On the topic of 'Baseball fans become Holmes, soccer fans become dark urban planners'
Baseball is a locked-room murder, soccer is an illegal urban plan
Some of you might be surprised by such an unsettling headline right from the start, but this article is a completely trivial, light read where I, the author, purely compare and seriously delve into the roots of what makes baseball and soccer—the sports I love—so interesting.
Only those curious and open-minded readers who are okay with that should continue reading.
Now, with the preamble out of the way, let's get to the main topic.
Baseball plays are interrupted after every pitch. Soccer keeps flowing.
Baseball uses hands. Soccer uses feet. Note that only the goalkeeper lives in a special administrative district where the use of hands is permitted.
When people talk about the differences between the two sports, they usually list 'competitive specs' like the ones above.
They are all correct.
They are correct, but that is like comparing sports using only the superficial spec sheets of home appliances you often see at electronics stores, which is remarkably lacking in interest.
The truly interesting differences aren't happening on the screen, but inside the skulls of us watching the screen.
By the way, I analyze it roughly as follows: baseball is a sport of accumulating 'deductions,' and soccer is a sport of unfolding 'imagination.'
In baseball, you chase the truth; in soccer, you build the future.
That time spent in front of the TV with a beer in one hand, knitting your brows even though no one asked you to.
Our brains are employed in completely different professions depending on the sport.
When watching baseball, we become great detectives.
We gather evidence from the past and try to expose the 'criminal plan' hidden in the next pitch.
When watching soccer, we become unlicensed urban planners.
We run roads that don't exist yet across the pitch and begin rezoning a city that will vanish in a few seconds.
In short, it's like this.
Baseball is a full-scale mystery solved one pitch at a time.
Soccer is real-time urban development that returns to an empty lot in ninety minutes.
And today, in the stands and in living rooms, there is a massive outbreak of great detectives who were never hired and dark urban planners who were never appointed.
In a baseball stadium, a 'locked room before the incident' is created with every pitch
Baseball has punctuation.
The pitcher grips the ball.
The batter takes his stance.
The runner takes a lead.
The fielders crouch down.
For those few seconds, the field becomes a still image, and a small, closed room rises in the center of the stadium.
The incident has not happened yet.
However, the conditions for the incident to occur are already all present.
The count.
The number of outs.
The runners.
The score difference.
The batting order.
The wind.
The previous pitch sequence.
The batter's favorite zone.
The pitcher's pitch count.
The expressions in the dugout.
Although the evidence is surprisingly public, the most crucial things remain invisible.
What do the parties involved intend to do next?
Will the pitcher push with a fastball?
Will he escape with an off-speed pitch?
Where will the catcher lead him?
What is the batter waiting for?
Will the runner really run?
Or is he just taking a big lead with a 'look like I might run' face?
At this moment, in living rooms across the country, a mental investigation meeting begins.
Amateur Holmeses sitting on sofas cross their arms, put their hands to their chins, and suddenly lower their voices.
'He finished him off outside in the last at-bat. He'll go inside high to outsmart him here.'
'No, this catcher likes to waste a pitch after getting ahead. It'll be a forkball in the dirt.'
The investigators are all amateurs.
Only their convictions are professional-grade.
It is a battle of deduction that no one asked for.
Moreover, we investigators possess a terrifying special ability.
We can conveniently and instantly erase only the incorrect deductions from our memory.
Even if a slider comes right after we declared 'It's definitely a fastball,' we just silently eat an edamame bean.
Yes, when it comes to destroying evidence, we are top-tier in an instant.
However, only when the ball comes exactly where we predicted is that memory permanently saved in 8K resolution.
We lift our glasses slightly and say, even though no one is listening:
'See?'
This 'See?' has a depth that only those who have buried three hundred wrong deductions can produce.
A single pitch is not a physical phenomenon, but a 'testimony'.
The pitcher throws.
The pitch type is revealed.
The location is revealed.
The batter's intent is shown in their swing.
The runner takes off.
The meaning of the defensive positioning suddenly connects based on the direction of the batted ball.
The parties involved, who had remained silent until that moment, all begin to testify at once.
The white ball flies.
The alibi crumbles.
Therefore, a single pitch in baseball is not just a phenomenon of a white ball moving at tens of meters per second.
It is the moment when hidden intentions confess in the form of a result.
On the first pitch, there are many suspects.
However, as the count progresses, the available pitch types, target locations, and viable strategies are narrowed down.
Every time more information is added, the alibis of the options crumble away.
In baseball, there is a pleasure in the world gradually becoming narrower.
Yes, the sensation of logically eliminating escape routes and gradually narrowing down the suspects.
Possibilities are whittled away, and in the end, you are driven toward a single answer.
In other words, it is the aesthetics of convergence.
That is why baseball fans, while watching the results, are not just looking at the results.
They rewind time from what happened, reconstructing the blueprint that must have been in the player's mind.
We are not simply watching the trajectory of the batted ball.
We are even investigating the 'motive' behind 'why they were able to hit that ball, there, in that way'.
The reason there are so many replays in baseball broadcasts is not just because they want to show the same footage again.
They want us to conduct a thorough crime scene investigation.
There are no roads on a soccer pitch.
On the other hand, soccer has few punctuation marks.
The ball flows, people run, and the value of space repeats cycles of skyrocketing and crashing by the second.
A place that was prime real estate a moment ago becomes a wasteland that no one approaches three seconds later.
A soccer pitch may look like grass, but in reality, it is a real estate market where land prices are updated every second.
Moreover, at first, there are no roads, traffic lights, or zoning.
Players create roads by running, create plazas by stopping, and raise land values in other areas by drawing opponents toward them.
A forward runs behind the defense.
The opposing center-back follows.
That movement creates a void in the center that can be used for just two seconds.
Another player enters the scene.
The ball passes through.
A city is built.
And then, it vanishes instantly.
The property tax in this city is zero.
Its lifespan is also, roughly, two seconds.
When people talk about creativity in soccer, they tend to focus on flashy plays like brilliant dribbles or surprising heel passes.
Of course, those are showy and beautiful.
But true creativity sometimes doesn't even involve touching the ball.
It is about creating one more future that the next person can choose.
A fullback moves inside, opening up a bypass on the outside.
A defensive midfielder intentionally holds onto the ball to draw opponents in, creating a vast vacant lot on the opposite side.
Just by a winger taking up width, the alley in the center widens slightly.
One person's run shifts the opponent's defensive block by a few meters, and those few meters save the future of a teammate who doesn't even have the ball yet.
In soccer, space is not something that 'is just there'.
It is something generated when someone sacrifices another location.
Possibilities are not narrowed down to one, but branch out through the movement of people.
This is the "aesthetics of diffusion".
From our sofas, we build roads without a permit.
When we watch soccer, we cannot sit still.
In baseball, we cross our arms, but in soccer, our upper bodies lean forward.
And we point our index fingers toward the outside of the TV screen.
Not there! Skip one and go the other way!
The center is open right now!
Pass it outside! Outside! Outside!
Zero seconds for land acquisition.
Zero resident briefing sessions.
A six-lane road opens up based on nothing but conviction.
Our voices do not reach the players on the screen.
Even so, in our minds, we issue road usage permits, designate redevelopment zones, and open up six-lane bypasses on the opposite side.
It is unauthorized mental administrative guidance.
However, the extremely tricky and strict building code known as offside stands in our way.
If we build a structure into the future even a second too early, an inspector with a flag immediately comes to stop the construction.
Even if it crosses the boundary by just a few centimeters, construction is stopped immediately.
Appeals go to VAR.
Yet, we never learn.
That run was legal.
No, the shoulder was out. It's an illegal structure.
While watching slow-motion replays, we argue about which part of the body violated urban planning law.
In just a single match, millions of shadow administrators are born across the country.
Of course, everyone is unqualified.
A baseball failure is a 'misread,' while a soccer failure is a 'temporal gap in the future'.
The difference between the two sports is most apparent at the moment of failure.
The illustration on the left shows a failed deduction.
The one on the right shows a misaligned future completion time.
Failure in baseball has the bitterness of a mystery novel.
A 150 km/h fastball pierces the inside corner against a batter waiting for an off-speed pitch.
The bat does not move.
The umpire's hand goes up.
The batter looks up at the sky a beat too late.
There is something there that cannot be explained away simply by saying 'the technique was lacking'.
I read it.
I missed it.
I was outsmarted.
Or perhaps, the opponent who read that I was reading them went even further behind my back.
Baseball failure is like a traffic accident investigation after two intentions collide head-on.
In contrast, failure in soccer has a strange sense of poetry.
A midfielder sends a breathtakingly sharp through ball into a space where no one is.
However, the forward is not running.
They intended to receive the pass at their feet right there.
The ball is touched by no one, rolls quietly across the grass, and goes straight over the touchline.
A giant question mark floats over the entire stadium.
'Who was that pass for just now?'
But the person who made the pass saw it.
It was visible even to the few who were watching the same future in front of the television.
The city that was supposed to be completed there two seconds later.
It wasn't that the pass was wrong.
It wasn't necessarily that the timing of the start was wrong either.
It was just that the passer and the receiver were heading toward the future on different timetables.
In soccer, there are sometimes players who look like they have just returned from a world two seconds in the future.
The problem is that no one lives in their future.
Baseball uncovers the 'why,' while soccer builds the 'next.'
Of course, there is urban development in baseball, too.
Extreme defensive shifts, surprise bunts, hit-and-runs.
Depending on the placement of the players, the meaning of the field changes.
Conversely, there is deduction in soccer as well.
Reading where the opponent is trying to lead you, at what moment the press switch will be flipped, and what intentions are hidden in the defensive formation.
The difference is which element is more likely to take center stage in the brain while watching.
While watching baseball, we ask:
'What was that person thinking in that situation?'
While watching soccer, we ask:
'From this step, what kind of space will emerge next?'
Baseball fans try to uncover the reasons hidden on the underside of the world.
Soccer fans try to build the shape that lies beyond the world.
One side dives into invisible intentions.
The other side reaches out toward a future that does not yet exist.
Baseball predicts the future using evidence from the past.
Soccer moves the present with illusions of the future.
The reason we get excited watching sports isn't just about winning or losing.
It's because we want to experience the catharsis of having the deductions or paths that existed only in our own minds overlap with reality for just a moment.
The pitch you predicted really comes.
The pass really goes through the lane you saw.
In that moment, a small firework goes off in your brain.
I knew it.
It is an extremely carefree, yet extremely pleasant firework.
After the game, the two professions are absorbed into the izakaya.
Eventually, the ninth inning ends.
Or the final whistle blows.
The great detective takes off his hat, and the dark urban planner sets down his helmet.
And everyone heads to a nearby izakaya.
The moment the glasses clink for a toast, their titles are unified into one.
Izakaya-exclusive General Manager with Full Authority.
They talk about tactics.
They talk about player selection.
They talk about development policies.
They talk about club management and team organization.
From the second drink, they get into organizational theory,
and by the third drink, they start overseeing the nation's sports policy.
Of course, no one has appointed them to any of it.
There is zero responsibility from the start. But the authority in one's brain grows in proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed.
But that is fine.
No, that is fine.
Watching sports is the time when the brain of a person who isn't moving their body runs around the busiest. After all.
In baseball, we chase the truth of a locked room, and in soccer, we build cities that don't exist.
We forget when we're wrong, boast when we're right, and after the game, we redevelop everything with 'If it were me, I'd do this'.
The reason we can't stop watching sports isn't just because we're happy on the nights we win.
It's because we already know this lovable runaway intelligence, where a brain with no qualifications whatsoever solves the world on its own and designs the world on its own.
And today, we return once again to the best 'crime scene' of all: in front of the TV.
Yes...
──As long as the next locked room and the next city are waiting for us there──
