They say that baseball is a game of inches, and while we should question who exactly “they” are to make such grand pronouncements, they’re right, as far as it goes. The difference between fair and foul, safe and out, a rousing dinger or a deflating warning track catch can be pretty small.
But that isn’t different from any other sport, really. A slap shot clanging the posts or a jumper bouncing off the front of the rim show that in other sports, as in life in general, inches can make a big difference.
What makes baseball so maddening and beautiful is that most of it isn’t a matter of inches, but of milliseconds and millimeters.