If, as was suggested, the question is which is more complex to play, the correct answer would be baseball. Although it appears that baseball players spend the majority of their time standing around scratching their privates, in reality baseball is a very complicated game of strategy and mental preparation, for example knowing that, as a right fielder, the correct play on a ball hit to the fielder on a single hop with men at first and second is to hit the cutoff man if the lead runner was moving with the pitch but changes to a throw to home if the the lead runner waited to see if the ball would drop. Also, baseball is all about statistics calculated from the most obscure details (Joe Blow is 3 for 48 batting against left-handed pitchers on a Tuesday when playing a day game after a night double-header).

Football, on the other hand, is straightforward. Hit the man opposite you as hard as you can, as soon as you can.

Now, watching is a different proposition. Casual fans can watch baseball and figure it out quite easily, or as one of my favorite baseball movie quotes goes: “This is a simple game. You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball.” Also, in the majority of plays in baseball only a single man is moving at any given time (the pitcher).

Football requires a lot more participation from the viewer. There are twenty-two men all moving at top speed in various patterns, and then one has to factor in all the different rules for who can bump whom, and how far down the field, and when can the ball be thrown forward, etc. Football is outrageously complicated to the novice viewer. I remember the first time I figured out what a “first down” entailed. Until I was about nine I always assumed that there were nine possible first downs on the field (the ten yard line, the twenty yard line, and so on) and as soon as you passed one of those you got a first down.

And I still don’t understand pass interference.

To play or to watch?

And then I’d have probably still answered HOCKEY!