"A hotdog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz" -- Humphrey Bogart
I'm not sure just when I became a fan. In truth, I don't think anyone ever chooses to do it. I don't think anyone ever woke up on a Saturday morning and said to themselves, "Today is the day I learn something about baseball." Baseball isn't like that. Baseball, it seems to me, chooses you.
Baseball
I know this: most of what I learned about baseball is thanks to my dad. And I conjecture that most baseball-loving population over the past 100 years would say the same thing. Baseball is like your great-grandfather's pocket watch handed down to you with care. A kind of inheritance, if you will, from your father, grandfather, uncle; often - but not all the time - a male authority figure.
Baseball fans are a unique breed. While your mean baseball fan can discuss the finer points of the game in great detail, the real love the sport engenders in the avid fan is not easy to define. If you spend any time nearby baseball, it seeps into you in a hard-to-explain way. It's a connecting thread in the linens of one's life. Somehow, game by game, inning by inning, it gets in your blood, and once you've got it there's no cure. Once de facto exposed to baseball, it will be, for now and always, a astonishing infection, deeply ingrained in your psyche. If all of this metaphor talk about baseball sounds maudlin or overly-sentimental, you are not a baseball fan. But don't worry, there's still hope for you.
My first exposure to baseball, as I mentioned, was thanks to my dad. Specifically, via the games we would go see played by Portland's minor league team, the Beavers. I suppose I was about eight or nine when I saw my first game. I don't recall the score or who the opposing team was. Maybe surprisingly, I don't even remember whether our beloved Beavers won or lost. Being so new to the game, I didn't understand strikes, balls, outs, steals, or anyone else that seemed to be happening in some odd blend of quiet, deliberate order counterbalanced by sudden, riotous chaos. There were cheers, boos, some running, some dust kicked up, some ball throwing, even some stealing (when my father said that a runner stole 2nd base, I recall pointing out the obvious: "No he didn't. It's still there.")
I didn't know any of the players, and couldn't tell the catcher from the mascot. I de facto had no idea what was going on down there on that huge green and brown expanse. I was a baseball newborn, seeing, hearing, smelling the myriad of sensory experiences unique to this bizarre game for the very first time.
I can only recall aspects of the game that de facto don't have anyone to do with sports or statistics.
I will never forget my first sight of the baseball outfield as we entered the stadium, almost blindingly green. I remember the foreign bittersweet smell of beer. I remember the loose crackle of peanut shells under foot. I remember the musky smell of sod and moistened dirt, and of course, the enchanting scent of hotdogs, and salty popcorn. There is a perfume to a baseball stadium, and it can be found nowhere else. I remember the crack of a 33 ounce bat against a five ounce leathery sphere that sounded like a gunshot echoing in the stadium while the players took batting practice before the game. Most of all, I remember the ever-present noise of the fans, like an ocean, sometimes a quiet drone, sometimes a raucous tidal wave of cheers or boos interspersed with yells of "Get your glasses on, ump!" or, "He's gonna bunt!" or, "Pull that pitcher, he's done!" None of this made any sense to me whatsoever.
Although I was a small boy, experiencing a hundred utterly alien and weird things on that day over 30 years ago, I was overcome with an unexpected feeling - not of being in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar place, but of being at home.
I know that this touch of mine isn't unique. In fact it's almost a cliche. Talk to anyone who loves the game and they will likely have a similar story to tell. But while baseball has not been my life's passion, my appreciation of the Grand Old Game has reached a point with me where I have no selection but to look a puny deeper at this odd phenomenon and observe the game in my own way.
"I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our population out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger corporeal stoicism. Tend to ease us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us." ~Walt Whitman
In 1979, the Pittsburgh Pirates, led by Dave Parker and Willie Stargell, won the National League pennant. Anytime I hear their theme song, "We Are Family," by Sister Sledge, I can't help but envision Stargell rounding the bases in his black and yellow Pirate uniform, like some exuberant bumblebee, after one of his sublime sizable home runs.
As it happened, our local minor league team, the Portland Beavers, were the farm team for the Pirates at that time. This resulted in dad and me meeting both Stargell and Parker when they visited Portland while a Beavers exhibition game. anyone they were like in their personal lives, I remember that Stargell and Parker exhibited all the hallmarks of the gentlemanly demeanor the practice of baseball somehow seems to instill in so many of its stars. And I recall that both of them, while graciously smiling and autographing a nonstop provide of baseballs, seemed to have hands and arms of superheroes, which, in a sense, they de facto were.
"When they start the game, they don't yell, "Work ball." They say, "Play ball."' ~Willie Stargell
It was then - having met some of its legends - that I began to pay attentiveness to baseball. Although I was already a fan of basketball and football, I found myself constantly mesmerized - if not downright confused - by baseball and its intricacies. That seeming contradiction between simplicity and complexity is but one of the enigmas of the game. Baseball is, after all, unique. Let's remember a few things about baseball that, in my mind anyway, set it apart from other sports.
First, the game is set upon a field arranged in a rather unusual geometric shape. Rather than having a goal of some sort on each end of an elongated field (as most other sports) there is no such goal. No basket, no goal, no net. There is no linear movement from one endzone to the other.
While the exact dimensions and configuration of the lines and bases on the field are constant in major and minor league baseball, the fields themselves can vary in size and shape. The length from home plate to the center field fence, for example, can vary as much as 35 feet from park to park.
Second, baseball is not a game depending so much on constant action as it is on moments that can unfold in a split second fastball strike, or a singular swing that sends a ball over the fence and brings a home crowd to its feet (or leaves them cursing in despair). Once the pitcher fires the ball toward home plate - a journey that takes the ball about half a second - virtually anyone can happen. Anything.
Critics of baseball say the game lacks athleticism and hard play. This is a puny like complaining that tennis lacks enough slam dunks, or that golf doesn't involve enough tackling. But as anyone who has played or paid close attentiveness to the game can attest, there's abundance of physicality in baseball. The power it takes to smack a ball over a fence 410 feet away may only be eclipsed by the sheer superhuman exertion it takes to activate a fist-sized hardball into a space the size of a hubcap sixty feet away...at nearly 100 miles an hour...100 times a night...accurately.
Still, say critics, the game is slow, not enough action to satisfy the short attentiveness spans of the contemporary sports fan. While the annotation seems misplaced to us baseball fans, do the critics have a point? while an mean game, how much time elapses while which "something's happening?"
To get to the lowest of this question, Wall road Journal reporter David Biderman recently analyzed the amount of time spent in action while an mean major league baseball game. "Action," includes the time it takes for a pitcher to throw the ball, as well as the more confident time a ball is in the air after a hit, or a player is stealing base, etc. Biderman considered that the mean game had about 14 minutes of action in it.
However, as noted by Biderman, the time not spent in action while a game isn't exactly time wasted. between pitches, a myriad of decisions and strategic options may be weighed out. Managers may be busy consulting the hitting chart on an opposing batter before he even steps up to the plate. Catchers and pitchers are having a constant silent dialogue concerning what kind of pitch to throw and where to place that pitch, depending on a range of factors. And fielders may shift positions depending on the batter, or the game situation to growth their chances of rescue runs. While the casual observer may grow frustrated by "all the standing around," in baseball, the more complicated fan knows that this time spent between pitches is where the real game of baseball is played. In short, there is all the time "something happening" while a baseball game.
But the critics who persist in impatiently drumming their fingers on their knees and yawning over the "slow pace" of baseball may find it enchanting to learn that Biderman also considered the amount of play action while an mean pro football game. Just 11 minutes.
While it's enchanting to think these aspects of time where baseball is concerned, most aficionados know that baseball has far more to do with timing. To the novice fan, baseball looks like a sport centered on the pitcher trying to assault out the batter, and the batter trying to avoid such a fate. But to the trained eye, the battle between pitcher and hitter is one of keen decision-making and split-second timing, and it's not a easy thing to analyze. Take pitching, for example.
It would take a supercomputer to properly decree the variables in physics complicated in throwing a pitch. From the way a pitcher regulates his breath before the pitch, places his feet on the mound, and adjusts his balance, to the grip on the ball, to the wind-up (often seeing like a pained contortionist, but considered industrialized by each pitcher to maximize velocity and balance), to the publish point (the spoton occasion the ball leaves the pitcher's hand), and the amount of spin or torque applied to the ball as it is released (the arm swing measured as fast as 5,000 degrees per second!), muscles from neck to toes flexing and releasing, pitching is a excellent symphony of physiological exertion unlike anyone seen in other sports.
The speed, movement, and break of a pitch largely determines its success, so the slightest deviant motion or off-balance publish can make the inequity between a perfectly settled assault or a wild pitch. To expert all this, a good baseball pitcher is de facto more than an athlete. He's part physicist, part sleight-of-hand magician, and part gambler.
Batting is no different. A skilled hitter is a blend of laser-like focus, spring-loaded power, and gymnastic equilibrium at the plate. The position and angle of the bat before the pitch is released, as well as the stance, head angle, and knee bend, can be distinct from hitter to hitter. And then there is the swing itself. There is, as it turns out, a exact way one is supposed to swing at a pitch. Turning the upper body toward the pitcher as the ball is released, rotating the shoulders, and extending the arms only through the assault zone - not before - while following the ball with your eyes, and throwing the whole weight of your hips, arms, and shoulders into the (hopeful) contact. Got it? Good.
Of procedure not everyone hits this way and keen observers can identify some ball players merely by their unique stance at the plate. For an object episode in contrasts of batting styles among players, observe the differences between Ichiro Suzuki, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Kevin Youkilis, and Alex Pujols at the plate; all superior hitters, and yet all possessing radically distinct batting stances and swings.
Obviously, not everyone cares about such things as whether a hitter is "pulling the ball to left field," or how a pitcher manages to throw a ball in such a way that the trajectory de facto changes in mid-flight. As enchanting as these things are to me, I know that the mean sports fan probably doesn't spend much time reasoning about them. Of procedure many baseball fans are not "average" sports fans. They may never have held a bat in their hands, but they are students of the game and they devour puny pieces of baseball data the way mice gobble crumbs.
"Baseball statistics are like a girl in a bikini. They show a lot, but not everything." ~Toby Harrah
Truthfully, the one element of baseball that was, for a time, off-putting to me is the absolute pervasive worship of The Statistic. Baseball, more than any other sport face of world economics, maybe, takes statistics very, very seriously. Some have compared the lust for baseball statistics to a drug addiction. It seems that almost nothing can happen while a game - no matter how trivial - that isn't being meticulously documented by somebody somewhere. We've all seen box scores, displaying the runs, hits, and errors, by innings for a given game. Some of us have even looked up things like "lifetime batting average," for a given player, or "best Era for a closer since 1955." But this does not scratch the face of statistical obsession with which baseball fans preoccupy themselves.
For example, were you aware that on September 5th, 2006, seven teams shut out their opponents? Or that on July 24th, 2006, the Detroit Tigers became the first team in 115 years to score 5 or more runs in the first inning of three consecutive games? Or that only two brothers ended up with the exact same batting mean in the same season (Mike and Bob Garbank, in 1944, a.261 mean for both). Still awake?
Well, let me let you in on a puny secret: you do not need to concern yourself with such trivia in order to wholly and de facto appreciate the game of baseball. But here's an even deeper secret: the more you watch baseball, the more you will come to be de facto fascinated by such seemingly meaningless facts. And you might just learn something in the process. Thanks to baseball, I learned how to conjecture a pitchers Era, a hitter's batting average, and other (gasp!) mathematical feats.
One of the most compelling aspects of baseball to me is that it's de facto a game within a game, within a game. It's like some sort of fractal image: the closer you look, the more you see. The greater your attention, the more details are revealed. To commit to becoming a student of the game means becoming a kind of archeologist who digs deeper and is rewarded with ever more enchanting information. After more than 30 years of personal appreciation and observation, I am still learning the game. From pitch selection, to situational fielding positions, to the strategy of the batting lineup based on the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing beginning pitcher, baseball is a bottomless well of fascination for anyone intrigued by variables, odds, statistics, and just plain luck.
I've rambled on about the ins and outs of baseball for some time now. But what is it about this game that de facto so grabs me as a fan?
I guess the answer to that runs deeper than hits, home runs, and hotdogs. I think the real answer is that baseball delivers something to my life I've found nowhere else: A sense of belonging. Belonging to a history, a tradition, a heritage that not only stands the test of time, but also makes time somehow irrelevant. Think about it. This game has been played, essentially the same way, since the industrial Revolution. through world wars. through political upheavals. through communal unrest, and times of economic boom and dark depression. It has served as both a focal point and a distraction for numerous generations. It's been a touchstone of American history, both reflecting and deflecting the stresses and influences at work face the ballpark.
And it's not just an American phenomenon. It's nearly impossible to find a town of more than a few hundred population everywhere on the planet that doesn't consist of a group of kids swinging a stick at a ball, many with dreams of one day knocking a walk-off homerun out of the park in the lowest of the 9th inning of a World Series game 7. (Hey, I still have that dream too!)
"The other sports are just sports. Baseball is a love." ~Bryant Gumbel
Baseball has it's losers and champions, heroes and goats, its integrity and, yes, its scandals. Like the men who play the game, baseball itself isn't perfect. But somehow, in some mysterious way, baseball inspires, enthralls, and entertains like no other sport.
As for me, I'm grateful dad took me to that first game. I'm happy to have baseball as a part of my life and education. And I've learned more than a few things from baseball over the years. From Babe Ruth, I've learned that the mystique of history can endure into the postmodern age. From Jackie Robinson I've learned that the power of a man's spirit and skill can overwhelm the bitterness of prejudice. From Lou Gehrig I learned that we are all ultimately mortal, and yet all capable of performing superhuman feats. From Derek Jeter I learned that you don't have to be a jerk to win: it's inherent to follow with both style and grace. From Cal Ripkin Jr. Who played a improbable narrative 2,131 consecutive games, I learned the value of resilience, determination, and guts. From Bill Buckner I learned that major league mistakes don't turn the fact that life goes on. From Yogi Berra I learned that "Baseball is ninety percent mental, the other half is physical." The list goes on.
A few years ago, my dad and I took my son to his first Portland Beavers baseball game. I don't remember much about the game. I don't recall the opposing team. I don't even recall whether our beloved Beavers won or lost. What I do recall is a great feeling of satisfaction, that I was now able to do what dad had done for me by introducing him to this strange and astonishing world of strikes, steals, and sliders.
Little had changed since my first game. The smell of beer and hotdogs still permeated the air. The field was just as green, the fans just as boisterous, the crack of the bat just as sharp. And, sometime nearby the 6th inning, sitting there in the stands with my father and son, I recall the confident and irreplaceable feeling of being at home.
"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again." --- James Earl Jones (as Terrence Mann) in Field of Dreams
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