why so many games?

[mdewals]

Hi,

ok I'm european and therefor grew up mainly with soccer. In soccer you play a team twice. 1 home game and 1 away game.

so why is MLB playing so many games against 1 team and therefor getting a total schedule of 162 games??

A while ago I was looking at the standings with a collegue of mine and he found it quite absurd(sp) that they play so many games.....and in a way he's kinda right....

[kgbaseball]

Baseball is different from any other sport in that games can be played everyday without having to worry about things like leg fatigue in basketball or complete body fatigue like football, for example. Players can play everyday realtively easily without needing to sit out a day. The reason there are so many games is because baseball comes down to pitching, and it's impossible to decide which team is better during a 1 game series; one of the starting pitchers may have an awful day while the other pitcher may have a fluke start where he is Cy Young-worthy. Usually a 3 or 4 games eries can decide which team is better. The schedule is unbalanced, meaning teams play against other teams in their division more than they play teams not in their division. For example, the NL Central teams play eachother 17 times and usually 7 games against non-division teams. I believe the NL East and West teams play eachother 19 times.

It is kind of absurd how many games each team plays. I don't think 162 games is necessary, but that won;t get changed anytime soon.

[Friedman]

How is it absurd that baseball teams play so many games? If you look at it that way, then isn't absurd how few games soccer teams play? But anyway, that's just the way baseball is. That's part of what makes baseball so special - you don't have to wait every Sunday for a game like you do in Football. In baseball, you can enjoy watching or listening to a nice game almost every day of the week. Besides, playing a team lots of times during the regular season adds to rivalries, and it makes winning harder. For example, the Yankees and the Red Sox play each other so many times during the regular season. It is harder for a team to win a lot of games against another team because of the amount that they play, and it makes divisional races harder.

There's also the fact that a game of baseball isn't as physically demanding as a game of, let's say - football. But baseball is an interesting sport. It's the only sport that I know of where a team as bad as the Royals can sweep a team like the Red Sox. I mean, you're not going to see the Jets beat the Patriots, or the Knicks win a bunch of games against the Heat.