Five million people gathered in the streets of one lone city making it the seventh largest gathering in human history. All of this is because the Chicago Cubs won their first world series in 108 years. The five million fans that flooded the streets near Wrigley field all have one thing in common: they love the game of baseball. All of these people love the Cubs, and most have waited all of their lives to see the Cubs win a World Series.

Baseball, a game that might be boring to a lot of people, is not what it looks like. Most people believe that baseball is simply throwing, catching, running and hitting. This is a common misconception, because in all honesty, it has a lot more to do with the mentality of the player than it does with their physicality. To play baseball, you have to know what to do in certain situations. For example, if you are in the field and there are runners on first and third base, you should know the runner on first will steal to draw a throw and possibly score the runner. Baseball also can take a lot more patience than football or basketball, because in those sports something’s always happening, but in baseball, there is a lot of standing around and watching.

Another amazing thing about baseball is that success is measured differently than in other sports. You will fail more than 70 percent of the time. It is difficult to understand that, because most people think that to be an all star you have to be near perfect, but for baseball it’s the complete opposite. The best players are the ones who fail the least and can do the best in the field. When you bat in baseball you have approximately 50 milliseconds to decide if they want to swing or not, and if they wait too long then there is no way they could catch up.

I can also understand that people think that there is too much down time. I agree with that, especially if you are watching younger kids playing baseball. Not only can the down time be boring but the fact that in some innings the ball is never even put in play can get monotonous because there is nothing happening. Also, people like other sports because they have contact. In its own way, baseball has contact too because you get hit by people running bases or you can get spiked by someone sliding into your leg. Most of all, the college and the MLB pitchers can throw from 85-100 mph, which is faster than cars are legally allowed to drive, and people sometimes get hit by a solid ball going that fast.

So, next time you want to say that the game is boring or has no action, think about getting hit by a 100 mph fastball in the arm or hitting a ball 400 plus feet to win a game. It all comes down to show that baseball is exciting. There might be factors that make it boring, but you may have to think about what it is like to be in a situation where you feel like you are on top of the world.