Baseball: the ball-and-stick game over 176 years in the making. Ever since the first pitch was thrown, baseball has been a cornerstone of the sporting world and an epitome of the American experience. However, today many of the millennial and the up-and-coming generation see baseball as an incredibly boring sport--on par with professional golf or curling.

Although you get to watch men do something analogous to cleaning

While not as fast-paced as football or high-scoring as basketball, there are many reasons to start watching more baseball:

1. Baseball is unpredictable

If you follow football (NFL or college), you have a pretty good idea of who will win the championship this year (probably Ohio State). And the next after that, and so on. Football is fun and all, but it’s kind of lame in the fact that upsets are fairly uncommon; it happens, but there is a reason upsets are often called “miracles.”

Although this miracle was quite nice to watch

Baseball is really cool because you really have no clue who will win. Sure, seeing the record of wins-vs-losses of a team is a decent indicator, you have no idea who will win until the game has been played, even if the other team is awful. Baseball is a sport centered on Murphy’s Law: anything that can happen, will happen. Take Game One of this year’s World Series: the first pitch thrown to the Kansas City Royals resulted in an in-the-park home run. Guess when the last time that happened during a World Series? 1903, almost 110 years ago. That’s crazy.

2. Participating in a baseball fan base is awesome

Well, being in a fan base anywhere is really cool. But for baseball, there is something unique: as I mentioned before, you never know what’s going to happen during the season. Sure, your season may go from promising to the dumps (sorry Braves fans, you still did better than Philadelphia), but there is a really cool feeling seeing your team go the other way: from obscurity to almost-champions. It happens almost every year in baseball that a team goes from zero to hero in no time. Take the Chicago Cubs this year. Only third in their division, they went to not only beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, but went on to beat the St. Louis Cardinals, who had the best overall record in all of baseball. While they didn’t go on to the World Series this year, I can assure you Chicago was on fire during their run.

But then again, I think we all wanted to be a part of Back to the Future II

3. Baseball is great to watch

Few things match the enjoyment of attending a baseball game. You would think that as slow as baseball can be, going to a game would be a huge waste of money. Well, you are wrong on two accounts. Firstly, baseball games are super cheap usually (I’ve seen tickets as low as a dollar). Second, baseball games can become very intense very quickly. A couple of hits or an error in an inning is all it takes to change the tide of a game. And even if things are slow, it’s fun to just hang out with friends who all mutually enjoy watching a great game.

And if you are watching at home, that can be fun too. During the slow games, sports commentators can say really hilarious and nutty things. I watched a game where they talked about Led Zeppelin albums while a side was at bat. It was great, and you missed it because you thought baseball was boring to watch. Well, now is the time for redemption: tune in to watch the Kansas City Royals take on the New York Mets in Game Three of the World Series this Friday at 8 o’clock. Even if you aren’t a fan of either team, it will still be incredible to watch, and who knows: maybe the commentator will make fun of more girls taking selfies again or show that one kid who is way too excited.

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