BASEBALL: Struck out on criticism

I like sports. I like baseball. It’s a game I would love to have tried playing in high school except our cows needed to be milked.

I like the preciseness of baseball where the tension of a no-hitter can retain absolute attention while holding transfixed 56,000 people in the stands and millions via TV. Unlike other sports, it’s so precise that when it rains or snows, the game is postponed unlike that other American sport which plays in ridiculous conditions.

So, Mark Nelke, your rant about baseball being “agonizingly slow” fell on deaf ears. Baseball is the pure team sport where each player has the full attention of all watching at any given moment, when their individual quality of play — one play — could determine the outcome of the game. That’s pressure.

By the way, why is your paper so biased toward the American League? Big write-up today (Sunday) starting on page 1 of the Sports section about the Tigers-Red Sox and nothing on the Dodgers-Cardinals. Is it because the Mariners are in the AL? You would think that the heritage with the Dodgers and Spokane Indians (you may be too young to remember the days of Maury Wills, Frank Howard, etc.) would provoke more coverage. Dodgers-Braves coverage was pretty scant, a series in which the Dodgers as a team hit .333!

Bottom line, don’t denigrate America’s Pastime! It’s a gentleman’s game — not one where a bunch of bruisers pile on each other in a snowstorm where you can hardly see them. May Babe Ruth’s ghost haunt you!

JIM KORVER

Post Falls