Good points about the leather and wood. Any time I get to hold some wood – please, no dirty jokes! – or get to touch and/or smell leather – I think of baseball.

My favorite thing about baseball is they play basically every day. A baseball season, like life, has ups and downs and never stops. Your team can lose 10 games in a row and still finish in 1st. And no matter how bad your team is playing today, there’s always a game tomorrow.

Great thoughts Steve.
Folks often ask me why I like baseball so much. My answers are normally as follows:
1. There is an element of beauty in baseball which is lacking in the other major sports. The diamond, the expansive outfield, the blue sky, the little white ball soaring into the night, and much more.
2. The ingredients are natural and pleasing. Horsehide ball, wood bat, leather glove, grass, dirt, sun, even the old wool uniforms. There is nothing like playing in the field while pounding your fist into your glove be/tw pitches, pulling your hat down to shield the sun, lunging to snag a grounder, firing the ball to first.
3. No clock. The game has a timeless quality totally lacking in other sports.
4. The mano a mano battle be/tw pitcher and batter. With the game in the balance, that battle is intense.
I could continue but I’ll stop at 4.

Football? a good TV sport, though barbaric. Overhyped and often anti-climatic.
Basketball? another good TV sport, though simplistic in nature with too much late game stoppage.
Hockey? I like it but it, too, is simplistic in nature with too much center ice play.

Others have said the larger the ball, the lower your class. Baseball isn’t full of thugs and miscreants (PED’s don’t count; I’m talking about shootings, assaults, jail time, etc). No doubt to me it’s the best game.

#2 reminds me of one of my favorite “Peanuts” strip;

“Why couldn’t McCovey have hit the ball just three feet higher?” — Charlie Brown

I like your reasons, although I’m not sure I agree with number 1. Things happen on average in baseball, which is why stats are such a big part of the game as compared to other sports. That being said, things don’t always conform to the average in baseball, and often vary from those averages at the most opportune times, which makes baseball unpredictable.