But, when kids are starting out, soccer doesn t require much deftness. Almost anybody can approach a big, plodding soccer ball and manage to kick it. Seeing a little, bitty baseball coming, though, arranging an explosive collision with a skinny, tubular baseball bat so that the ball is launched in the opposite direction takes quite the extraordinary skill. It will take a kid so long to get sufficiently good at it to be able to accomplish this regularly enough to keep his interest up that he ll inevitably give up halfway through the process. He ll turn to soccer, where he ll be able to knock the smithereens out of the ball in short order.
Baseball also incorporates the element of fear into the game.
The ball is hard as a rock, which is what it feels like if it hits you in the head, which is quite possible if you don t get real good real fast. It can knock you colder than a mackerel, if somebody throws it and you miss it. If somebody hits a ground ball at you, it can zing, zing, zing from rock to rock in the infield like a pinball, and wind up spilling your teeth all over the ground. Even if all goes well and you catch the ball instead of tasting it, you still have to throw it accurately to first base so that it gets there before the batter does. Of course, that presupposes that the kid at bat was able to hit the ball in the first place, which is mere fantasy, when you re just starting out.