"Are you kidding me!?!" - Great catch

[Andy_W]

I do find US baseball commentators, often, overhype the athletic prowess of the sport, or is it just me?

I'm comparing it against cricket catches & it just doesn't stack up, imho.. good hustle to get there but they use a freaking big mitt to catch with..

'Are you kidding?' - Mullins takes 'impossible catch'

Watch Cedric Mullins make an "impossible catch" for the Baltimore Orioles against the Minnesota Twins in the MLB.

www.bbc.co.uk

Seen cricketers catch those bare handed, which makes it about 5x harder. But even those are nothing compared to some tough ones in the slips, at gulley or silly point etc. Some of the boundary fielding where they catch it over the line and then throw it to their mate, all in mid air are ludicrous.

Based on that, the USA lot would cream their pants at almost every single cricket catch. It's weird though as the USA lot also watch NFL, and a lot of those catches are much better than baseball ones, see guys catch them one handed every week, about 5 feet in the air.

The best catches in baseball are the ones which basically get nothing said about them, by the blokes stood behind the batter, but they get told which ones are coming, unlike in cricket where the wicketkeeper is clueless a lot of the time.

Compared to footy too, we see people volley the ball on target when it's coming over the shoulder, that's probably the hardest thing to do in football I think, it gets lots of praise, but never enough.

 

[jam69]

 

[gregorgregorovich]

Seen cricketers catch those bare handed, which makes it about 5x harder. But even those are nothing compared to some tough ones in the slips, at gulley or silly point etc. Some of the boundary fielding where they catch it over the line and then throw it to their mate, all in mid air are ludicrous.

Based on that, the USA lot would cream their pants at almost every single cricket catch. It's weird though as the USA lot also watch NFL, and a lot of those catches are much better than baseball ones, see guys catch them one handed every week, about 5 feet in the air.

The best catches in baseball are the ones which basically get nothing said about them, by the blokes stood behind the batter, but they get told which ones are coming, unlike in cricket where the wicketkeeper is clueless a lot of the time.

Compared to footy too, we see people volley the ball on target when it's coming over the shoulder, that's probably the hardest thing to do in football I think, it gets lots of praise, but never enough.

I used to keep wicket and was frequently told that I was clueless.

 

[BobUpnDown]

Yes, their catching is definitely easier due to the mitts - but on a related note, I've often heard it said (by various experts) that hitting a baseball is one of the very hardest things to do in all sports. The pitch comes at phenomenal speed and can move a great distance in the air. The batter has a ridiculously small amount of time to decide where the ball is going, what to do with it - and then try to actually do it. That's why even the greatest batters of all time only have hitting averages around .300 - which is a three in ten success rate, and that's before you even think about extra stuff like home runs.

If you're not convinced, or you want to know more, just google "hitting a baseball is hard" and you'll find a multitude of sources that explain it much better than I did.

I fully agree it's not easy - indeed a little mantra with sports is, the easier it looks, the harder it probably is to do very well.. with Baseball v Cricket I'd add a few other caveats: baseball to be called a fair pitch & one of the 3 they have to hit - it has to be in a specified hitting zone, with cricket it bounces in a pitch & they can aim at you inc' your head..

TBF it's the fielders with their mitts that get me..

 

[Nano]

Instinctively I would say that cricket catches are more impressive because there is no mitt but there are a few reasons why baseball catches are still impressive.
1. Baseball players wear the mitt on their non-dominant hand so they can throw with their stronger hand.
2. Baseball fielders in the boundary can be a lot further away than cricket players in the boundary and the ball is traveling faster at those distances.
3. They also get less opportunity to make as catch because hitting a ball doesn't happen that frequently and hitting the ball in the right direction and at the right height happens even less whereas cricket you can kind of predict where the fielder needs to be based on the bowler.

 

[Scrug]

The only sports Americans love and excel at are the sports only Americans play.

I find them as a whole quite insufferable.

 

[Tryasize10]

personally, I dont see what is that special about that catch at all other than the dive making it look spectacular. He had the line and sight of the ball straight away, was standard fare really

 

[jonny_greenings_sock]

Ice hockey looks difficult.

The rest of their big sports look really easy. Being a quarter back and throwing the ball forward, easy. Being massive and dunking a ball in a hoop, easy. Catching a ball wearing a massive mitt, easy.

That is all I have to say about that.

Made me laugh and got me thinking.

Apart from the fact that I can’t ice skate, I reckon the one I’d least like to play because of difficulty and pain would be NFL. So fast and so violent.

 

[goalscrounger]

To be fair to the commentator, for context, he did say it was possibly the best catch you'd see "all week".

 

[atypical_boro]

The only sports Americans love and excel at are the sports only Americans play.

I find them as a whole quite insufferable.

That’s not entirely true though TBF.

Hockey is big in lots of European countries and massive in Canada, just not here. The NHL is by far the biggest in the world but it is also not exclusively American.

Basketball is huge globally. Just not here. Again, their league is the biggest, like our PL is in football (probably).

Baseball is big in plenty of Caribbean countries plus some in Asia. Is it probably not bigger than cricket globally but that’s mainly only because Britain colonised India.

Obviously NFL is solely American, in the same way CFL is solely Canadian (and not very different) and AFL is solely Australian. Rugby League is one of our biggest sports and is only taken seriously by Australia and a few northern counties.

Soccer is big there. It’s not as big as the “big 4” but it is big, relatively speaking, compared to lots of other sports.

I think it’s a bit of a cliched view, personally, and not entirely fair.

 

[BoroMart]

That’s not entirely true though TBF.

Hockey is big in lots of European countries and massive in Canada, just not here. The NHL is by far the biggest in the world but it is also not exclusively American.

Basketball is huge globally. Just not here. Again, their league is the biggest, like our PL is in football (probably).

Baseball is big in plenty of Caribbean countries plus some in Asia. Is it probably not bigger than cricket globally but that’s mainly only because Britain colonised India.

Obviously NFL is solely American, in the same way CFL is solely Canadian (and not very different) and AFL is solely Australian. Rugby League is one of our biggest sports and is only taken seriously by Australia and a few northern counties.

Soccer is big there. It’s not as big as the “big 4” but it is big, relatively speaking, compared to lots of other sports.

I think it’s a bit of a cliched view, personally, and not entirely fair.

Although that’s all true traditionally those sports developed and exclusively grew in the us and Canada. It’s only through tv coverage and some associated marketing that they’ve stopped being a fringe sport outside of the us over the last 30 years. Barring the odd exception like ice hockey in the Nordics.

Now there is a bigger imprint on some countries on some American sports like baseball in Japan but these are generally outliers. American football, baseball and basketball are still in most countries secondary or fringe sports outside of North America.