What everyone knows about baseball is that it’s impossibly dull and that each game lasts at least an hour longer than they’d like it to. The players are paid way too much, especially compared with teachers and firemen. Baseball fans and broadcasters obsess on numbers – obscure statistics with strange initials like RBI and ERA. The players aren’t very athletic, really; many are obviously overweight and are winded after running the 180 feet from home plate to second base. Ballplayers spit a lot and consume a bizarre amount of sunflower seeds and chewing gum. Some old-timers still chew and spit tobacco. Everyone knows about the World Series, which is played in late October, often in weather only a hockey player could love. Many of the greatest, most popular players have used performance-enhancing drugs; most lie about it, diminishing their greatness and popularity. Baseball is America’s Pastime.
What I know about baseball is that it is a game for patient people. It is a game best enjoyed during the summer, when the days or long and warm, the fans unhurried. The players’ skills, though not strictly speaking “athletic,” are remarkable and rare. The game requires freaky-good hand-eye coordination, great concentration and a degree of fearlessness. (It’s hard to hit a golf ball, but your opponent never hurls or hits the ball at you.) It is helpful to be fast and strong – but in many cases, one or the other will do.
The game’s most fundamental event – the pitch – is the reason for its apparently slow pace. The physical act of throwing a pitch is in itself a challenge; the process of deciding what sort of pitch to throw is a mental exercise, a guessing game. Throwing the decided upon pitch at the desired speed, with the desired movement, and having it arrive sixty and half feet away in the desired location is something only the best of the best can do consistently. What I know is that what many people consider the “action” – a ball in play – is not a discrete event, but the culmination of a series of events which can be viewed broadly (in relation to what happened earlier in the game or season) or narrowly (how the batter responded to the last curveball the pitcher threw.)
The word “statistics” is no longer adequate to describe what serious fans can know about the game. Today we are dealing with information about what happens on the field, not just a data set easily reproduced in a newspaper. Video cameras and a host of other equipment installed in each Major League ballpark record the velocity and movement (lateral and horizontal) of each pitch. All games are videotaped from many angles. The speed, trajectory and destination of each batted ball are logged. What I know is that understanding the game is a pastime unto itself and because of the good, funny, interesting writing of many fans, learning about the game has become almost more fun than actually watching it.
No comments:
Post a Comment