In Praise of Baseball

I have seen this year after year. As much as we love football and hockey in this country, there is something about baseball that captures people in the heart. Do not deny it. You love baseball! Okay, maybe you don’t. Many people, however, do love the game, and those people go about life with a bounce in their step, a glint in their eye and a warm grasp on their memory. They wait all winter for baseball and spend all summer enjoying it. It is about life.

If I were a Jedi, I would do a great mind trick that would finally and ultimately convince you of the fact that, despite your denial, you really do love baseball. I cannot do that…so I won’t even try.

I have given up the fight of trying to convince people of the beauty of baseball. I am now confident and content that those who do not appreciate the great game, never will and that is their loss. Much like the father who abandons his children and never even realizes that he is the one who loses out when the child takes his first bike ride or dances her first recital, those who ignore baseball simply do not know what they are missing. In the meantime, I will sit in the stands, follow the standings and question the stance of the next power hitter. I will absorb what you deny.

See, baseball is about so much more than the final score. If all we cared about in any of life’s pursuits was the final score, would we even spend our time being alive? A very wise person once asked me this, “If life is so easy, why doesn’t everyone do it?” Wow – that hit me like a line drive. What a concept. And it got me thinking about a lot of things that have nothing to do with baseball but also about a lot of things that have much to do with baseball.

In life, there are choices. If a runner is on third, he can attempt to steal home. A rarity, yes, but a surprise attack strategy nonetheless. What happens when one steals home? One runs the risk of being caught stealing, getting called out and disappointing the team. Sure, the rewards outweigh the risk…or do they? Is one run and attention from thousands worth potentially losing the game? How many times has a runner attempted to steal home? A few dozen, maybe, in the entire history of the game. How many have scored? Who knows? I would think that stealing home is a lot like abandoning your kids. It walks a fine line between cautious risk and undue consequences. By the way, Ty Cobb alone stole home 54 times in his career. Perhaps that is a lost art.

In life, there are also mistakes. What is interesting about baseball, and what separates it from other sports, is that there is no direct penalty for having committed the error or the blunder. Even the much-maligned balk results only in a free pass to the next base. Imagine being the guy who balked in a winning run! In football, a referee either gives or takes away yardage; in hockey, they take a player from the ice and place a man in the penalty box; in basketball, they grant a free opportunity to score a point uncontested. Not so in baseball. The errors you make effect you in ways to which only you can react. If a booted ball advances a runner, you still have the chance to get out of the inning. It is not arbitrary. That error could cost the whole game or an entire season, or it could just be a blip on the road through nine innings. Much like our laws, one could argue. Depending on the severity, a judge’s rulings could sidetrack long-term success or place you under custody of the manager for a longer term; or, it could simply teach you a quick lesson to never do that again. But, what’s the point of even discussing that? You hate baseball, remember?

We have in this our life teams that support us, teams that want us, teams that respect us; fans who hate us, fans who adore us in an overly-obsessive way, and fans who might not even notice that we came or went in the roster that is their own life. We have umpires who keep us cool, those who infuriate us and those we get mad at, even though they only kicked us out when we lost our cool and crossed the lines of the rules we knew about all along. It is funny how those things work.

What baseball offers is a time to reflect. We don’t get enough of that in our hectic lives. Between pitches, we can converse with a friend, guess what pitch will come next or just sit quietly enjoying the surrealism that is the moment. Heck, we can even get up to run an errand if we want to do so and not really miss all that much. See, baseball can be like that moment in pre-school when you realized it was okay to relax. In fact, there are but a few moments during baseball when we must focus absolute concentration. We do this with the pennant on the line, the final out moments away, the winning run on second (and, really, what is more exciting in baseball than the potential winning run standing on second?), the ceremonial first pitch, the singing of the National Anthem. In life, we pause when our children are born, stretch when we have worked too hard, clasp our hands in cerebral prayer as the floodwaters rise, doff a cap in farewell to a loved one, shake our heads in dismay over things both silly and profound, anguish when the bad news arrives, and watch the highlights of somebody else’s victory or defeat.

Eh, whatever. If you don’t like baseball, you just don’t like it. What can I say? It is neither sport, nor metaphor. It’s just a game I guess. By the way, that person who said -- “If life is so easy, why doesn’t everyone do it?” -- she was nine when she asked that question. Barely to the on deck circle of life, and I think she has a lot of things figured out already. I think she will do well at this game.