stands there, strike one. Etc, etc etc.

But in football, every single play has guys crashing into each other, even if the ball doesn't go anywhere. There's always action, every time.

Football also has a much greater strategic element to it, which makes for great use of the Telestrator during instant replays.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

The pitch is something happening; it's not a non-event just because it happens to not be a hit. With the exceptions of fouls on strike two each pitch advances either the walk or strike count, and moves toward advancing the outs.

Anyway, the point is not whether one sport has more action than another; my point is that the action of baseball is perfectly satisfying in person, but isn't communicated well on television. What's the thing lost, and where is it lost?

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

I grew up watching American football on telly (pro and college) and live (college -- my dad was faculty and bought a block of tickets for the family every year), and college basketball (both on telly and sitting in Cole Fieldhouse). Those always made as much sense to me for watching as for playing, though for some reason I could never quite get my head into a pro basketball game as a college one.

Tennis took a little getting used to on television, but watching with my mom I did eventually acquire and appreciation for it. I don't go looking for it, but if I spot a women's match while channel surfing (especially if one of the Williams sisters is playing, these days) I'll often sit and watch a spell.

Basketball and tennis (and volleyball) are well suited to television. Football really is too despite your observation about not seeing enough away-from-the-ball action on the small screen. But American television crews really understand the game, and manage to capture quite a bit of what you need to see, even if enough is left out that every so often you wish you could've seen how the whole play unfolded. That the pacing of football lends itself so well to instant replay helps a lot there. (Hmm. What's the standard number of cameras for shooting an NFL game nowadays?)

I've never had a television set on which I could follow the puck in ice hockey. (By the way, I find it easier to watch tennis on a black-and-white television than in colour. I can see the ball better even on a smaller screen.) Not that I really understood the game until I was conscripted persuaded to join a friends intramural floor-hockey team in college (and there are a couple of anecdotes connected with that, but I digress).

Lacrosse seems to more or less work on television despite being less replay-friendly than football. I'm not entirely certain why, given the problems with soccer, which I tackle below. I should watch more of it and try to puzzle that out.

I used to understand the fun of playing baseball while utterly failing to comprehend the appeal of watching baseball. Then one year a friend said he was coming to DC to watch the Old Timers game, and asked whether I could provide crash space, and invited me to the game.

Okay, sitting in the stadium, I finally understood why people like to watch baseball. I'd have to say it's not my cup of tea, but now I understand. (And it's not as though I had a bad time or was really bored or anything; it was ... pleasant enough, just not thrilling to me.)

And then there's soccer. And I will allow myself a digression at this point. (continued next comment)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I'm intimidated by the quality and depth of your response and feel inadequate trying to answer. But here goes. And I'm glad you found the appeal of watching baseball even if it doesn't drive you mad with desire.

You're right about tennis and volleyball as also being television-friendly, and I just didn't think of them. Basketball is quite good on television; hockey suffers from the problem of finding the blasted puck, although some of the modern graphics effects with things like highlighting the puck position do help.

I don't know how many cameras there are for football, although I think that one of the side effects of the amusing folly of the XFL was an opening up of camera angles -- the silly attempt to make a new league encouraged people to look at robotic cameras posed over the field and able to view at fresh angles.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

On the camera note, the World League of American Football (Now condensed down into the NFLEL, and since the Barcelona Dragons folded, not something I'm following anymore) had HelmetCam, which was unique and derided.. and nowadays, incorporated into NFL games. I think in sports, like other business, competition encourages variety, and the good ideas get sifted down.

Fottball on TV has also improved greatly with the overlay down lines, which makes the game instantly more understandable. (The ball has to cross *here*). Baseball's corresponding recent television improvement is the permanent outs, count, and men-on-base display.. which doesn't really give a sense for the action.

I think there is a little of the problem of seeing-the-field, and seeing-the-pitching, and it's hard to captured those both on television. Soccer has a little of the same difficulty, and I think hockey a bit too. Whereas in Football, basketball, Tennis, Volleyball.. even including Nascar, and most racing events.. you can get a good one-view feel for 'the game'.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, no more NFL Europe to follow, so you don't have to worry about that. (They closed the league just a couple weeks back.)

The addition of computer-added scrimmage and first down lines was a great benefit to football, though. That did improve the coverage considerably and with remarkably little extra work for the director or commentators past making sure the guy on the computer was awake.

And then there's soccer

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Until I joined the junior varsity soccer team by accident in middle school (yes, really; well, more of a misunderstanding), all I knew about soccer was that it had something to do with kicking and was popular in Europe. After I'd decided I rather liked the sport, my father took me to a college game, and I was disappointed at how much less I understood what was going on than watching American football. I could play it but not really watch it...

... Until the same friend who rounded up our clique for intramural hockey started an intramural soccer team. He was, of course, captain and coach-ish (we had some novices on the team), but in his rush to work out offense he completely neglected the defense. So I asked him whether I could be defensive captain and start working with the other fullbacks on our strategy and formations, and he agreed. So it was a sortakindacoaching experience for me. And that's what made watching soccer finally click for me. I'd understood for years what was going on on the field when I was on it, and how that corresponded to the chalkboard diagrams, but it never made as much sense when I was a spectator. Well, after having devised our defensive strategy (one that didn't even use the halfbacks on defense at all -- and we only got scored on once the first season; our goaltender did more spotting and directing than goaltending), I discovered that when I was on the sideline watching my teammates, I could see the chalkboard diagrams overlaid on the grass as everyone moved, clear as day! Suddenly I could watch other teams play soccer and get as mentally involved in the game, have as much fun understanding what everyone on the field was trying to do, as with American football! Watching varsity games became fun. Watching a professional game was fun as well.

Except that I couldn't see anything on television, on the then-rare occasions when soccer was televised. One player dribbling, then passing. Another player attempting a steal or a tackle. A shot on goal. No clue as to context. No idea what passing lanes were open or what looked like a good idea or a bad idea, no way to tell if somebody else was out of position. Offsides calls were always a complete surprise. Ick. Heck, most of the time I couldn't even tell when a shot on goal was a possibility, because there weren't enough visual clues as to where on the field they were!

Then one day, sometime in the past ten years, I saw a soccer game on television, with American voices calling it, that worked. It made sense. I could see enough of the field -- and the right portion of the field -- to understand what was going on in the play, not just "oooh lookit the fancy footwork". I could see the game. And since they weren't trying to cram the entire field onto the screen, I could still see the footwork, the fakes, the tackles, as well as the maneuvering.

"Oh my God, yes!" I said, "American broadcasters have finally figured out how to televise soccer after all that time!"

"Uh, Glenn? Sorry to disappoint you," the other person in the room said, "but even though those are American announcers, that's an Italian camera crew. They're feeding one camera crew's footage to all the different countries' broadcasters, and other countries are just supplying the commentators."

Sure enough, the next time I saw an American soccer game, the camera work was as bad as ever -- follow the star or follow the ball, never show what the options or the threats are. *sigh* (Okay, maybe not quite as bad as the 1980s, but close.) But it can be done right, and in at least some of the countries where a big percentage of the population grows up marinating in soccer the way Americans are steeped in football, it is done right. And then, like American football, you don't see as much as you would in person, but you see enough to really follow, and appreciate, the game. I just have to restrict my soccer-viewing to international events where Americans aren't running their own cameras. (This might be easier if I had cable.)

Re: And then there's soccer

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I think you've hit on something critical here. There's a fundamental smallest strategic unit to a game, the group of players and space over which something important to the game is liable to happen, and if the typical shot is smaller than that, then the game is poorly chopped up. With baseball the basic unit -- to start with, anyway -- would be the pitcher, batter, catcher, and any runners. Soccer has the problem that the fundamental unit is not just whoever has the ball, but also the people in interception and in passing range, and possibly even the goalie too.

It'd be nice to say that the problem will be cured as more Americans grow up playing soccer and presumably understanding it -- isn't it nice that most of the jokes about soccer being incomprehensible have faded in the past dozen years? -- but the fact the problem exists with baseball shows simple understanding isn't the lacking quality.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

it does seem like there's a few precious seconds of game stretched out to days of coverage

Here, let me introduce you to cricket (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket). =:)

(For full details, please consult the duly designated LiveJournal representative, loganberrybunny)

It's true to say I've never been exactly one for sports; but then, the ones doled out at school are, somewhat of necessity, almost always team-based games, and.. well, I'm very good at coordinating with people, but sports teams, not so much. So when our school offered such thrilling activities as hockey (not the icy kind, which looks like dangerous fun) and cricket, I eventually negotiated my way into weight training and archery. And was instrumental in the creation of the "computer run" - as a given "activity" had to have some sporting element, it was technically a cross-country run up to and around some of the (quite expansive) school playing fields, followed by lessons for a computing examination. Which turned out to be more of a pleasantly brisk walk, followed by doing whatever hacking we felt like. (Remarkably, the real programmers wound up with Cs, and those with more of a vague interest received As and Bs)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I know of cricket; I would see games in Singapore in various states of not much going on and scoreboards with obviously insane numbers on them. But ESPN Cricket was the most expensive add-on package to Starhub Cable and it wasn't economic for me.

There were some team sports I liked -- the baseball variants, particularly, but also volleyball and such -- but for most of the year the gym teachers would have us slog through the whole class doing calisthenics or running in dull circles or weightlifting, and then wondering why this failed to instill in us a love of physical activity.