FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME

A short while ago I was discussing my blog with a friend. She asked what I wrote about, and I replied that I write a little bit about everything. But I try to focus mainly on real estate and baseball, my two favorite subjects. She considered this for a moment then asked me an interesting question. Why baseball? Why is that your favorite sport? It gave me pause. It seems like baseball has been my favorite sport forever. After all, it is (or was) the crown jewel of American sports. There is a reason they call it a baseball diamond. Yes, I know that is not the reason they call the field a diamond. But I am pressed for time, and I wanted to work the term into this essay one way or another. In my teens my favorite sport was football. I remember watching double headers every Sunday on television. I remember seeing Franco Harris make that Immaculate reception against the Raiders in the playoffs. I was a Rams fan. I grew up with Roman Gabriel, Jack Snow, Merlin Olsen, Deacon Jones, Tom Mack, Coy Bacon, and Charlie Cowan. I remember Tommy Prothro inexplicably punting on 3rd down. Back then the Rams were a mediocre to fair team, the second pro football team in town behind the USC Trojans. Every year they seemed to lose both games to the San Francisco 49ers but still managed to sneak into the playoffs, only to lose to the Dallas Cowboys or the Minnesota Vikings. Maybe that’s why I lost interest in football. That, and I started to regularly attend 4 to 6 Dodgers games each season, which were (at least back then) much less expensive to attend than any other sporting event.

I think that I would also argue that football is much more interesting when viewed on television. In a football game, on any given play, there is a lot happening on the field. Twenty-two players all in motion at once, running routes in different directions, misdirection plays, the quarterback scrambling, linebackers blitzing. What is the quarterback doing? What are the receivers doing? It’s hard to take it all in and invariably you miss some of the action. Especially if you have seats on the 20-yard line and all the action is taking place at the other end of the field. Watching the game on television is an entirely different experience. It captures all of the action for you in ultra-slow-motion replay from a dozen different angles. Baseball is just the opposite. It’s hard to concentrate on a televised game when the camera is mostly focused on the pitcher and the batter. This is why a lot of casual observers call the game boring. it’s akin to watching grass grow or paint dry. To that, I will grudgingly say, they aren’t wrong. But to see a game live! First of all, just ten players on the field at a given time, if you include the batter. While not much appears to be going on, if you are attuned to the game, you can tell a lot about what is about to happen by watching the players. I like to focus in on the way the outfielders are positioning themselves. What are the infielders doing? How is everybody moving after the ball comes off the bat? A lot can happen if a player fails to move to the right position after the ball is put into play, none of it good. How many times has a runner scored from second base on a routine play because the catcher ran down the line to back up first base, as he’s supposed to do, but the pitcher forgot to back up the plate, allowing the runner to literally walk home? And no matter where you’re sitting, you can see everything that is going on. I recently attended a Dodger’s game. It was a playoff game against Atlanta, and I had to settle for seats in the top deck, roughly a mile above first base. I’ve never watched a game from that vantage point. Apostles were hawking soft drinks and frozen malteds. But I was surprised how much detail I could take in. Really, the only thing that was a little disconcerting because we were looking down on the field were fly balls. There were a couple of towering fly balls that I thought sure were going out that turned out to be pop-ups caught by the second baseman.

In the 70’s and 80’s, unlike the Rams, the Dodgers were constant. They had Cey, Russell, Lopes, and Garvey. Those guys were together for nine years. Tommy Lasorda was their manager for 20 years. In the outfield they had guys like Bill Buckner (yes, that Bill Buckner), Dusty Baker, Rick Monday, Jimmy Wynn, and Joe Ferguson. They didn’t win the division every year, but it seemed like they were at least in contention. Back then, their big rivalry within the division was with the Cincinnati Reds and their Big Red Machine.

Baseball is accessible, anybody can play the game and at almost any age. It always starts out with an eight-year-old kid playing catch with his father. Little League follows soon after. When I grew up in the 60s and 70s almost every kid in my neighborhood played on a little league team. One of the dads was always the coach. You didn’t need to be freakishly tall. You didn’t need to weigh 300 pounds with thighs like tree trunks. You didn’t need special equipment that made you almost unrecognizable. Unless you were a catcher. Next it was high school ball, followed by college or the minors. The game captivated you for life. I could relate to those guys. I still can relate. I’m 63 but give me a few weeks at a gym and some time in a batting cage and I think I still have a shot at the minors. If not, there is always slo-pitch softball or tee ball for us seniors.

There are those marvelous nicknames. Baseball is, and always has been, a treasure trove of great nicknames.

I love the Babe. The Bambino! The Sultan of Swat! I love that they are all the same person. Charlie Hustle! Moonlight Graham! Bill Spaceman Lee! The Splendid Splinter! The Big Unit! Mr. October! Shoeless Joe! Pee Wee! Stan the Man! Catfish! The Penguin! The Big Hurt! The Say Hey Kid! The Toy Cannon! Wizard of Oz! Oil Can Boyd! Joey Bats! Mr. Cub! I could fill up three pages with nicknames for some of the greatest players to take the field. Any serious fan will recognize who most, if not all, of these players I have just listed are. But those nicknames, those wonderful, ridiculous, nicknames, conjure up memories from my youth and always bring a smile to my lips.

There is the ultra-well-groomed outfield grass, a shade of green that dazzles the eyes, even in the dead of summer when it is in the high 90s and there hasn’t been a hint of rain in weeks. The smell of fresh cut grass is like no other. I look at that weird mowing pattern with the grain first going in one direction then, the opposite direction, and back again and again. I look at that and think, how can I get my lawn to look like that.

Baseball is a game of numbers. More than any other sport, a baseball game can be defined by statistics. I can look at a scorecard and see the game play out in my head. I know what a 6-4-3 double play is. I also know that one of the rarest double plays is the 3-2-3. That’s where the bases are loaded, and the ball is hit to the first baseman. He throws the ball to the catcher to record the force out at home who then relays the ball back to the first baseman to record the out at first. I have always known that a K was a strike out but a backwards K on a scorecard means strike out looking. I just learned that. Certain numbers are iconic. Number 42, Jackie Robinson! Most people know that Barry Bonds has the single season home run record but how many did he hit that season. Everyone knows that Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961 to break the record set by Babe Ruth. There was even a movie about that season called *61. The Babe hit 714 home runs in his career, best in baseball until Aaron hit 755. Probably the most important number in baseball is 3. It is the number of strikes required for a strike out, the number of outs in an inning, and the number of bases. Multiples of three are prevalent. Nine innings in a regulation game. Nine players take the field for each team. Twenty-seven outs in that baseball unicorn, the perfect game. Sixty feet six inches is the distance from home plate to the mound. Ninety feet between the bases. One hundred sixty-two games in a season. Three hundred career wins was (at one time) the measure of a great pitcher. Three thousand career hits the measure of a great hitter.

And wow, the baseball superstitions. Baseball players are probably more superstitious than any other athlete. Players will not step on the foul lines while taking or leaving the field. A pitcher with a no hitter is usually the loneliest player on the bench. Players have rituals in the batter’s box, drawing a symbol with the bat, patting the batting helmet, tugging on their sleeves. Some players went to ridiculous lengths. Wade Boggs famously only ate chicken on game days. He also would take exactly 150 ground balls during practice. Pitcher Turk Wendell would go into a crouch if the catcher stood up only going back to a standing position when the catcher went into his crouch. Mark McGuire wore the same cup from his high school playing days until it was stolen. Joe DiMaggio would always touch second base as he ran in from the outfield. Some superstitions became a part of the game. Singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game during the seventh inning stretch started out as a superstition. So did having an honored guest ceremoniously throw out the first pitch. Three famous superstitions prevented teams from winning a World Series for decades. The Curse of the Bambino is often cited as the reason the Boston Red Sox couldn’t win a World Series for 86 years. The Curse of the Black Sox prevented the Chicago White Sox from winning a Series for 90 years. I think maybe it was because neither team knew the correct spelling of socks, but that’s just me. And the curse of the angry goat prevented the Chicago Cubs from winning the World Series for over 100 years. A warning to barkeeps, always allow pet goats to sit at your bar. You can seat them with the pink elephants.

It’s a team sport but I love the confrontation between pitcher and batter. It’s mano a mano, just two players facing off trying to out-maneuver one another like players on a chess board. One cannot deny the tension in the air when the bases are loaded in a close game and the count goes to 3-2. The batter begins fouling off pitches and with each foul ball the tension ratchets up a notch. But it wasn’t always like that. In the early days the idea was for the pitcher to serve up the ball, underhanded, so the batter could put it in play. Sort of the baseball equivalent of punt and let your defense do the work. A young pitcher came along in the 1860s named Jim Creighton. He developed a pitching style where he put spin and movement on the ball with a slight snap of his wrist, which was against the rules at that time. He was so subtle in his movements that the umpires could never catch him in the act, and soon other pitchers began to copy him. He fundamentally changed the game and pushed it towards the game we know today. And another reason I love the game. It has a history stretching back over one hundred fifty years. Dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of stories about men just like Jim Creighton. Men who influenced and changed the game, fashioning it into America’s past time.

Baseball movies! My favorite all time movie is Field of Dreams. This from a guy that saw Star Wars a dozen times when it first came out! But Field of Dreams catches the essence of what the game is about. James Earl Jones, as Terence Mann, has a great speech. One of many throughout the film.

“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Oh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.”

Field of Dreams is just one of many great baseball movies. The Sandlot, Eight Men out, Bull Durham, A League of Their Own, The Pride of the Yankees, The Natural, Moneyball, Damn Yankees, Fear Strikes Out, 61*, and For the Love of the Game. Just to name a few. They tell stories, both real and imagined, of men accomplishing great deeds. They spark the imagination and touch the heart.

Baseball is America’s past…present…and future. They have come of age together. They endure. It is backyard barbeques, apple pie, hot dogs, and the seventh inning stretch. The smell of fresh mown grass or roasted peanuts. Who’s on first, What’s on second, I don’t know…third base. Two bits got you a ticket during the Great Depression. Everybody knows the lyrics to Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Baseball is the tie that binds. It brings communities together. It is fathers and little boys, and even little girls, playing catch. Mom’s hauling the kids to little league practice. Young men playing in the minor leagues until they are old men, all dreaming to play in The Show. It is symmetry. A disease was named after Lou Gehrig and a surgical procedure after Tommy John. Baseball is double headers in July, night games (finally) at Wrigley Field, The Green Monster. It is Rick Monday snatching the American flag from anarchists trying to set it afire in center field at Dodger Stadium! Lou Gehrig telling 61,808 fans at Yankee Stadium that “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth!” Kirk Gibson hobbling around the bases after hitting a limp off home run against the Oakland A’s in game one of the ’88 World Series! Why do I love baseball? How could I not!