Why baseball?

With all due respect to football, basketball, hockey, soccer, etc., I say baseball is the best sport. Now that the season has started (Let's Go Mets!), let me tell you why I think so.

• Wrigley Field and Fenway Park- Okay, I'm a Mets fan. But you have not seen a baseball game without visiting one or both of these baseball shrines. I've been lucky enough to see games in both places (more than once at Fenway). Are the parks old? You bet- and old stadiums from the "classic" days of baseball fit in to baseball's history like gloves (no pun intended).
  
• The history- 140 years. Thousands and thousands of players. Heart-stopping moments: "The Shot Heard 'Round the World", Kirk Gibson's "The Natural" moment, "The Catch", Bill Buckner (sorry, Karen). If you were alive and knew about baseball, you can remember where you were or what you were doing when at least one baseball moment occurred. Can you say the same for basketball? Or hockey?
• The Stats- I am never surprised anymore when some new factoid comes out from a game- take last night. Two switch-hitters on the same team hit homers from both sides of the plate. Okay, no big deal- but did you know the last time it happened was in 2000? Someone did, because it was in today's paper. Is there any organization like SABR for any other sport? I bet you can find an answer to "What baseball team has the most wins on a Tuesday" a lot faster than "What hockey team has the most wins on a Tuesday".
• The Pace- Baseball invites you to walk away and come back later, because it is leisurely; but there is a price- you might just miss something completely unusual. My story- my wife and I were at a Mets/Yankees game in May, 2005. She leaves in the bottom half of an inning to get something to eat and drink. She was gone maybe 10 minutes. While she was gone, she missed a pitcher in his second major league at-bat double over the outfielder's head, then score from second on a sacrifice bunt when the catcher didn't go back to cover home plate in time. As they say, Amazing.
• Lou Gehrig- As I said, I'm a Mets fan. But the greatest player of all time in my mind is Lou Gehrig. Others hit for higher average, others hit more homers, others were better fielders, others were better runners. But there was never a better human being who ever played, and who doesn't get choked up when they hear "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."?

So we are 1-0, Dan Murphy is on a 162 homer pace :-)- what's not to like?