Now that February is five days old, spring training will
soon begin in baseball, the thinking man’s game; at least that’s how I prefer
to see it. Not to suggest that the players are any brighter or the plays on the
gridiron not complex, but the game of baseball seems to attract poets, essayists
and nerds.
It could be the deliberate pace allowing time for rumination or the geometry of the field with its Euclidian exactitude in the infield and random irregularity of the outfield that suggests the full dimensions of our humanity. And to top it all it is apportioned in innings, nine of them, more or less corresponding to our new life span; I can say this because I am about to enter my ninth decade. There’s even a possibility of extra innings.
Then there is the polarity of Dionysian hunches versus the Apollonian
stats. The way a manager must weigh the pull of the record book with its data
of past performance against his intuitive, inarticulate, inchoate decisions made
by the seat of his pants which defy rationality. I can imagine Plato relishing
the sport, or Schopenhauer discoursing with Spinoza in the dugout over a
squeeze play.
When one umpire says, I
don’t call ‘em as I sees ‘em. I call them as they are, and another
proclaims, They may be balls and they may
be strikes but until I call ‘em they ain’t nothing…we have the difference
between objective materialism and subjective idealism.
Baseball taps into something primitive in us. Its origins go back to the time when man first swatted away a fly or a caveman took his club to the head of a creature which became dinner for six. Bat against ball, stick against rock or the confluence of any projectile and the extension of an arm.
The more I have learned about baseball the greater the mystery…
as in all things. There is an X factor at its core which is another way of
saying that baseball is life, seemingly coherent yet hidden and inexplicable.
It is also high drama and inconsequential in terms of cosmology. The outcome of
any game changes my life not at all…unless I allow it to.
One of the more arcane features are the signals, the silent
messaging that never stops between pitcher and catcher, manager and coaches,
coaches and players, infielders and outfielders and even umpire and umpire. It is
estimated that 1,000 signs are exchanged over the nine innings. To the casual
fan the proceedings can be watched and enjoyed without any knowledge of this
cryptic game within the game. But the strategies and counter-strategies abound
with every tip of cap, scratch of the nose, hitch of the belt or shuffle of the feet and then there is the acknowledgement
of the sign. Half of them may be decoys.
Catchers must hide their fingers; base runners are charged with stealing them.
Not only does the pitcher need to get it but all the position players, as well,
must know whether to move a step to the right or left if a fast ball is coming.
It’s a chess game on a board of green grass. However for the athlete too much
thinking can take him out of his muscle memory…..think of that.
As a fan, with a smattering of inside knowledge, I get to
second-guess every move not only on the field but off it starting with winter
trades and ending with the last pitch of the season. It’s my alternative
universe which stretches back in time beyond my first game at Ebbet’s Field in 1939,
to the bubble-gum card years, the games imagined on the radio and the
heartbreak and joy that come with identifying. There is the life lesson of
accepting loss and disappointment inherent in a game where success is accorded
to a batter who fails two-thirds of the time
There are ample reasons to walk away from it all starting
with the biblical injunction to put away childish things to the spoiled
players, arrogant owners, high ticket prices, performance-enhancing drugs and
free agency which undermines team loyalty. But my inner child requires it and
after the Dodgers followed me from Brooklyn 55
years ago this is the least I can do. Play Ball!
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