Ongoing Debate – Baseball v. Lacrosse

The seemingly new fad of boys growing up choosing to play Lacrosse over Baseball thoroughly bothers me. Bothers me to the point of taking the debate to the blog world. Quite frankly, the fact that I am writing this blog is an insult to all things good and right with the world, baseball being one of them.

Now I’m sure I’m going to have guys and girls alike (you know who you are) find this argument absurd. They may find this argument to be dumb because they’ll say “who cares”. They may say, “what does it matter anyway?” They may even say, “I’d rather be shopping at Abercrombie & Fitch right now” or “ooooh, big sale at J.Crew on green pants with yellow mini-boats on them!” Alas, that’s the whole point (and what the comment section is for).

What they should be saying, however, is that this is something that should’ve been said about 5-10 years ago. This is something that should have been stopped long before this blog and my opinions ever made it to the net. Before, quite frankly, any Birkenstock-wearing kid from Maryland ever picked up a “Lax” stick.

We now know that it obviously bothers me. But why? Here is why…

Because it’s a shame. Yes a darn right shame that there are families allowing their children to grow up choosing Spring Sport #2. Baseball is the American Pastime for christs sake. Whatever happened to meeting up with your buddies to go play home run derby or stick ball? Whatever happened to the thrill of buying your first glove and oiling it up and wrapping rubber bands around it to soften the leather?

As a kid, as true red-blooded American, you grow up watching Baseball. You root for your favorite team. You root for your favorite player. You play little league with your friends. You grow up having a catch with your father, mother, uncle, cousin, friend, whomever. You get the point. You eagerly anticipate watching the Fall Classic. You try to stay up late to catch the whole game. You don’t and you shouldn’t grow up trying to catch ESPN6’s encore of Loyola v. Hofstra or Princeton v. Brown. Its not natural. Its not what life as a young kid is supposed to be like. It is, quite frankly, embarrassing.

I mean here is a sport that really doesn’t even have their own fields. They play on football and soccer fields. That should tell you something right off the bat.

I’ve had this argument/mature debate several times with several different people. The lacrosse player’s defense always tends to go the way of they elitist and “lacrosse players are better athletes than baseball players.” Now, this one is laughable. One sport has a bunch of guys running around “cradling” a ball throwing back and forth. The other one has 9 different entirely different positions that require entirely different skills. The idea of different positions in Lacrosse is the size of the sticks. If you’re on defense you get a longer stick. Wow. Whoever thought up that plan was a genius…no wonder the ivy league schools tend to revel in this sport.

While we’re at it – if you did make the unhealthy decision to play Lacrosse why in gods name would you choose to be a defender?? Have some guts and try to score at least. Lord knows there is plenty of opportunity for it since the scores are usually 37-36. (what exactly is the point of a goalie...and those long sticks on defense obviously dont help much)

Quite frankly, I blame Maryland.