Baseball again...

Ah, what's that I smell?  Is it grass, newly mown, lines painted in all the right places, dirt raked perfectly?  Yes, it is baseball season once again, and unlike last year, there is a chance the teams from little league to big league, will get to play a full season. And there might even be fans at the games.  (Heck in Texas, which has opened up completely so that absolute strangers can sit cheek to jowl, spit on each other, and spread the virus which isn't dead yet, guaranteeing its continued existence, you can go to a game with 40,000 other super-spreaders.)

But back to baseball. In past years I have waxed poetic (another expression that makes no sense to me) about my love for baseball. I have told stories of being five years old and announcing at the dinner table my intent to be a professional player, a goal that never changed until I did just that.

I have written about great baseball people like Yogi and Hank. And I have even written about the baseball gods (yes, they exist), my love for college softball, and about a single game I attended in Pittsburg in 2015.  You can read all those posts in this blog. 

Yes, it is a love affair and I make no apologies for it.

After writing about these things,  I have heard from some with age-old complaints about baseball.  Some whine about the slow pace (intended; why does everything have to be faster?) and the lack of action (more than a football game, by far, where the total action time is about a minute and a half) and the tight pants on the players (nobody actually wrote about that but someone should).  Usually negative comments about baseball come from people who only watch the individual play going on at the time and miss all the other parts of the game that make it interesting. 

I have decided, therefore, to make it my goal for the rest of my life to take every single baseball hating person to a game and make them sit next to me so I can school them in the beauty of this our national past time (And don't give me that crap about football where 600 pound men beat the hell out of each other and call it a sport-- being our national past time. One is beautiful; the other is beastly.  For reference watch this video of the late George Carlin's monologue on the difference between baseball and football   Baseball vs Football - YouTube )

I will make them sit next to me so I can show them things the average fan never sees. And by not seeing them, and concentrating only on the play at hand, they miss all the fun stuff in the sport. 

Like the shortstop and second baseman signaling to each other who will cover second on an attempted steal by putting their gloves to their faces and one signaling 'mine' or 'yours', open mouth yours, closed mouth mine.  And I will explain how the decision is based on the pitch the catcher has called and the pitcher has agreed to throw. Which quite possibly came from the pitching coach in the dugout based on the scouting report on the batter, the situation in the game, the situation in the inning, and maybe a decision the manager knows he's going to have to make two innings in the future.

I want to sit with my imaginary hater and show them how even the best hitter on a team, in late innings with a runner on second base will intentionally make an out by hitting a ground ball to second base to advance his teammate to third base, where he can score on a flyball. The best hitter becoming a 'failed' hitter so something good can happen later.

Perhaps I can show them a player who enters a game after spending ten years struggling in the minor leagues and finally making it and explain the importance of this moment for the player, his family, all the coaches he has had in his life, and of course, himself.  I would tell my imaginary seatmate, the chances he's going to stay in the majors are slim to none, but that for the rest of his life he'll be able to say he made it to the 'show.' I usually cringe when someone gets into the 'sports is life' argument. But this is a case in point.

All of this makes the game interesting if you know what to look for. 

But the excitement of the action is what flies in the face of the 'baseball is boring haters'.

Hopefully in the game we're attending there will be at least one triple. There is no more thrilling play in all of sports than a triple. The batter hits one down the line and into the corner and then proceeds to sprint around the bases to third. When he gets to first his coach using hand signals gives him an idea whether he should try to advance past first to second. Then when he gets to second, he turns to the other coach over at third, who tells him whether he should try to get that far as well. Literally in the course of a few seconds a player has hit a ball a long way, depended on two other people to tell him whether to keep running, and has made it all the way to third on that single play. 

And who are the guys coaching at first and third that make the decisions for the batter?  Often two former players who never made it above the low minor leagues in their playing careers and never made more than $750 a month in the process. These two guys are telling the player who makes $30 million a year what to do. Talk about reversing the income gap...

Finally, a triple almost always ends in a dramatic slide to avoid the tag from the third baseman who has received the ball after two other players have touched it, the outfielder who picked it up and the 'relay man' somewhere in the infield who receives his throw and passes it on to the final fielder who makes the play. No action in any sport is more thrilling than a triple in baseball.

Who are the characters in this play within a play?  Only a ridiculous run-on sentence can describe them all.  

First it is a pitcher who only plays every five days and often makes more than any other player, a batter who has hit the pitch coming at him at 100+ miles an hour (and for which he has had three tenths of one second to decide whether to swing or not,) two coaches that guide the runner to continue running and slide, an outfielder who realizes he isn't going to get to the ball on the fly and has to gauge what angle the ball will come off the wall to field it cleanly and then turn to throw it to a moving player who has come out for the relay, who himself then has to pivot blindly toward third and throw to another player who is waiting for the ball to tag the batter and is now praying the runner doesn't drive his metal spikes into his thigh while applying the tag. Whew. (Yea, I know, I could have written that in a bunch of correctly written sentences but the run-on was more fun.)

But wait! I forgot the umpires!  On a triple, all four umpires get into the action too! The first base umpire turns and starts running toward the corner where the ball is going to land and makes sure the ball has landed fair. The home plate umpire covers for the first base umpire and makes sure the batter/runner touches first base, which, of course, the first base umpire can't see because he's running toward the outfield.  The second base umpire gets ready for the play at second to make the call, which becomes moot because the batter/runner has decided to try for third. So his job is to make sure he touches second base. And then the third base umpire makes the call on a play at third base. Whew x 2. 

That is action my friends. Oh, and by the way, if the ball was hit to the left field wall, necessitating the third base umpire turning to run and make sure it is fair, the home plate umpire covers the play at third and makes the call out or safe!

Finally, I hope our imaginary game includes one pitcher throwing a no hitter. This has to be the most often sited example of boredom in baseball by those that don't know the game. How boring that one team never gets a hit. But, that's what makes it NOT boring...every pitch matters. Every batter if focused on breaking up the no hitter. Every eyeball is on one person as he tries to do something few get to do: pitch a full game and not allow the other team to get a hit. That's not boring; that's drama!

And then I will prove to my baseball hating friend that baseball is a real religion. Unlike some of that other made up stuff we believe.

I will point out to my friend that as the game gets late, say in the 6th or 7th inning when the players realize the pitcher has a no hitter going, he should watch the pitcher return to the dugout...and be ignored by his teammates. 'Watch,' I will say. 'Nobody will even talk to the pitcher,' because of the tradition- which is followed at every level of the game - that to speak to a pitcher who is throwing a  no-no is to jinx him or her. To do so will result in an immediate hit the next time out on the mound breaking up his no hitter. And why?  The baseball gods! Aren't you listening!? The baseball gods will punish the pitcher because of someone else's failure to follow tradition. It's just like religion! Because somebody else did something bad a long time ago, god is going to punish you and me.  'T R A D I T I O N!' I can hear the great baseball loving Tevye singing now, can't you?

Come on. Stop the baseball is boring nonsense. Learn the game and it's anything but boring.

If you refuse to do this, by the way, I will send the baseball Gods to your house and force you to watch the Chicago Bears against the Detroit Lions. Now THAT'S boring...

[One other note: I have decided to coach a T-ball team this spring. Four to six year old's. If this doesn't provide fodder for a few blog posts nothing will.  More to come, I promise.]