Baseball

For someone unfamiliar with baseball, it may look like nothing much happens during a game. Indeed, you could probably condense a typical  3 hour game into 5 minutes of actual physical activity... the rest of the time, you see players standing on the field, picking their nose, scratching their balls, chewing gum— generally waiting for the action to occur. Hypothetically a baseball game could go on forever if the score remains tied. For a sport with limited action, unlike soccer, tennis, football, basketball, and hockey, there is no rush to hasten the outcome of the game with overtimes, sudden deaths, tiebreakers, or penalty shots. The flow of time within this sport is like flow of time in life— ebbing and flowing depending on circumstance. It is within this framework that one experiences a baseball game. Given the slow pace, my memories of games are inextricably tied to meandering conversations, flicking empty peanut shells on the ground, singing along to national anthems, eating overpriced hotdogs, and stretching in the 7th inning.

Baseball is the only American sport I know where the defense initiates the action. The pitcher hurls a 3” diameter leather-wrapped rubber ball 100 miles per hour from his mound 60’ away towards home plate. This gives the batter roughly 375 milliseconds to decide whether the pitch is going over the plate between his knees and elbows for a strike, and commit to initiating and executing a swing to hit the ball. The pitcher has an arsenal of tricks to keep the hitter off balance. At any given point, he could throw a slow pitch (changeup), or a pitch that curves to the side (slider) or down (curveball). If the hitter is lucky enough to make contact with the ball, it must elude the fielders to register a hit. Not surprisingly, hits are very hard to achieve. If you manage to hit a ball safety 30% of the time, you would be an all-star with a multi-million dollar contract, with a large estate and numerous luxury cars, a pool with a view of the ocean, a multitude of commercial endorsements... not a piddling architect responding to pages of city planning zoning objections.

Strings of consecutive hits or walks are typically rare occurrences within a game, but when they do happen, the game starts taking on a completely different character.  Imagine a batter with men on base threatening to score — every pitch takes on much more significance. A hit could alter the outcome of the game. Time slows to a snail’s pace, the crowd stands on its feet,  the chants start rolling in from the stands,  pitcher is sweating looking at the catcher to coordinate the type and speed of pitch to throw (having laboriously analyzed each batter’s weakness before the game by looking at countless video replays), after much deliberation, the pitch is launched, the batter commits to a swing, swivels his bat, steps, twists his torso, spins his bat, fouls the ball off to stay alive. The pressure and anticipation mounts for the next pitch... In baseball, players practice for hours for high pressure moments like this. The pitcher tries to execute the perfect pitch, the hitter tries to make the perfect swing, the fielders try to choreograph themselves on defense to field the batter’s balls and convert them to outs. An error on either side could cost the game. In baseball you have to make the plays when you have to make the plays. There’s no margin for error. “There’s no crying in baseball.” These moments of intensity are why baseball is so beloved by Americans.

For Bostonians who lived anytime between 1918 and 2004, it always seemed we were on the losing end of all these crucial moments... like Charlie Brown repeatedly falling on his back every time he tried to kick a field goal with Lucy swiping the ball away from him at the last second and then laughing at his failure.  I spent the days of my youth watching games, championships within tantalizing reach only to have my heart broken by inexplicable errors or managerial decisions.  It was the ‘Curse of the Bambino’ (named after Babe Ruth, who was the greatest player to ever play the game). After he was traded from the Boston Red Sox (so the owner could fund a musical project) to the New York Yankees in 1918, the Red Sox would not win a championship for 86 years. The Yankees would go on to win 27 World Series in that same span. They were the Lucy, and the Red Sox were the Charlie Brown of baseball. Anytime the Red Sox face the Yankees nowadays, the games are drawn out to 4 or 5 hour affairs given each side’s increased intensity because of the historic rivalry. Passions are stirred my memories of former battles like pedro throwing old don zimmer to the ground, or varitek shoving a glove in A Rod's face... I imagine this is the same feeling a Shia feels when he confronts a Shiite, or Israeli a Palestinian, or a cat a dog.

Since I grew up in Boston, I was indoctrinated in the Red Sox. It was my religion. I was raised to have faith in the  Red Sox no matter the circumstance. Like Job in the Bible,  i endured horrible losses of tremendous pain that tested  my faith. But my faith never wavered. I went to Fenway park regularly as my house of worship from spring to autumn. I played in the parks and little league youth teams imitating my favorite players, assuming my favorite player’s jersey number as my lucky number (Jim rice = 14 = my lucky number). What we didn’t have in championships, we made up for in character... or so we rationalized. We loved the Red Sox underdog players despite their foibles, we made snide comments that the Yankees only win because they pay their players more, and we loved our ballpark because it was small and quirky. The Green Monster wall defined by the available urban condition rather than some grotesque perfectly symmetrical oversized monstrosity in the South Bronx.

Things turned around for the Red Sox in 2004. The Red Sox have won 4 championships, mainly through the new owner’s statistical approach to the game. Despite the wins, and the fact I’ve  now lived in nyc almost twice as many years as in Boston,  i still retain my youthful hatred for the Yankees. To this day, at yankee stadium, you’ll hear me yelling the most vile things at the most inappropriate times, and celebrating all the yankee blunders brazenly with glee.