To say I’m not a big sports guy these days would be an understatement. It was only a few days ago that I pretty much stumbled on the fact that my hometown baseball team, the L.A. Dodgers, were in the playoffs and potentially making another run at the World Series. I used to follow them a lot more as a kid, but these days, yeah, I’m one of those bandwagon jerks who only maybe gets excited when they’re doing well. Also before any of you internationals comment, I am well aware that the World Series is a highly ironic moniker for the championship of a sport that most of the world doesn’t care about. Hell, baseball is maligned by many in the United States as well, with such luminaries as George Carlin mocking “America’s pastime” as irredeemably boring. But despite what I say in the first paragraph, I still like it. I won’t necessarily go out of my way for it, but I can still get caught up watching in a way I don’t with other sports. My half-remembered youth still downloads the intricacies of batting averages and designated hitters and ground rule doubles into my brain so that I can play armchair manager and shout obscenities at the batter who decides to chase a wild pitch on a 3-0 count. Don’t get any of that? No worries. I’ve come to a conclusion over the years that I still prefer baseball over many other sports in the same way I prefer the X-Com video games over, say, Starcraft: baseball is turn-based. Baseball is thought and strategy free from the pressures of a clock, that is then punctuated by moments of white-knuckle excitement as the element of chance comes into play.  The “downtime” in between plays is for me not a bug but a feature. And as I found myself drawn into watching it this week, it occurred to me that it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that fans of serial webcomics either enjoy baseball or would enjoy it if exposed to it. Because there is that similar feeling of moments of drama couched in between periods of reflection. There’s a want to know what happens next, but also a patience to let that happen in its own time. Even a webcomic that updates seven days a week will never approach the “real time” experience of a movie. But does that make it any less impactful? Maybe, maybe not. But baseball survives to this day. And serial comics do, too.