If you have read my sports stuff for any amount of time, you would know baseball and basketball are my favorite sports. I like the pitchers, the catchers, a day at the park – my favorite baller was John Starks (that’s my tribute to Kurtis Blow, by the way).

Although I’ve been a big fan of both sports, I only played organized baseball, and only then up to age 14.

(I did make my 6th grade basketball team. How, I don’t know, but I did. Sadly, I was cut before the first game. If I remember right, I missed one too many practices before the season even began. That was 1988. Practice? I was Iverson before Iverson was Iverson.)

Anyway, one of the things I’ve learned in the last few years by reading great blogs and talking to people is that if you never played a sport, you can never really understand what’s occurring on the field, court, or other playing surface.

With that in mind, or rather with the experience of playing basketball not in mind, or with the inexperience of playing basketball in mind, here are some thoughts on how baseball and basketball compare to each other.

(In all honesty, some of this post was written over two years ago, back in the “compare basketball to Jazz” phase of the sports blogosphere. That theory has been so overused and overanalyzed that even one of its originators, Bethlehem Shoals of FreeDarko.com thinks it is cliché.)

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Even the most casual fan of music knows the difference between the performance of music by mechanical rote and music played by improvisation.  It is the difference between the calculated routine of an orchestra and the raw emotion of an old bluesman.  Although both show musical ability and captivate the listener in their own way, their methodologies reveal a dichotomy in music between precision and feeling, accuracy and improv, calculation and creation, science and art.

These differences can also be seen in sports, particularly in the basic underlying premises of baseball and basketball.  Whereas baseball is admired for its strategy, planning, physics, and mathematical analysis, basketball is quite the opposite, admired more for its spontaneity, creation, and freedom.

(This is of course changing rapidly as front office folks and more and more fans jump feet-first into the statistical analysis world baseball fans have been in for the last 30 years.)

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For as long as there have been baseball fans, there have been baseball statistics. Ever since Harry Chadwick started keeping score, baseball fans have been enamored with numbers. Wins, losses, batting averages, hitting streaks, home runs, strike outs, speeds, and distances have been associated with the game since the first pitch.

Basketball is different. It doesn’t have the long lasting relationship with numbers that baseball has. Basketball fans are more thrilled by the performance than the result. It is the spectacle of action, the awe of movement. Granted, there are historical numbers, such as Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, Michael Jordan’s 63-point playoff performance, or maybe even Scott Skiles’s 30-assist game, but they pale in historical depth to the numbers of baseball legend.

Because of its association with numbers, baseball as always seemed more scientific to me than basketball.  Baseball is the “Science of Pitching” and “Science of Hitting”.  Although I am sure there are numerous books on how to shoot a basketball, I’ve never heard of the the “Science of Shooting” or the “Science of Dribbling”.

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Throughout the history of baseball, those who achieve the highest levels of success have been those who have mastered the science of the game. One of the best examples of a baseball “scientist” is future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux.  Despite Maddux’s inability to strike out every hitter, he made a successful career of deceiving hitters through ballspeed variance and movement.  On the other side of the spectrum is pitchers like Detroit Tiger Joel Zumaya, whose brute strength (when healthy) enables him to make a living overwhelming hitters with his 100 mph fastball.  Falling between Zumaya and Maddux are hundreds of pitchers, some successful and some not, who utilize both the science of strength and the science of aerodynamics to varying degrees.

For batters as well, baseball is describable through the science of physics.  As making contact is at the heart of basic hitting, numerous batters throughout history have studied the science of procedure as to ensure hit placement.  These hitters such as Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Pete Rose, and currently Ichiro Suzuki, use the spin of the pitch to determine where to guide the ball during the hit. As with pitching, there are also those whose brute strength has elevated them to success.  Hitters such as the legendary Babe Ruth and not-so-legendary Rob Deer have used their ability to hit a baseball a long distance as a way to continue their careers.

Basketball is of course not without its physics. There are plenty of trajectories. There is the shot, the arc, the leaping, the angles of the rebound, and the reaction of a blocked shot. Many rebounders, such as the legendary Dennis Rodman, have used science-like precision to determine angles and timing, not unlike the mound calculations of Greg Maddux.

But basketball is based much more on freedom. The freedom to move left or right, front or back. The freedom to accelerate or slow down. The freedom to create your offense through arm and leg motions that make even the most liberal coach cringe. You can’t improv a home run. You can throw a little zazz into a dunk.

Basketball is not without its brute strength either. But braun in basketball is far different than braun in baseball. Like baseball’s speed, basketball’s strength is  a segment of the game falls opposite of the majority of the sport. For basketball, the strength, power, and science most often seen in baseball are evident in plays near the basket. Like Ruth and McGwire in baseball, many large basketball players such as Shaquille O’Neal and Dwight Howard and have used their size and strength as a weapon, overpowering their smaller contemporaries and dunking the ball directly in the basket.

Although a majority of baseball relies on physics and its resulting actions, there is one aspect of baseball that does not confine itself to the rules of science: fielding.  Fielding is more often than not a routine of basic movements, conditioned by practice to position individuals at the right place at the right time.  However, when the ball is batted or thrown off its usual trajectory, fielders must make non-routine movements to catch or throw the ball.  These movements – the leaping catch over the fence, the dive in the hole to field a groundball, the jump over or around a runner to make a throw – make fielding more of an art than a science.  Defensive experts such as the legendary Ozzie Smith or, more recently, Omar Vizquel, or any of the other great fielders in baseball history have often displayed a level of immeasurable improvisation and a knack for getting to the ball and ensuring it gets to where it needs to go.

If fielding can be considered artful, then it is no coincidence that it is the last frontier of baseball statistical analysis. And it is no coincidence either that baseball fielding and basketball are becoming statistical at the same time.