What makes baseball purists to assume that baseball should be treated and respected more than any other sport?

What is it about baseball that should be better and get more than any other sport and why?|||We don't want everybody to say baseball is the best and everybody must like it. We just want basic respect like other sports.





Personally, I'm tired of hearing how baseball has a bunch of guys with no athletic ability and all they do it take steroids. That's completely wrong. You don't know how many people come in here and complain about baseball being the most boring sport in the world. All we want is the respect that other sports get.|||because its kinda been around longer than a lot of different sports and well its a sport that everyone can learn and you can always learn to get better at it and ive played alot of sports none of them are as hard as baseball|||It's all very subjective, but in it's ideal form baseball has several points that elevate it over the other major sports:





1) The game is decided on the field, team against team, man against man...there is no clock, no artificial tie-breaker, no contrived rules where one method of scoring is worth more than another. The game is played the same way in the 17th inning as it is in the First.





2) Ideally, all the players are judged by the same skill set regardless of position...they must run, hit, throw and field up to a certain level in order to compete (I say "ideally" because this is not true in the AL...which is why "purists" abhor the DH).





3) The Game encourages humility and discourages bravado...This goes directly against the NFL and NBA, which seem to celebrate self-promoting loudmouths who prance around like prima donnas and preen and pose simply because they happened to to their jobs. Although I would say that Hockey players tend to be the most "down to earth" of all major athletes, within the NHL game there is still an emphasis on "tough-guy machismo" that is absent in Baseball.





4) The Game combines the best elements of Team and One-on-One competition. It all begins with the Pitcher/Batter duel, but depends on the ability of men to work together in concert...whether it means covering your position and hitting the cut-off man on defense, or advancing the runner into scoring position on offense.





5) Even though there are Superstars, Baseball celebrates the rise of the "working class player." The NFL and NBA are "star driven" games...everyone knows LT and Tom Brady...but where's the love for LT's lead blocker or Brady's left guard? You'd have a hard time missing Shaq or Tim Duncan if you met them at the mall, but would you even recognize Dustin Pedroia or Grady Sizemore if you met them on the street?|||standing O to a_man_could_stand!!!





For me baseball has a rich tradition and history.. I mean with all due respect to other sports (i love basketball, football and granted they have their own respective history as well) baseball is called America's past time. Its gone through so much and has been there for Americans during the Great Depression, WWII, etc.|||Have you ever stood in against just an average MLB pitcher.





Try it some time and then come here and ask that question.|||For the same reasons that many basketball fans think basketball is the best sport, Football fans think football is the best etc etc.