“The triple is the most exciting play in baseball. Home runs win a lot of games, but I never understood why fans are so obsessed with them.”
Hank Aaron, Athlete
Advantages & Disadvantages of Playing Baseball
Baseball is one of the most popular sports on our planet, especially in the United States.
Millions of people all over the world play baseball on a regular basis.
Even though baseball is quite popular, playing baseball also implies some problems.
In this article, the pros and cons of playing baseball are examined.
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Contents
Advantages of Playing Baseball
- Team sport
- You may be able to find new friends
- Fitness improvements
- You can start out with basic equipment
- You learn how to deal with competition
- Playing baseball can improve your confidence level
- College scholarships
- You may be able to earn good money from it
- Improvements in overall health
- You can free your mind
- Baseball may improve your reflexes
- May help to lower your stress level
Team sport
One advantage of playing baseball is that it is a team sport.
You will learn how to deal with different kinds of personalities and can adapt to their behavior.
This is quite important, not only for baseball but also for several other parts of our daily life.
We often have to work with many different people in our companies and have to adapt to the individual character types in order to achieve the best possible outcome.
You may be able to find new friends
Due to the fact that there are many different players and characters in a baseball team, chances are that you will also make many new friends if you practice this sport on a regular basis.
Quite often, you will be able to make really good friends with whom you can hang out with, even for things that have nothing to do with baseball at all.
Therefore, playing baseball may also improve your social life.
Fitness improvements
Since baseball is a physically exhausting sport which implies plenty of running, chances are that you will also be able to improve your fitness level significantly.
Especially if you work in an office job where you do not exercise enough during the day, you might want to play baseball since you can get a healthy level of physical activity out of it, which may in turn prevent you to develop mental health problems of many sorts.
You can start out with basic equipment
Although you can spend plenty of money on baseball equipment, this is not necessary at the beginning.
You can get pretty basic equipment for a rather affordable price and therefore, also children from poor families will be able to learn this sport.
In case you don’t have any money for baseball equipment, you can also search online.
On platforms like Craigslist, there are free sections and you might get lucky and find used baseball equipment for free.
You learn how to deal with competition
At one point in your life, it is also crucial that you learn how to deal with competition.
You will soon realize that the whole life is one big competition and if you are not ready to deal with this fact, you may lose in various parts of life.
By playing baseball, you will learn to compete at a quite young age, which may benefit you later on in your life.
Playing baseball can improve your confidence level
Baseball can also help you to boost your confidence.
Especially if you are a person who suffers from low levels of confidence, playing baseball can help you quite a lot since you will get better over time and this will give you a boost and may turn out in a state where you will really believe in yourself and in your abilities.
College scholarships
Especially in the U.S., there are also many college scholarships related to baseball.
However, keep in mind that you have to be extraordinarily good to get one of those coveted scholarships and the chances for every applicant to get one of those are extremely low.
You may be able to earn good money from it
If you become a professional baseball player, chances are that you will also make pretty good money. The best players can earn millions of dollars each year.
Yet, similar to college scholarships, the chances to get to this level are extremely low and you should have a backup plan in case your baseball career fails due to various possible reasons.
Improvements in overall health
Since baseball requires plenty of physical exercise, you will also be able to improve your overall health level.
Our body needs a certain minimum amount of physical exercise to work properly and therefore, especially if you work in a job that doesn’t allow you to exercise, baseball can vastly improve your physical health level.
You can free your mind
Playing baseball will not only improve your physical condition, it may also help you to free your mind.
We live in a society where we are flooded with large amounts of information on a daily basis.
However, many people are not able to deal with this information overload in a healthy manner.
In order to unplug from this excessive information flows and to free your mind, baseball may be a great tool since it allows you to take some time off from your daily routine.
Baseball may improve your reflexes
Since baseball can be a quite fast sport, it may also improve your overall reflexes and may sharpen your mind.
This may not only be useful for playing baseball, but also for various other parts of your daily life where you have to make quick but yet profound decisions.
May help to lower your stress level
Another upside of baseball is that you can also lower your overall stress level.
If you work in a demanding job for long hours, chances are that you will suffer from a high stress level on a regular basis.
Playing baseball may be a great way to lower your stress level since it involves plenty of physical activity and also allows you to turn off your smartphone for a certain period of time.
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Disadvantages of Baseball
- You can’t play it alone
- Injuries are quite common
- Motivation issues
- Trouble with teammates
- Problems to find a baseball court
- You may have to find a referee
- Baseball is a time-consuming sport
- You might need a trainer to get to the next level
- Your business career might suffer
- Talent is a huge factor in baseball
- High levels of pressure
- You may be more interested in other sports
You can’t play it alone
As we can see from the previous analysis, playing baseball has many important benefits.
Yet, there are also some problems related to baseball.
One issue of playing baseball is that you cannot play it alone.
There are many people required for a baseball match and if your friends do not have time to play with you, you might not be able to practice this sport on a regular basis.
Injuries are quite common
Another problem with baseball is that injuries are not uncommon.
Due to the physical nature of baseball, you might sooner or later suffer from ligament ruptures or other unpleasant injuries that may also have the potential to finish your career if they are not cured properly.
Motivation issues
Some people may also lose the motivation to play baseball after a few times.
Baseball is not an easy sport and it requires plenty of coordination and practice in order to see some success.
Thus, if you just started, you may want to try it a little bit longer since it can take a while to learn how to play baseball.
Trouble with teammates
Even though you and your teammates will stick together most of the time, there might also be periods in the season where you might have some trouble with other teammates.
This is especially true for losing streaks in which everyone is frustrated and it may only take one wrong word for the situation to escalate.
Therefore, make sure to be able to deal with this sort of trouble since chances are that this will happen sooner or later in your career.
Problems to find a baseball court
In many countries of our planet, it will also be quite hard to find baseball courts to play on.
This is especially true for recreational players.
Most of the time, it will be necessary to join baseball clubs in order to get the opportunity to use baseball courts.
You may have to find a referee
If you want to play baseball in a serious manner against other teams, you will also need a referee who can lead those games.
These referees have to be paid most of the time and you should factor this in when it comes to calculations regarding how much your playing baseball will cost you in the long run.
Baseball is a time-consuming sport
Not only is it quite hard to learn the basic skills in baseball, it is also rather hard to play it on a high level and you have to invest plenty of time in it in order to get better.
Many people may not want to make this time commitment and if you don’t have the time right now, baseball might not be the best sport for you.
You might need a trainer to get to the next level
If you really want to take your baseball skills to the next level, you will also need an experienced baseball coach who can help you refine your technique.
However, those coaches can be quite costly and you may have to invest significant amounts of money if you have the ambition to become a pro baseball player.
Your business career might suffer
If you want to play baseball on a professional level, you will also have to practice several times a week.
However, this may not be possible due to the fact that you might have to work in a regular job in order to cover your expenses.
Therefore, especially on a high level, playing baseball may also interfere with your business career and you may have to decide which one is more important to you.
Talent is a huge factor in baseball
You can put in all the work you want, but if you don’t have a certain level of talent, you will never become a professional baseball player.
Thus, always keep in mind that the chances to get to a level where you can make a good living out of playing baseball are close to zero and you should keep backup options due to that.
High levels of pressure
If you really want to play baseball on a professional level, you also have to deal with enormous amounts of pressure.
Always remember that if you play in the MLB, millions of people will watch exactly what you are doing on the court.
Many people are not able to deal with this kind of pressure and suffer from serious mental issues due to that.
Thus, make sure to develop a stable personality in case you have the ambition to pursue this career path.
You may be more interested in other sports
Some people simply also don’t like playing baseball.
If you realize after a while that baseball is not for you, just try different sports instead.
We are all different and while some people may love playing baseball, others might actually hate it.
Top 10 Baseball Pros & Cons – Summary List
| Baseball Pros | Baseball Cons |
|---|---|
| Playing baseball can improve your health | Baseball can be time-consuming |
| May improve your fitness level | Hard to play on a professional level |
| Nice team sport | You may need a coach |
| You can make new friends | Can interfere with your business career |
| You learn to compete | Not a sport to play alone |
| Can be a serious profession | You may suffer from high levels of pressure |
| May improve your confidence | Potential injuries |
| Improvement of your reflexes | Talent is a big factor |
| You can free your mind by playing baseball | You may get into trouble with teammates |
| Possibility for college scholarships | You may not like playing baseball |
Should You Play Baseball?
As we have seen in the previous discussion, there are numerous pros and cons of playing baseball.
In the end, you have to decide for yourself whether you want to play baseball or not.
I suggest you at least give it a try in case you have some interest in it since you will only figure out if you like playing baseball or not once you tried it.
Make sure to get your baseball starter kit here on Amazon now!
If you don’t like baseball, you may check out soccer or basketball instead.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball
http://probaseballinsider.com/
About the author
My name is Andreas and my mission is to educate people of all ages about our environmental problems and how everyone can make a contribution to mitigate these issues.
As I went to university and got my Master’s degree in Economics, I did plenty of research in the field of Development Economics.
After finishing university, I traveled around the world. From this time on, I wanted to make a contribution to ensure a livable future for the next generations in every part of our beautiful planet.
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