As we embark on the first baseball season in 68 years without Vin Scully behind the mic, thank goodness we still have this classic comedy bit from George Carlin.
Image source: georgecarlin.com
I have a writerly purpose in sharing it with you today. Carlin’s piece demonstrates how, by choosing just the right words, a writer creates a mood and a sophisticated set of images for the reader. In this case it’s actually 2 moods and 2 sets of images.
We see, for example, that football is played on a rigidly structured gridiron, and baseball is played on an elegant diamond.
Football comes across as weighty, even sinister (down) while baseball is light and airy (up).
Football delivers an abrupt kick and slaps us with a warning; baseball provides relief and freedom to stretch.
While I’d never discount Carlin’s deft delivery, I think it’s his pitch-perfect choice of words that makes this piece the classic that it is.
With your writerly sensitivities thus enriched, sit back and enjoy the work of a master comic and master wordsmith.
I enjoy comparing baseball and football:
Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.
Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park. The baseball park!
Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.
Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything’s dying.
In football you wear a helmet.
In baseball you wear a cap.
Football is concerned with downs – what down is it?
Baseball is concerned with ups – who’s up?
In football you receive a penalty.
In baseball you make an error.
In football the specialist comes in to kick.
In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.
Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness.
Baseball has the sacrifice.
Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog…
In baseball, if it rains, we don’t go out to play.
Baseball has the seventh inning stretch.
Football has the two minute warning.
Baseball has no time limit: we don’t know when it’s gonna end – might have extra innings.
Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we’ve got to go to sudden death.
In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there’s kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there’s not too much unpleasantness.
In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you’re capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.
And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:
In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy’s defensive line.
In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! – I hope I’ll be safe at home!
(Transcript source: Baseball Almanac. The original source, of course, is the inimitable George Carlin himself.)
Leading Technical Communication 
Larry, two thoughts:
1. The idea of baseball as a peaceful game is bollocks. Football is a reenactment of line of battle warfare. Baseball is a reenactment of siege warfare, in which one side used bombardment to strike the home of the other and the other makes sorties for relief. They are both war games. All sport is war conducted by other means.
2. It isn’t the choice of individual words. It is the juxtaposition of words that achieves the effect. The art is not in the selection but in the arrangement, not in the vocabulary but in the story.
1. Quite true: it’s bollocks that baseball is a peaceful game. But football positively revels in its warlike aspects, while baseball plays it more low-key. It’s siege warfare, maybe even guerrilla warfare.
2. Word choice is significant, and writers need to understand that. Then, having chosen the right words, the real potency comes in juxtaposing them — as you point out.
1. Baseball is genteel – it evolved out of “rounders” (women’s cricket) after all ;>)
Thanks for stopping by, Jeff. I’d heard of “rounders” as an antecedent to baseball. Had no idea what it was. Women’s cricket, eh?
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