an interesting debate came up this weekend.<\/p>\n
what is a sport? what is a game? what delineates between the two?<\/p>\n
i view sports as a subset of games. there are no sports i could think of that are not a game at some level. however, there are plenty of games that are not sports. the person i was debating saw sports and games as totally different creatures, whose differences were defined by skill vs. sweat.<\/p>\n
the argument was about baseball – basically, the person i was arguing with put baseball (we are talking pro ball here) on par with darts or chess as a game of skill, rather than a sport. her definition of a sport was caloric burn during the sport’s performance and “working up a sweat”. personally, i think that for every david wells, there are a half-dozen athletes in top physical condition. it was definitely a weak point to defend though, that wells competes with\/against professional athletes. i tried to offset with some Babe Ruth. That was shot down by the fact that bowling is a sport. <\/p>\n
at any rate, i disagreed heartily at the delegation of baseball to the title of a game. sure, there are ball-players out there who are not “working” 1\/10th as hard as some of the more intense sports during the course of a game. that being said, in order to be on the field and eligible to be in<\/b> the game, they need to be top-notch athlete, even if only in a specialty.<\/p>\n
there was also some excellent discussion of game pace, and strategy vs. tactics in any competitive situation. <\/p>\n
to me, what has always defines a sport vs. a game is this: when athletes participate in\/execute the game with seasoned coaches, the anticipation of the outcome of the game is heightened for the participants, and, in heightened tenfold for the audience. i could give two shits about watching a bar league softball game. they are a lot of fun to play in, but they are also easy to blow off. not so much for a pro baseball game. same could be said for toss around football, or a pickup game of soccer. while i realize my personal definition has some gray areas, it doesn’t seem to have held me back over the years. restricting the delegation of sport\/game to sweat\/cardio workout- no sweat\/cardio workout seems pretty thin.<\/p>\n
i’m not here to debate what the original argument was about – i think considering professional baseball anything other than a sport is just silly – by the definitions of the words sport<\/a> and game<\/a> alone, you are left with little room to argue.<\/p>\n as with all things though, you are left with plenty of room to interpret – what is your interpretation?<\/p>\n