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Comment by d35007 | Hacker News Reader

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d35007·

> Good. Baseball isn't a serious spectator sport. It's only interesting to statisticians

What makes a spectator sport "serious"?

The average MLB game had almost 30,000 spectators in the 2024 season[1]. That's a lot of statisticians.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2024/10/01/mlb-atten...

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You can put a basketball game on anywhere in the world, and people will watch it, even if they haven't watched basketball before. People only watch baseball out of tradition. MLB didn't even have a play clock until 2023, letting batters step out of the box at whim and create even longer periods with no action.

> You can put a basketball game on anywhere in the world, and people will watch it, even if they haven't watched basketball before

What the heck is this confident assertion based on?

From showing basketball to people who haven't watched a basketball game before.

Just checkin’

But what if I have watched basketball and I don't watch it. Basketball is a boring game until there's 5 minutes left.

And then it takes 30 minutes to play the last 5 minutes... ugh.

Baseball is twice as long and boring to most people all the way through, so we seem to be in agreement.

Uhh basketball has plenty of issues, like 6 timeouts in the last two minutes, way to many 3s, traveling everywhere that make it hard to watch.

How do three pointers or uncalled fouls make a game hard to watch? If anything, they make it easier for a first time watcher. Timeouts in the last few minutes happen only when the game is close, prolonging the suspense. If the game isn't close, it ends faster.

Source: Trust me bro

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