/lit/, what is the most literary sport and why is it baseball?
Tennis, by far. And no, not because of le meme man.
>not road cycling
lmao@ur life
>not bullfighting
>not gladiatorial combat
Wew lad
>>7888593
I'm glad you enjoy that athletic hobby but it's not a sport. No defense involved? No one actively trying to use their skill to interrupt your skill?
Not a sport.
>>7888602
Fuck off, Hemingway, you juvenile shit
>>7888603
This is pathetically bad bait. At least think before you post it.
Do you mean sports that can be competitive? If yes, then it's running.
If by sports you mean sport activities then it's callisthenics.
It's cricket. Baseball doesn't even compare.
>>7888593
That looks fun but I don't want to get hit by a car.
I know how obstructive and irritating cyclists are when I'm driving and I'm more careful and tolerant than most. Fuck, just last summer I saw a cyclist get hit by a car, the guy wasn't even wearing a helmet.
>>7888607
Numale cuck who will never taste true victory or defeat detected.
In addition to the usual themes of victory, defeat, and struggle against the opponent, these two sports have the theme of death which isn't present in other sports. Therefore, they are more literary. QED.
>>7888603
>No defense involved? No one actively trying to use their skill to interrupt your skill?
You haven't actually seen any road cycling races, have you?
Chariot racing.
>not wrestling
this board is pathetic
Edging.
>>7888652
the sun also rises is literally about a neoliberal cuckold that watches some slut fuck all of his friends interspersed with bullfighting. Do you even read him or are you just another fatass Yank marketer that namedrops him before your prepaid South American fishing trips?
>>7888647
Baseball is a thousand times more literary than cricket. Cricket is literally contentment the sport. No one's agonised over a cricket game, and no one's either played cricket like their career's depended on it.
>>7888679
Nope, I've read it. The main character was cucked by life, not by his own failure to be a man. Cohen was the true cuck. The bullfigher that fucked Brett was the must uncucked character for of all, as a symbol of the masculine power of his sport.
baseball is /lit/ because DeLillo likes it
>>7888627
>This is pathetically bad bait.
You are pathetically triggered right now.
It's an athletic and competitive hobby masquerading as a sport. It's not my fault you need to pretend that a glorified hobby is a sport.
>>7888654
>You haven't actually seen any road cycling races, have you?
Physically interrupting other cyclists isn't a necessary part of the activity. These are a bunch of guys practicing a competitive skill in unison and sometimes accidents happen. That's it.
These hobbyists always get so triggered when they have to deal with the fact that they aren't actually into a sport.
>>7888584
Chess. You're all filthy fucking phillistines.real answer is boxing. Only sport where victory is ensured by hurting your opponent so much that he can't get up anymore
>>7888679
>the sun also rises is literally about a neoliberal cuckold that watches some slut fuck all of his friends interspersed with bullfighting.
thanks for the kek
>>7888755
>Only sport where victory is ensured by hurting your opponent so much that he can't get up anymore
if thats your criteria here then i suppose the greatest sport is alimony
>>7888751
Do you also think things like javelin throwing and the 100m aren't sports?
>>7888766
>>7888767
Yes. As well as a large portion of track and field events etc. These are competitive skills that you perform solo without obstacles and being disrupted or disrupting isn't a core aspect of the game. The people who compete in these hobbies are incredibly skilled and athletic; but they aren't playing sports.
if you're a cis hetero white male then dodging false rape accusations.
It will become a national sport and lit worthy.
>>7888603
i have also rustled others with this definition of sports welldone etc
>>7888793
All in a day's work, m8.
>>7888773
Was the S section of your dictionary missing?
How has no one said boxing yet? It's the perfect convergence of strategy and physical prowess
>>7888798
>you thought this bant was worth posting
The fuckin state of you, cunt.
>>7888801
cos yer head gets bashed in m8 an then you cant do no finkin
>>7888804
Fuck off you eastern cunt.
>>7888830
bit rude bit rude
Formula 1 before they became pussies.
>>7888584
How do you relate "literary" to sports?
What makes the best stories? What requires the most intelligence? What is the most visceral display of humanity in conflict? What has the most emotional impact? What is the most abstract?
This thread is kinda wasted if you don't suggest any frame for argumentation. I don't find "literary" to be so easily related to sports and looking around in this thread nobody else does either.
Baseball because you can take a book with you to the stadium and read in between the moments of absolute dullness and boredom.
Chessboxing
CS:GO
>>7888670I did not start with the.greeks
The answer is, of course, golf.
>>7888607
t b h hemmmingway wrote about dimaggio in old man/sea
The Decathlon in track & field obvi
>>7888584
Because it's long and dull
>>7889093That's what she said.
>>7888649
cycling to get to places like schools and shops isn't a sport. see: the tour de france. Real cycling is cycling to the champs elysées, everything else is a sham.
1v1 sports
tennis, boxing, chess (not a sport w/e)
Lacrosse
>>7889292
Your post is badly formatted.
Go soccer is the most beauttiful sport.
Jai Alai
Cribbage
Russian Roulette
>>7888584
Competitive kissing
>>7888670
>wrestling
This is correct. Wrestling is also the least gay of all sports.
>>7888584
jeu de paume
A sport is only 'literary' if you are practicing yourself, watching it on TV is non-literary to its extreme.
football, easily. just don't be a pleb, get past the commercial surface a bit
>using "literary" as an identity
>>7889692
I hope you mean 'rest of the world' football, and not American football.
>>7888584
American Football is by far the most literary sport. It pretty much writes itself.
>Game as War
>Players (warriors) don battle armor (equipment, helmets, pads, cleats, etc.)
>Game (war) is always played (fought) between two opposing city-states.
>Deep seated rivalries and hatreds which span decades old real world conflicts (Red River Shootout is a continuation of the fight between Oklahoma and Texas over control over the Red River; "The Game", which is Michigan vs. OSU, is a continuation of the Toledo War; etc. etc.)
>Generals (head coaches and assitant coaches) lead their troops (players) and make the battle plans (game plans) for the troops to execute.
>Epic moments such as goal-line stands (conjures up images of Thermopolyae, The Alamo, etc.), last play and second wins, etc.
>Great interplay between individual heroes (Star players) and their reliance on standing and supporting troops (other players).
Basically, Homer would have fucking loved football.
>>7889725
think that's obvious from the image
>>7889769
>Basically, Homer would have fucking loved football.
Maybe if the players had stripped and oiled up beforehand.
>>7889769
would homer have enjoyed watching 40 minutes of coca cola ads in between 10 seconds plays though?
>>7889769
Is this satire?
>>7888755
Okay, boxing is the only one that has really given me pause. It's probably pretty close between baseball, boxing, and maybe bullfighting.
>>7888880
I was being intentionally vague. Half the enjoyment I get out of threads like this is people arguing over what "literary" means. To me it basically means a certain aesthetic that I associate with books, but I couldn't really elaborate on it, its just a gut thing. Besides, I'm more interested in what you might think it means.
>>7888755
What has being ruthless got to do with literature unless you're hummmmingbird?
>>7889769
>sing oh muse of the pass of Manning that brought countless ills on the Bears
>>7888584
Fuck off Haruki
>>7889330
patrician as fuck.
>>7889846
>Maybe if the players had stripped and oiled up beforehand.
Implying they don't
>>7888584
>what is the most literary sport
Homosexuality.
>>7889769
So no different from soccer, basketball and hockey then? Except for having more armour than the former pair and less than hockey.
>>7888672
kekk
Probably is baseball. Has a nice, slow rhythm and is comfy as fuck.
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/08/a-perfect-game
>>7889769
I think I agree with a lot of this. Football does seem really Homeric. In a way that other sports based on two teams fighting for territory/goal-scoring aren't. Soccer and basketball rely too much on subtle things, like footwork and passing, and not enough speed, strength, agility, etc. Hockey comes closer, but hockey is just fucking goofy.
>>7892933
Rugby is better due to strict codes (more tragic) and no armour.
>>7888587
this guy is right, why is there even a thread after this post?
>>7892954
But why though. Tennis seems so... fruity. I mean, I play tennis casually and enjoy it. But it has to be one of the least consequential sports.
>>7892973
Because literature is soooo manly and perfectly typified by a war epic from over 2500 years ago. /s
>>7892987
Okay, you disagree, that's fine. But what's your alternative? Why tennis?
(For the record, I never said it was, I'm not one of the guys defending football).
>>7892995
I'm not that guy but I would say Tennis is a sort of discourse between two people, I could see the back and forth nature of the game being somethin akin to an author engaging with a reader and the reader struggling with the author.
But idk, I don't watch or play tennis.
>>7888584
The social practices of one generation tend to get codified into the "game" of the next. Finally, the game is passed on as a joke, like a skeleton stripped of its flesh. This is especially true of periods of suddenly altered attitudes, resulting from some radically new
technology. It is the inclusive mesh of the TV image, in particular, that spells for a while, at least, the doom of baseball. For baseball is
a game of one-thing-at-a-time, fixed positions and visibly delegated specialist jobs such as belonged to the now passing mechanical age, with is fragmented tasks and its staff and line in management organization. TV, as the very image of the new corporate and participant ways of electric living, fosters habits of unified awareness
and social interdependence that alienate us from the peculiar style of baseball, with its specialist and positional stress. When cultures change, so do games. Baseball, that had become the elegant abstract image of an industrial society living by split-second timing, has in the new TV decade lost its psychic and social relevance for
our new way of life. The ball game has been dislodged from the social center and been conveyed to the periphery of American life. In contrast, American football is nonpositional, and any or all of the players can switch to any role during play. It is, therefore, a game that at the present is supplanting baseball in general acceptance. It agrees very well with the new needs of decentralized team play in the electric age.
Because most games are fucking boring, but every now and then there's one super exciting game that just keeps you up at night so you start to remember why you watch baseball it's not super exciting all the time but when it is exciting, boy is it!
>>7893023
This is really interesting, might have to chew on this for a bit. In the meantime I'd like to push back in one area. The crux of your argument seems to be that baseball players are specialists and can't float around the field and swap positions, the way football or basketball players can. That's fine, but that's just one way in which baseball emulates the industrial period. I've always thought of baseball as being more of an agricultural game, mostly because of its conception of time. Football and basketball, it seems to me, run on industrial time, they have no internal periodization, they're amorphous and homogeneous until time is imposed on them from outside in a very precise way. Baseball, on the other hand, generates its own time, it moves in rhythms (3 strikes is an out, 3 outs is a half-inning, 2 half-innings is an inning, 9 innings is the game), somewhat like the seasons, and to me that's what gives it its leisurely, one-at-a-time pace, not so much that it's emulating an assembly line or a conveyor belt.
>>7893023
LOL You people don't understand sports. At All.
>>7893080
Please enlighten us then.
>>7893054
it's a direct quote i lifted from 'understanding media' by marshall mcluhan, a real interesting book which i thought pertinent to the thread. i like your response, about baseball making its own time.
The Giants win the Pennant!!!!
baseball is incredibly /lit/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrI7dVj90zs
>>7888584
I love you.
>>7893241
Nice, I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the post.
Why are the Yankees the best team in existence?
>>7889769
>Watching beefed up niggers run fast and tackle eachother between 10 minute ads for mega corporations is literary
I think surfing has potential to be quite /lit/.
It's not uncommon for surfers to go around the world chasing waves, either solitary or with a friend. And when you're in the water it's pretty much an independent sport. Just you and nature all around you. If you're real into exploration it can take you to pretty much every country, continent etc.
Africa, south america, canada, north america, indonesia, china, japan, etc.
>>7893430
This. Something with the ocean. One of the literary tradition strongest symbols. From the ocean between Homers islands to the sad Truffaut boy. Why wouldn't the most /lit/ sport be diving?
>>7893023
>In contrast, American football is nonpositional, and any or all of the players can switch to any role during play.
Confirmed for never having played football. About the only positions which can switch at any role during a play would be slot backs, tight ends, and maybe full/tailbacks shifting out of/into a new position prior to a play
>>7892212
Soccer, basketball, and hockey are all real-time sports which frown upon physical contact (except hockey). In contrast, football is played on a gridiron (eerily similar to a battlefield, complete with battlelines), is turn based (allowing for generals to adjust battleplans as needed), and a battle line is drawn every single play (The line of scrimmage). In football, there is many different types of attack, a 'cavalry charge' (full frontal, 3-yards-and-a-trail-of-dust run attack), 'ranged attacks' (passing plays or air raid style offenses, double-movements and (play action and/or trick plays), 'flank attacks' (trap or counter plays), siege battles (prevent defense or goal-line stands), etc. etc. etc.
I could also go on about all the insane football games and stories which are brimming with literary potential (Appalachian state vs. Michigan, '84 National Championship between Nebraska and Miami, the 'four horsemen' of Notre Dame, Game of the Century between Oklahoma and Nebraska, Various 'dynasties' of football dominance ala Oklahoma 53-57, Alabama 61-66, Nebraska 93-97, etc, 'blueblood' programs acting as historical powerhouse)
College football offers much more in the way of literary merit with its nostalgia, rivalries, pageantry, and folk heroes who border on regional gods to many people (Bear Bryant, Knute Rockne, Tom Osborne, Bud Wilkerson, the Gipper, the Heisman, etc etc etc.)
I would even go so far as to say that the mythical quality of baseball is matched and in some ways even surpassed by football in many respects.
>>7888584
No, it's catch
>>7888766
underrated post
>>7889769
My dissertation actually has a lot to do with this and you're mostly right. All mejor sports have the "war" mechanism in there somewhere, but american football really turns it up to 11.
It doesn't necessarily make it the most literary sport, but one of the most epic for sure.
Distance running
>>7888584
I don't see how it could be anything other than cricket. not even an Aussie
>games last for days
>High points of the game are huge and can swing the game
>playing for 8 hours a day with breaks
>history spanning hundreds of years
>>7893430
Ooh, I really like this.
>>7893500
Man, see, when people like you talk about football it makes it sound fascinating. Then I try to sit down and watch it and its so fucking dull. It's like 3 hours of commercials, people standing around, miscellaneous bullshittery, only occasionally punctuated by action. I wish I could get into it, I really do.
>>7894163
Watch games after the fact on youtube or mirror sites, they cut out the commercials.
Also, the college networks usually do quick and condensed versions of games (usually running an hour) a day or two after the games are played. They cut out a lot of the non-substantial plays and commercials and cut in the major plays.
Or go to high school games...the game might not be as complex, but you won't have to spend 3 hours watching one game.
>>7894173
Mmm, I might have to do that. I think I'd be more interested in college football anyways.
>>7894367
College football is the superior version of the game. The athletes are still incredible, but amateur enough to keep things interesting. This opens up more strategic options and is why you will see different different and exciting offenses such as air raid, spread, triple option, ground and pound, etc. In pro, all of the players are elite, which means almost every team plays pro style or west coast style football. The tactical options are extremely limited and it results in a lot of boredom IMO. The only counter point to this is that the QB and defensive play is much better in pro.
College has a lot more history and tradition attached to it than pro, by nature of the fact that college football has been in the public interest pretty much since its inception, as opposed pro football, which didn't really start getting popular until the late '60's.
>>7894508
>the players are worse so the game is better
people from rural communities actually believe this
the best is when they make the same argument for basketball, thats a serious gutbuster
>>7894543
more drama
you're on a literature board, family
>boreball
Golf is the best option here
To a lesser degree, Upland Bird Hunting works as well
>>7893460
I think surfing lends itself better to the act of both writing and reading. When you're in a burst of writing you're riding the crest of the wave, but the moments of pause or writers block are just like waiting for the next big swell.
The act of reading someone's work can be viewed similarly, with a solitary work being like riding a single wave or each chapter being like a ride with the moment of pause between being like waiting for the next wave
>>7894543
Have fun watching your pocket passers and pro style offenses from here until eternity.
Also have fun with Goodell and his sarcastiball league which is turning football and football players into bigger whiners and floppers than fucking soccer players.
>>7888593
cyclists are the most annoying people on earth
What do you all think about Updike's Hub Fans Bid Adieu?
I think it's brilliant.
>>7893430
As a surfer can confirm this anon is correct.
>>7894508
this man knows
>>7888694
I think you are mistaking drama for substance. There are many subtleties to cricket (primarily in the test format) that challenge natural instincts and establish unique tensions beyond simply trying to hit or not be hit.
For one thing, on a very obvious surface level, the five day format means that the game is uneven in its nature (as the pitch will change significantly over the course of the match), so it relies on the skill of a captain to overcome the odds against his team or press home an advantage. There is enough time for full ebbs and flows in momentum, fortunes and personal duels, and therefore a great deal of rising action to what is fairly often a particularly dramatic climax.
That is to say nothing of the individual skill of batsmen, bowlers and captains who have a much broader range of options open to them over the course of their innings's than their equivalents in baseball.
>>7888584
What determines a sport?
What determines 'literary'?
