Here’s a statement that should surprise no one: I am not a sports fan. (Here’s some additional insight into that.) However, I’ve spent my whole life deeply intertwined in American culture. Though I find most sports empty, and baseball (considered by many America’s sport), I’ve always found boring. Yet I did spend part of a spring (I think 5th grade) playing baseball, trying to understand the love for this game. Or, more likely, trying to become cool. Such motivations are lost to antiquity. It’s a complex thing, really, to have such ambiguity about something beloved by so many. And I often find myself exploring this relationship
Writer Scott Gilbertson, host of the blog Luxagraf and writer for such publications as Wired, recently posted “Fields of the Mind“. The subheading sums things up well: “There is but one game and that game is baseball”.
As someone interested in the game as an expression of culture, I loved and deeply appreciated his piece. He loves the game. Enough to criticize it, especially all that Major League Baseball has sacrificed in the pursuit of profit. Yet there’s something deep within the sport. As Scott says, “For all my misgivings about the MLB, baseball itself remains the only game I have ever cared about. It’s the best game.” There’s a richness to his connection to the sport that I admire, even if I don’t understand.
Scott took his son to Minneapolis (a city I’ve only experienced via the airport. A rather lovely airport, mind you, but still a rather limited experience of the city) to experience a Twins game. Without much connection to the team, it gives them more insight into the game itself, rather than any nuance provided by team loyalty. And through that, he shares some notions that really provide me with a deeper view into the game, and why it’s so beloved.
Consider the pace of baseball, which is perfect, not too fast, not to slow. The rules of the game are simple enough to grasp at a glance, and, perhaps most importantly, the outcome of a game is never certain until the final pitch.
And this one:
Then there’s the length of the baseball “season”, which as Giamatti says in the quote above, is actually perfectly timed to three seasons. It starts, everyone full of hope, in the spring, really comes into its own in summer, and then, the cold reality of October rolls around. Only one team wins the world series.
That last one gives me deep pause. Such a poetic insight into this game. A fascinating metaphor for life. A perspective I would never have gleaned, as someone who tends to think of baseball as an insomnia cure.
There’s one other quote from his post I want to share that I find insightful.
What really draws me in to baseball these days though, and I suspect this is true for most fans, is the narrative, the endless stories unfolding in real time. Every player has a story, which turns every game into a bigger story, which turns every series into a story, which turns every team into a story, and all these stories are constantly twisting and turning in unexpected ways as the season unfolds.
Now this is something I had NEVER considered: story, the narrative within the game. This deeper connection seems fed by baseball’s more leisurely pace. I guess the pacing allows announcers to explore the deeper stories of the players. As I think about it, there is no other game I can think of where the announcers play such a pivotal role in the game. With that, the baseball fans I know invest time (sometimes lots of time) into the details of the game, especially their teams. I don’t know football fans, for instance, who can recite statistics at the depth hardcore baseball fans do.
I appreciate this look into baseball by someone I admire about this game that’s so much a part of American culture. It’s helpful to see what he loves about the game. And he loves it enough to want to share it with his son.
So, go read the post. And I think you would enjoy subscribing to him.
