"How could he (Jorge Orta) lose a ball in the sun? He's from Mexico."
-Harry Caray
Ask Milo Hamilton how much he likes Harry Caray.
Can't begin to tell you how excited that baseball season, as opposed to steroid season, is right around the corner. Today I watched two innings of the Braves-Dodgers spring training game (I think the score was about 10-3 at the time).
So many people have written so eloquently about baseball its hard to find new ways to praise it. Movies have rhapsodized about it, from the James Earl Jones speech in Field of Dreams, to Susan Sarandon's speech in Bull Durham, to virtually all of The Natural. The most prominent American authors have elegized it, including Walt Whitman, John Updike, David Halberstam, George Will, John Updike, Phillip Roth, even George Carlin (and his famous baseball vs. football monologue).
Baseball is America. Each year the President throws out the first pitch. It was invented during the Civil War, and swept first throughout every part of this country. Then we planted it throughout the world where it flourishes today as the best American export ever. Gerald Early, quoted in Ken Burns' Baseball, said two thousand years from now people will think of America for three things: the Constitution, baseball and jazz. A big part of the Bay Area's recovery from the 1987 earthquake involved the resumption of the A's-Giants World Series. The President threw out the ball at the first Yankees game after 9/11 as a means to help restore national confidence. Baseball, a sport of all things, brought integration to the national conscience in 1947 when Jackie Robinson took the field, a year before Truman integrated the military and seven years before Brown vs. Board of Education. Even in its flaws, baseball still occupies the country's attention. No one cares about steroids in football; baseball steroids is a national scandal.
Dark clouds hang over baseball. Steroids obviously, but also steep ticket prices which keep out people not in at least the upper middle class, spiraling player salaries that make them even more removed from ordinary people, team economic disparities, free agency (which often means we're just cheering for the shirts, as Jerry Seinfeld famously observed), the continuing flight of black players and fans from the game, the designated hitter, the lack of organized inner city little leagues and facilities, and night World Series games (on so late that kids can't watch them; I still remember watching part of the 1972 World Series in my elementary school library with the principal). But attendance and revenue keep going up, and even the "poor" teams are relatively competitive. All the Yankees' money has not bought a championship in 10 years. The "poor" Twins, A's, and Tigers are now routinely competitive.
I agree with Earl Weaver-baseball is the greatest game. A team that's ahead in late innings can't just run out the clock; each team gets the same number of outs and same chance to win the game. Its undoubtedly the hardest game to play. Michael Jordan, ESPN's athlete of the century, couldn't get past AA ball when he tried to play baseball. You can't succeed just by brute size, strength, or speed, like you can in other sports. If you have a 100 mph fastball, you still get clocked unless you can develop a curve. If you can hit a fastball, it doesn't matter if you can't also hit a curve. The game is complicated-the rule book is over 100 pages. Although there's a lot of apparent down time in a baseball game, the "down time" is in reality when the teams make adjustments and change strategy. Its the thinking time of the game.
The baseball season follows the pattern of life. It begins in April during the spring. Just like youth, the season is new and full and promise of what might be. It matures through the summer, as the teams come together, endure hardships, learn as they gain experience, and evolve as they become more aware of their capabilities. It comes to an inevitable end in the fall when things die, and as the teams look back on the season's potential, either fulfilled or lost. Not unlike April Come She Will. Yet, baseball is born again every April, and (despite astro-turf and the DH) I can watch what basically is the same game that my dad, his father, and his father before him watched.
Unlike other sports, most of us can remember individual plays or moments from the games. Gibson's home run, Mazeroski's, Carter's, Pujols' (ugh), Bobby Thompson's. Willie Mays' catch, Ozzie Smith's snare, Dave Parker's throws home at the All-Star game, George Brett's pine tar home run, Pete Rose running over Ray Fosse, Don Larsen's perfect game, Bo Jackson climbing the outfield wall to catch a certain home run ball, Clemens' steroid rage throwing a bat at Mike Piazza, Fisk willing the ball fair, or, the best baseball moment of all time, 47 year old Nolan Ryan's epic smackdown of 26 year old Robin Ventura. I generally can't remember where I parked my car or left my keys every day, but I can still remember every detail of Billy Hatcher hitting a home run off the left field foul pole screen for the Astros in the bottom half of the 14th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 NLCS against the Mets to tie the game. You could have an entire night's conversation just listing off great moments like these. Baseball has lasted 150 years, each season has thousands of games, yet often everything comes down to actions taking seconds but lasting forever.
Baseball's legends have formed part of the American lore. Stories about Casey Stengel's testimony before Congress, Earl Weaver baiting umpires, Babe Ruth's called shot, "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth," Yogi Berra-isms, Ripken's streak, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, the Black Sox, Rick Monday saving a burning American flag, Henry Aaron running around the bases for the 715th time with those hippies following him, Roberto Clemente dying in a plane crash while trying to aid Nicaraguan earthquake victims, and now the steroid testimony, have become part of the American conscience. Its numbers are instantly recognizable, notwithstanding latter-day steroid-fouled assaults: 755, .406, 56, 61. Baseball surely has inspired the best sports movies. Not only the ones mentioned above, but such other greats as Bang the Drum Slowly, Major League, Eight Men Out, Pride of the Yankees, A League of their Own, The Rookie...the list goes on. Baseball scenes in non-baseball movies nearly steal the show-trying to listen to the Series in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the baseball scene in City Slickers, the 1951 Giants-Dodgers playoff game playing in the background in The Godfather when Sonny Corleone was gunned down....
What can compare to a pennant race? Checking the box scores every night (or now every day on the internet). Hanging on every out the last three weeks of September. Comparing each team's upcoming schedules and probable pitchers. The baseball season is an every-day friend, renewing itself every day. Unless you're a Pirates fan.
Even the broadcasters become part of your life. Other than Keith Jackson or John Madden, I'd be hard pressed to think of a football announcer. But years later, I can still hear in my mind Gene Elston and Loel Passe calling Astros games ("how bout them Oranges"). Generations grew up listening every day to Red Barber and Mel Allen, Russ Hodges, Jack Brickhouse, Jack Buck (whom I could listen to on my transistor calling Cardinals games on KMOX while going to bed in Houston), Ernie Harwell, Harry Carey, Curt Gowdy, and the unequaled Vin Scully ("two and two to Harvey Kuenn"). These guys were storytellers and painters, of a kind who no longer call games. The story they told was baseball. No one can forget "the Giants win the pennant," "I don't believe what I just saw," "Holy Cow," "Oh Doctor," "There's a new home run champion of all time and its Henry Aaron," "Go crazy folks, go crazy," or "It might be...it could be...it is!" Hey, even a fictional call ("just a bit outside") is one of the most famous ever.
I can't forget how it feels to hit a fastball on the sweet spot of a wooden bat and watch it rifle into the gap toward the outfield wall. That feeling simply has no equal.
And, finally, I love that there's no crying in baseball.
Ask Milo Hamilton how much he likes Harry Caray.
Can't begin to tell you how excited that baseball season, as opposed to steroid season, is right around the corner. Today I watched two innings of the Braves-Dodgers spring training game (I think the score was about 10-3 at the time).
So many people have written so eloquently about baseball its hard to find new ways to praise it. Movies have rhapsodized about it, from the James Earl Jones speech in Field of Dreams, to Susan Sarandon's speech in Bull Durham, to virtually all of The Natural. The most prominent American authors have elegized it, including Walt Whitman, John Updike, David Halberstam, George Will, John Updike, Phillip Roth, even George Carlin (and his famous baseball vs. football monologue).
Baseball is America. Each year the President throws out the first pitch. It was invented during the Civil War, and swept first throughout every part of this country. Then we planted it throughout the world where it flourishes today as the best American export ever. Gerald Early, quoted in Ken Burns' Baseball, said two thousand years from now people will think of America for three things: the Constitution, baseball and jazz. A big part of the Bay Area's recovery from the 1987 earthquake involved the resumption of the A's-Giants World Series. The President threw out the ball at the first Yankees game after 9/11 as a means to help restore national confidence. Baseball, a sport of all things, brought integration to the national conscience in 1947 when Jackie Robinson took the field, a year before Truman integrated the military and seven years before Brown vs. Board of Education. Even in its flaws, baseball still occupies the country's attention. No one cares about steroids in football; baseball steroids is a national scandal.
Dark clouds hang over baseball. Steroids obviously, but also steep ticket prices which keep out people not in at least the upper middle class, spiraling player salaries that make them even more removed from ordinary people, team economic disparities, free agency (which often means we're just cheering for the shirts, as Jerry Seinfeld famously observed), the continuing flight of black players and fans from the game, the designated hitter, the lack of organized inner city little leagues and facilities, and night World Series games (on so late that kids can't watch them; I still remember watching part of the 1972 World Series in my elementary school library with the principal). But attendance and revenue keep going up, and even the "poor" teams are relatively competitive. All the Yankees' money has not bought a championship in 10 years. The "poor" Twins, A's, and Tigers are now routinely competitive.
I agree with Earl Weaver-baseball is the greatest game. A team that's ahead in late innings can't just run out the clock; each team gets the same number of outs and same chance to win the game. Its undoubtedly the hardest game to play. Michael Jordan, ESPN's athlete of the century, couldn't get past AA ball when he tried to play baseball. You can't succeed just by brute size, strength, or speed, like you can in other sports. If you have a 100 mph fastball, you still get clocked unless you can develop a curve. If you can hit a fastball, it doesn't matter if you can't also hit a curve. The game is complicated-the rule book is over 100 pages. Although there's a lot of apparent down time in a baseball game, the "down time" is in reality when the teams make adjustments and change strategy. Its the thinking time of the game.
The baseball season follows the pattern of life. It begins in April during the spring. Just like youth, the season is new and full and promise of what might be. It matures through the summer, as the teams come together, endure hardships, learn as they gain experience, and evolve as they become more aware of their capabilities. It comes to an inevitable end in the fall when things die, and as the teams look back on the season's potential, either fulfilled or lost. Not unlike April Come She Will. Yet, baseball is born again every April, and (despite astro-turf and the DH) I can watch what basically is the same game that my dad, his father, and his father before him watched.
Unlike other sports, most of us can remember individual plays or moments from the games. Gibson's home run, Mazeroski's, Carter's, Pujols' (ugh), Bobby Thompson's. Willie Mays' catch, Ozzie Smith's snare, Dave Parker's throws home at the All-Star game, George Brett's pine tar home run, Pete Rose running over Ray Fosse, Don Larsen's perfect game, Bo Jackson climbing the outfield wall to catch a certain home run ball, Clemens' steroid rage throwing a bat at Mike Piazza, Fisk willing the ball fair, or, the best baseball moment of all time, 47 year old Nolan Ryan's epic smackdown of 26 year old Robin Ventura. I generally can't remember where I parked my car or left my keys every day, but I can still remember every detail of Billy Hatcher hitting a home run off the left field foul pole screen for the Astros in the bottom half of the 14th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 NLCS against the Mets to tie the game. You could have an entire night's conversation just listing off great moments like these. Baseball has lasted 150 years, each season has thousands of games, yet often everything comes down to actions taking seconds but lasting forever.
Baseball's legends have formed part of the American lore. Stories about Casey Stengel's testimony before Congress, Earl Weaver baiting umpires, Babe Ruth's called shot, "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth," Yogi Berra-isms, Ripken's streak, Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, the Black Sox, Rick Monday saving a burning American flag, Henry Aaron running around the bases for the 715th time with those hippies following him, Roberto Clemente dying in a plane crash while trying to aid Nicaraguan earthquake victims, and now the steroid testimony, have become part of the American conscience. Its numbers are instantly recognizable, notwithstanding latter-day steroid-fouled assaults: 755, .406, 56, 61. Baseball surely has inspired the best sports movies. Not only the ones mentioned above, but such other greats as Bang the Drum Slowly, Major League, Eight Men Out, Pride of the Yankees, A League of their Own, The Rookie...the list goes on. Baseball scenes in non-baseball movies nearly steal the show-trying to listen to the Series in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the baseball scene in City Slickers, the 1951 Giants-Dodgers playoff game playing in the background in The Godfather when Sonny Corleone was gunned down....
What can compare to a pennant race? Checking the box scores every night (or now every day on the internet). Hanging on every out the last three weeks of September. Comparing each team's upcoming schedules and probable pitchers. The baseball season is an every-day friend, renewing itself every day. Unless you're a Pirates fan.
Even the broadcasters become part of your life. Other than Keith Jackson or John Madden, I'd be hard pressed to think of a football announcer. But years later, I can still hear in my mind Gene Elston and Loel Passe calling Astros games ("how bout them Oranges"). Generations grew up listening every day to Red Barber and Mel Allen, Russ Hodges, Jack Brickhouse, Jack Buck (whom I could listen to on my transistor calling Cardinals games on KMOX while going to bed in Houston), Ernie Harwell, Harry Carey, Curt Gowdy, and the unequaled Vin Scully ("two and two to Harvey Kuenn"). These guys were storytellers and painters, of a kind who no longer call games. The story they told was baseball. No one can forget "the Giants win the pennant," "I don't believe what I just saw," "Holy Cow," "Oh Doctor," "There's a new home run champion of all time and its Henry Aaron," "Go crazy folks, go crazy," or "It might be...it could be...it is!" Hey, even a fictional call ("just a bit outside") is one of the most famous ever.
I can't forget how it feels to hit a fastball on the sweet spot of a wooden bat and watch it rifle into the gap toward the outfield wall. That feeling simply has no equal.
And, finally, I love that there's no crying in baseball.
2 comments:
the strikes killed baseball for me. the strikes weren't the problem. they were symptoms of the problem. i will always refer to the stadium in houston as enron field. outside of 2005, i couldn't name which teams were in the world series after 1979. i liked peter's observation about the 2005 series.
I never liked baseball growing up. Of course, then I met Daren and had to go. Early on, I still didn't like it. You have to know my mother controlled the Rangers tickets for the company. They were GREAT SEATS. If you don't believe me, know that the guy with the radar gun sat *behind* us. :D I brought a book. I got into baseball when Dennis started playing. Suddenly, the game was a lot more complex and much less boring. I still am really only interested if Dennis is playing or if the Astros are on, but I appreciate the game as a *game* now.
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