Differences And Similarities Between The Horsehide And The Pigskin

Riley Woods
Marcia Shottenkirk
English Comp. I
22 September 2014 The Horsehide and the Pigskin Two of the most popular sports in America have to definitely be baseball and football. These two sports provide thousands of hours of entertainment for thousands of people. They give us something to root for every single season. Whether or not you’re a baseball fan or a football fan, you don’t have to know everything to realize they have a lot of difference, but also a lot of similarities, as well. Try looking at a baseball player then look at a football player, you can tell very quickly who does more physical training, exercise and lifting. Both sports require some element of physical conditioning. I play baseball and I know
it’s all about flexibility, responsiveness and quickness, where as in football, it’s about how much force, explosiveness, and just brute strength you must possess. I gave my friend who is a 300 pound lineman a baseball at shortstop. He was not quick about getting the ball out of his glove by any means. Naturally, it’s going to be tougher for him, because his arms were moving noticeably slower. This brings me to my next idea. You must train a certain way, to play a certain position in a certain game. Both baseball and football require you to have some sort of mental attitude, out on the playing field. In baseball if I’m not loose, warmed up and relaxed while playing my position, I am more likely to trip or stumble over myself and make errors. Football is exactly the opposite. In football my friend told me, “You have to be tight and tense, so you don’t get murdered on the field.” It takes countless hours of practices to train yourself to stay in both of those mindsets. That also brings me to my next point.
One major similarity between football and baseball is the amount of hours of running you put in. It’s the kind of running where by the end of the day, your legs still feel like they are running and don’t even get me started of the feeling of Jell-O legs. Not to mention the dizziness and nausea that comes with the endless drills, and too much of or too little water in your system. The big difference between running for baseball players is we don’t have to run with pounds of pads and equipment on us. Also in baseball it’s not so much endurance running as it is quick explosiveness burst of speed running the base-paths. At the end of the day, all the tedious running and practice pays off, come game time and the fans are there rooting, cheering, or even booing you on. Yes the fans! They are what make every sport on Gods green Earth worth playing for. Whether or not it is for a game saving turnover or a walk off homerun, nothing beats that spine chilling cheers coming from thousands of fans going nuts and the never ending echo of air horns sounding throughout the stadium. Even the fans who sit at home watching are cheering. Every miraculous sports highlight or replay that we are on would be indefinably pointless without the love from the fans. Although it seems like all fans are the same, they are different from every other fan in their own
way. It’s almost stereotypical of football fans to tailgate and be a little ruder and meaner than us baseball fans. Try walking up to any Greenbay Packers fan at Lambeau Field and tell him or her there team is terrible; wait for their response, you may walk away with less teeth than before. Just be glad you didn’t say that to Clay Mathews. As for baseball fans, we are a little bit calmer. Without the loving fans there would be no players, without players, there would be no coaches, there would be no game. Coaches on a football team or a baseball team are both going to be extremely competitive. The differences is their coaching methods. You don’t have to even be a player to realize that a football coach is going to be loud and in your face, naturally a baseball coach is going to be a little bit calmer and want explain things to you. This all comes back to the mental ability a football and baseball player must possess. You can’t have a loud and right up in your face baseball couch, simply because the players will be tight, tense and vice versa. By knowing these two sports are similar, it’s the little differences that makes me still prefer baseball. George Carlin once said “Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.”
After all, it is America’s past time.