“I went to a football game, and I brought kitting and I did not touch it,” McDaniel said. “It’s also just that atmosphere of being at a baseball game. It’s very different from being at a hockey arena, or basketball or football, where there’s high energy and everybody is getting riled up all the time.”

She said she had tried knitting while watching hockey on TV. “It just doesn’t work as well,” she said, “because if you look down for five seconds, you’re missing something.”

McDaniel, the managing editor of the baseball website The Hardball Times, doesn’t mind the long games, which are dragging more than ever because of longer at-bats, more foul balls, more pitching changes and more time in between pitches .

“This style of baseball that I have grown attached to and devoted so much time to writing about — it allows me to pursue these other activities,” she said. “I don’t really watch a ton of other sports because of the fact that there’s so much happening and I can’t sit down and pay attention for that long. I want to do something else at the same time.”

Baseball and knitting worked so well together that, in 2005, the Mariners hosted an inaugural Stitch N’ Pitch event that nearly 1,000 people attended, Butler-Gluck said. Soon, the national trade association, the National Needle Arts Association, got involved, and many teams held similar events, drawing knitters of all ages, ethnicities and genders .

Butler-Gluck, who used to work for the trade association, traveled the United States organizing events and educating stadium security staffs about knitting needles, which can be made from wood or bamboo rather than metal.