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2 June 2006 Baseball, cricket, subjectivity,
kickboxing, squashing testicles, the anthropic principle, and . . .
Some fellow teachers from Australia and I mused over whether it is more difficult to bat in baseball or in cricket. Without giving it much thought, I assumed a baseball is the more difficult to hit. Sam and Jarod both argued for cricket. We tossed over some reasons why it is more difficult to bat in cricket, the most convincing one to me was having the ball pop up from the ground headed right toward your face. The bounce of the ball must also make judging its destination a difficult prospect. Having practically no experience in both sports, I concluded the matter dropped. Batting in cricket is more difficult. Then, throughout the day (and because I’m never actually working), I thought over it some more and disagreed. I suspected that our opinions, as informed as some may be, were highly subjective, even culturally so. Sam admitted to not even knowing how to swing a baseball bat, though he could bat in cricket. My own extensive experience with baseball worth mentioning goes back to a couple of weeks ago, when I started visiting a nearby batting cage now and again, mainly hitting myself in the left shoulder after clumsily swinging over or under the slowest balls in the whole cage. I can’t knowledgably comment on cricket because I’ve never even held a bat. I don't know of Jarod's experience with baseball, though, being Australian, I'll bet it's limited (I'll have to ask him sometime). It occurred to me that our arguments could be tested. Several competent batters in both baseball and cricket could bat in each others’ sport. If the batters have a more difficult time successfully hitting a cricket ball than batsmen do with a baseball, then it might be worth concluding that batting in cricket is indeed more difficult. If the batsmen have more difficulty with a baseball, then the opposite could be concluded. My suspicion is that competent batting in each others' sports are skills that can be adapted by players at about the same rate and that neither will do well at first. In other words, batting in both games is equally difficult. Now what I suspect is the reason why Sam, Jarod, and I so confidently argued the greater difficulty of our own country's games had more to do with our personal experience in our own games and a lack of experience in each others'. Our reactions seemed more reflexive than thoughtful. Ours was a subjective view and, though we didn't mean it to be, we must have felt ours to be the more reliable. I remember that one of the aims of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), when it first began, was to settle the dispute over which martial art is the most effective -- a question with no definitive answer, as far as I’m concerned, as the effectiveness of a fighter depends on so much more than the fighter's discipline. I suspect a boxer will claim to be able to kick (or punch) the ass of a kickboxer. I’m sure the kickboxer will argue the opposite. People can take this subjective objectivity to ridiculous degrees, as well. I remember one girl I went to university with who told me that I would understand the pain of menstrual cramps if I had my balls squeezed in a vise and had that pain multiplied by ten, because, being female, she knew exactly how painful it is to have one's balls turned into pâté. Ultimately, we have to consider that we believe what we do simply because that’s all we know. It’s like the anthropic principle as summed up by Hawking: “We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to observe it.” To re-phrase this so as to fit the earlier part, and the point, of this essay: I perceive baseball and cricket the way I do simply because I am an American. If I were Australian, I would not perceive them that way. Finally, and I know I’m speaking from a limited male point of view, getting your balls crushed would hurt way more.
Copyright
© 2002-2012 by Charles Ian Chun
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