Molly's Crackpot Theory # 3547: Baseball is Geometry, Football is Algebra

Several years ago, on one of my earlier blogs, I wrote Writing & 'Rithmatic, about how the women writers I know all hated math, but loved geometry.


The same subject turned up this week on FaceBook, on author Eileen Dreyer's page. It started with the Mercedes ad (below), which led to a discussion of left brain versus right brain. When someone wasn't sure if they were left or right brained, Eileen asked, "Algebra or geometry?"

Beautiful Mercedes Ad

The text for the left brain reads:

“I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.”

And for the right brain:

“I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.”

By: Grace Mendez

DUH!

Algebra is linear -- or left-brained.
Geometry is spatial -- or right brained.

I completely understood and agreed. The explanation also supports  the crackpot theory I'd written in the earlier blog.

Then I got to thinking about left brain vs. right brain and football as opposed to baseball.

Football is linear. One hundred yards. Played on a gridiron

Baseball is spatial. It's played on a diamond. The diamond itself is geometry, its measurements as precise as the yards on a gridiron. But the game moves beyond the geometric shape to the outfield, beyond the outfield with a home run. There are no boundaries. W.P. Kinsella (who wrote Shoeless Joe, the book on which the movie Field of Dreams is based) wrote in his book The Iowa Baseball Confederacy that baseball is limitless (I'm paraphrasing here), that a home run hit hard enough could, in theory, fly forever.

Musing all of this makes me wonder if this is why baseball literature and movies are more prevalent and generally more "romantic" than football (Susan Elizabeth Phillips being a major exception). Of course, I could be totally wrong about that.Maybe baseball fiction/movies seem more prevalent to me and TV Stevie because that's our mindset. TV Stevie also reminds me that baseball has been around a lot longer than football, and therefore has a richer, deeper history from which to draw.

What do you think?