“Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical.”
Yogi Berra, NY Yankee catcher
I love baseball. There I’ve said it. Don’t judge.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve cherished and loved many things and people over the years including sports. I’ve also fallen out of love with some of them.
But there’s something about baseball. I think of baseball as a microcosm of our society.
Baseball is known as “America’s Pastime”, perhaps because of its prominent role in American culture. First of all, it’s a team sport, played with universal rules that all participants agree to. Sure, there are some subtle differences between American League and National League rules but these don’t affect the playing of the game. Everybody plays by the rules; unlike in life- or in the Republican wing of the U.S. Congress today. Don’t get me started.
Photo by Pixabay
We teach our kids good sportsmanship. Being a good loser is as important as being a good winner. After every game, the winning side shakes hands with the losing side. The losers don’t whine about how “The game was rigged!!”
When baseball players in the 1980s got caught using steroids to enhance their game, it shook the country, because it was cheating and you’re not supposed to cheat in baseball.
They say that sporting events represent fighting war by other means. Football could safely fit in that metaphor. Not so much baseball, though. Baseball acts more like a political campaign or a business venture even down to its dominance by men, men, men.
First, you have the suits and money men in the front office who hire the scouts and business managers to run things. They recruit and hire the General Manager. In the clubhouse and out on the field, the General Manager is in charge. He’s the de facto president of the team during the season. Players call him “The Skipper”. He makes all the decisions about how the game will be played and by whom. He hires what would be the equivalent of his “Cabinet”, that is, the bench coach, the pitching and hitting coaches and the base coaches.
Then there’s the umpires. These guys are the equivalent to the judiciary system of our country. They call the balls and strikes. If there’s a dispute of any kind on the field during play, they will decide the outcome of it. The Skipper may choose to appeal their ruling. Then the case is sent to a bunch of Supreme Umpires in New York who immediately review the case and rule on it. That ruling is final. Thank God Clarence Thomas isn’t a Supreme Umpire. We really need to believe in umps.
It is rarely a good idea to mess with an umpire during a game. An ump can eject anyone they want from the game. They can hold you in contempt of game. Some former presidents should pay attention to the power inherent in this type of relationship.
The game of baseball has inspired great art. Literature has been written about it. Ken Burns made a multi-part documentary about it. Dozens of movies and scores of plays and musicals about baseball have been produced. Photography, painting, sculpture, music and clothing fashion have all been defined by the game.
It’s not just a North American phenomenon either. They play it in Japan. Fidel Castro played baseball. In Cuba today, as in many parts of Central America, baseball is still fundamental to the culture. In Havana, it’s the one controversial subject that anyone can argue about publicly with anyone, without fear of retribution.
Over history, teams have evolved as society evolved. The racial integration of baseball closely restates the history of race in our society. Today, baseball players come from everywhere and are every color. It’s not unusual to see kids from Central and South America, Mexico, Asia and even The Pacific Islands playing in Major League Baseball.
The history of Black baseball in America alone is a story that racially defines who we are as a people.
Some folks say that baseball is boring as a spectator sport. It’s true that at its most essential, the game is simply about the batter trying to hit the ball and the pitcher trying to prevent him from doing so.
The actual fact is, in any given moment of any game from Little League to the MLB, there are hundreds of things going on simultaneously on the field. If you’re looking at the totality of decisions being made by the players and coaches during play, it’s anything but boring. But you do have to know what to look for. You know who knows what to look for? The fans do.
God love the fans. Fans, unbound by rules, embody the spirit of baseball. They haven’t agreed to a damn thing other than the cost of a ticket. They don’t care if the pitcher just threw a called-strike 96 mile-per-hour fastball “Straight down Main St.” to their team’s hitter. “That was a ball!!!”, they’ll shout, “The ump is blind as Judge Aileen Cannon!!!”, they’ll scream (someday).
I remember visiting my Aunt Syl and Uncle Mac in New York in the 1960s. They were getting ready to move from their big family home to a townhome in Florida for retirement and they’d sold off most of their furniture to locals, including the TV.
Uncle Mac was a Mets fan.
We dutifully sat in his study in front of the TV and watched the game. The Mets were laughably bad in these years, but like all fans, Uncle Mac clung to hope. The guy who had bought the TV and some other stuff came into the room and brusquely told us, he needed to pack his purchases into his truck and leave.
“You wait outside until the game’s over”, Uncle Mac said, while fixing him with the stink-eye. That’s the kind of passion baseball can evoke.
My wife and I were on the street car going to a game a few years ago. The car was packed with fans from both teams. We started chatting with a young black man dressed in hometown team colors. “I’m going to be heckling from the bleachers”, he said. “It’s a proud tradition”, he added.
And that’s why I love the microcosm of America that is baseball.
When we went to Mets games at Shea in the '60s, my old man would routinely make us leave late in the game to avoid the traffic back to Jersey. Didn't work. So we often sat in traffic and missed the most exciting part of each game. Fortunately, as Tom Hanks would say, "There's no crying in baseball."
Here in Cleveland, one of the stadium ushers heckles the other team. Devoted fans.