Why We Love the Most Boring Sport in the World

Recently, I spoke with a European friend of mine who, after attending a St. Louis Cardinals' game earlier this year, said baseball was the most boring sport in the world.

"I just don't get it," he said. "Nothing happens."

Funny how when my dad recieved four tickets to the sixth game of the World Series, the European changed his mind and begged me to bring him. Though in the end, my parents, little sister and myself occupied four seats in the second-to-last row of Busch Stadium, he texted me after the game, spouting his jealousy that my family had attended one of the best baseball games of all time.

Talk about not getting it.

I don't go to baseball games in hopes that someone will break a record. I go because every time Albert Pujols steps up to the plate, it looks like tiny explosions are occuring across the stadium, because everyone wants a picture of what might be Albert Pujols' last at-bat for St. Louis. I go because David Freese can be the most hated man in Cardinal Nation for dropping a pop-up in the fifth inning and can become an MVP for hitting a game-winning home run in the eleventh. I go because the Cardinals don't quit.

That's what makes Cards fans so spectacular. We know our team thrives when no one has faith in it. We support the nine men on the field anyway, cheering for them throughout the highs and lows of the game (and boy, are there a lot of lows).

We get riled up by a gutsy little rodent who ran across home plate one time, call him the Rally Squirrel and he becomes as big a mascot for this season as Fredbird. We love a team that is down by two and ties it up in the bottom of the ninth inning. And when they get down by two in the tenth, they tie it up again. We were a wildcard team that wasn't supposed to make it to the playoffs, yet we won the whole thing.

A team like the Cardinals manages to do to us fans what no other team can do; it makes us hard to be its fan sometimes. The Cardinals give us mini heart attacks and leave us dejected when all we need is Chris Carpenter to strike one more guy out. Then someone like Allen Craig comes in and snipes a ball from the air in left field, robbing the Rangers of a homerun and proving why we support these guys all over again. We are the best fans in baseball because we have the best team to support.

So yeah, I guess that's why I love the most boring sport in the world. Because it's not boring at all.