For a lot of people, baseball season is kind of the "meh" time of year where we just wait for football season to start up again. I almost never watch the games on TV even though with the advances in technology the game has become more entertaining and easy to follow. Regardless of these changes and attempts at making it more watchable it still can't hold my interest and mostly I'll just catch up on the scores the next day online.
My situation is a strange one because I live in Chicago and we have two professional baseball teams here. I live within walking distance of Wrigley Field where the Cubs play, but I am a White Sox fan. Unlike the people who grew up here (I didn't) I don't hate the cubs even though there is a rivalry, I cheer for them as well when they play.
The reason why I am a Sox fan instead of the Cubs is because Cubs tickets cost dramatically more than White Sox tickets by virtue of the Cubs for some reason being a much more popular team and the massive amount of season tickets that are sold out a decade in advance means that the number of tickets that are available to the general public is normally very limited.
For some reason or another the White Sox are much less popular and their stadium located in arguably one of the most dangerous parts of Chicago, the United States, and perhaps the world. Therefore you can normally pick up Sox tickets for around $20-$30 whereas if you want a Cubs ticket, you will pay significantly more for them if you can find them at all.
The White Sox stadium is one of the more modern stadiums in the country (by virtue of being one of the newest) and it is a pretty amazing experience going to one of the games. It's crazy to me how dangerous the south-side of Chicago is, and this is evident to anyone that visits because from the Red-Line train stop all the way to the stadium there are police and yellow-jacket wearing ushers that are strongly encouraging fans to not stray from the path and to head straight to the stadium. It's the friggin wild west down there.
Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that I absolutely love going to a baseball game. I love the slow pace, I love the fact that you don't really have to pay full attention and even though you can't really even see far enough to even know if it was a strike or not, you can tell by the roar of the crowd what is going on and the energy of being in a stadium is pretty damn electric. Also, it doesn't hurt that ball park hot dogs are amazing and you are never very far from a cold beer thanks to the roaming vendors.
Now as much as I love going to the games and consider them to be a great value, I find watching baseball on TV to be absolute torture. All of the electricity from being there is missing when you are watching on TV and even though the announcers try their best by injecting the game with statistics and you have a much better view of the strikezone, it just isn't interesting to me and millions of other people who don't tune in for the games.
Also, the games tend to be nearly 3 hours long and whatever I am watching better be Lord of the Rings entertaining if I am going to sit and watch something for that long. I choose not to. If I ever even pay attention to live game that I am not in attendance for, it will just be an open tab on a browser that makes a "beep" sound anytime someone scores. I would much rather do that than actually watch the whole game.
Does this make me not a real fan? Probably and I am not even afraid to admit that this is most likely the case. If I had to choose to lose one sport out of football (of the American variety), basketball, or baseball - the choice would be pretty easy for me. However, out of all those games to watch live, and Chicago has all of them, I would probably choose to go watch baseball first - but mostly because the games cost very little to go and see.
How about you? Do you like watching baseball on TV and if so, why?