Baseball is definitely a sport. It’s not my favorite sport to play or even to watch on TV, but baseball’s status as a sport is undeniable.

I decided to look up the definition of sport http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sport:
1. an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.
…
6. an object of derision; laughingstock.
Note that both baseball and golf are listed as examples of sport.

It is clear that baseball is an athletic activity requiring both skill AND physical prowess (try pitching a curveball or a 90+ mph fastball, or try hitting one). It is also often of competitive nature (Red Sox vs. Yankees), but not always (Yankees vs. Indians). Though a baseball game involving the Cleveland Indians would still qualify as “sport”, according to definition #6 above… j/k. =)

According to your sources, I will burn 474 calories/hour playing golf while carrying clubs (not often) and 302 calories/hour playing golf while riding a cart (often). I will burn 431 calories/hour playing baseball. It seems that it’s the act of walking around with clubs that make golf more calorie-intensive. If you think about it, most baseball players spend almost half the game sitting in the dugout (chewing gum or spitting doesn’t count). Their average calories burned per active period would probably be higher than that of golfers’ .

I have to disagree with you and your coworker on this one man. Baseball is a sport.

BTW, There may be some overweight, unfit people in baseball, but Babe Ruth is not one of them. Supposedly he put on weight later in his career (http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Babe_Ruth).

Nice comment. :) I agree with you, given your definition of sport. I guess I would normally think of baseball as a sport also. It’s just that, when you have people saying golf isn’t a real sport, then I just sort of retaliate by saying, well baseball isn’t a sport then either.

Now, how about bowling, cheerleading, dart throwing, fishing…???

BTW, do you usually ride a cart when playing golf? I think I carry my clubs 95% of the time. I only ride carts if I’m golfing with my dad, or if I’m at one of those super expensive exclusive clubs that require all members to ride carts. Real golfers don’t ride carts. Just ask ddlee. ;)

I’m too cheap to play golf on my own. The few times I’ve played, I went with our parents. In Taiwan they make you ride in carts. When we went to Hawaii last winter the courses required you to ride in carts also…. but I probably burn enough calories wandering around looking for stray balls…

hey dart throwing can be a sport if the dartboard is really far away! =)

I’ve refrained commenting on this one until I felt I could put a succinct rebuttal together, but it looks like Ted beat me to it (and probably did a better job of it too). Ok so this not going to be very succinct. :-)

As for what constitutes a sport it’s pretty obvious that our society has deemed both Golf and Baseball sports. I’d even say that for the most part it even considers Bowling, darts fly fishing and cheer leading to be sports as well. Baseball and golf are considered sports by schools and the entertainment industry, whereas the latter four (bowling etc.) are usually only called sports by entertainment entities such as ESPN. Regardless of that I think using calorie consumption and perceived fitness of participants is a pretty incomplete way to define “sport”. Personally I think the definition of “when is an activity a sport or when is it a game” is probably best thought as a continuum rather than a yes/no binary sort of question. E.g. Boxing and the Decathlon would be at one end of the continuum where as darts and bowling would be at the other…

I would think the reason why some people may say that golf is not a sport while purporting that baseball is one is that Golf is a rather stationary sport (which it has in common with darts and bowling) where as baseball while it has long bouts of inactivity (when you’re outfielder let’s say) almost always has someone running on every play. Certainly you can walk if you want to from shot to shot in golf, but that is at your leisure and is not really considered an essential part of the game unless you are playing at a very competitive level. In baseball conversely speed and reaction time are very instrumental to playing the game.

I personally think both are sports but think that baseball requires more athleticism while golf requires more skill. First off I would note that in baseball’s case that the amount of athleticism and effort required to play are heavily dependant on position. Certainly a pitcher or catcher works out a lot harder than a DH. Even noting that caveat in all positions in baseball one must not only act but react (to hit, to field and to run the bases), a component completely non-existent in golf. The golfer is in complete control of how and when he or she takes a shot. Further evidence of baseball requiring more athleticism than golf would be the celebrity crossover events that happen in golf. Athletes from various sports usually do fairly well in those golf events while it is virtually unheard of to see golfers playing baseball and when they do it’s usually slow pitch softball (which eliminates the most demanding position from the game, the pitcher) and usually not very well. Most people I would think would say golf is tougher to master than baseball though and this would be probably due the relatively few ways in which one can be successful in golf (in baseball there is more specialization as it is a team game, thus one could be good in only facet of the game and play at a very high level) and to the precision required to execute shots well.

As for me when I play golf, I’m about half and half walk/ride. Usually depends on the company I’m with at the time. I’m such an atrociously awful golfer that sometimes a cart is necessary to finish in a reasonably timely manner . :)

Thanks for the well thought out comment. I like the point about the necessity to react to an oponent’s actions. I guess you could argue the same happens in golf, though much more subtly and in the form of strategy, aggressive/defensive play, etc.

let’s play this spring! i just bought my first set of clubs…

hey jeff, sounds good! it should be fun getting some of the princeton guys together for 18 holes. :)