I have been asked many times: “How can you watch all those baseball games? Doesn’t it get dull?” I always respond with Red Smith’s old line: “Baseball is dull only to dull minds.”
Each game is different. When I am bored, I always know why: I’m not watching closely enough. Baseball appears to be a simple game, a boys’ game-except when it’s played by professionals. Then it’s a game of enormous skill.
The best seat in the house isn’t in the press box. It’s down at field level, six to 10 rows up, directly behind the plate. That’s where the scouts sit. Above all, they want to see the pitcher and the break of the ball.
Baseball is the best of the major spectator sports for many reasons. Among them, you can see the players, all easily visible. Nine men on the field, guarding clearly defined territories. Plus the batter and up to three baserunners.
It is also the only game in which the defensive team has the ball.
In football, 22 players are lumped on the field. Madness. Nobody can watch them all. Most fans follow the ball. The interior linemen, crucial to the play, are anonymous. Even the coach and his staff are left in the dark. They wait for the films.
In basketball, the taller the better. When Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired, he was the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. Couldn’t even shoot with his left hand.
Basketball, nonetheless, is the only sport in which the players “beat” the game. And they did it 25 years ago. The players are too good, too big, too fast. Ten wide bodies on a compact floor.
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Then, of course, there is hockey. I have seen only a few hockey games, in the days of Mush Marsh and Johnny Mariucci, and confess the game is too fast for me. I never knew who put the puck in the net. Worse, if it weren’t for the red light, I wouldn’t have known a goal had been scored.
Baseball has no such problems. The pace is leisurely and the field large, with ample room for everybody. The dimensions are essentially the same as in Babe Ruth’s time. Most of the newer ballparks, including the new Comiskey, are from the same cookie cutter, which is unfortunate.
Wrigley Field and Fenway Park are the oldest and smallest ballparks. They’re also the best because the seats are closer to the field. The domed stadiums are an abomination. The dome shuts out the sun and the wind and the rain. The Metrodome in Minneapolis has a canvas roof similar to a circus tent. When I’m there, I’m always waiting for the elephants.
Except for a few wrinkles-such as the designated hitter, a recent evil-the game is unchanged.
John Thorn, who has emerged as baseball’s reigning historian, says the bases were set 90 feet apart in 1858, not in 1845, as generally believed. To correct what had been the pitcher’s dominance, the pitching distance was moved from 50 feet to 60 feet 6 inches in 1893, where it has remained ever since. But some adjustments have been made. Again, to help the hitters, the mound was lowered from 15 inches to 10 in 1968.
Just as it was when Nap Lajoie hit .381 in 1904, three hits in 10 at-bats is a .300 average. Because of this, comparisons between the modern and ancient game can be made. Big-league baseball is the only major sport with an immense body of reliable statistics.
Baseball has the largest library. More than 1,000 non-fiction books have been written about baseball, not including the recent blizzard of soft-cover statistical compendiums published annually. No other sport has such widespread Rotisserie leagues or an army of 5,000 amateur historians and statisticians-the worldwide dues-paying membership of the Society for American Baseball Research.
Scholars have been seduced. The late Bart Giamatti, onetime president of Yale University and the National League and for five months baseball’s seventh commissioner, said after completing a tour of the bases:
“We are at home plate, the center of all the universe, the omphalus, the navel of the world.”
Another charm: The players are of average size. The boy next door who didn’t eat his Wheaties and hasn’t grown since the 8th grade is playing second base for the Cincinnati Reds. Or leading off and in center field for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Unlike football and basketball, there is no clock. No two-minute warnings. Extra innings, if necessary. Bottom of the seventh, Harry Caray leads the fans in singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Time also for another hot dog.
Take a friend to a baseball game and there is time to visit. Only at a baseball game do the fans keep score. A hitter batting in the eighth. He’s 3 for 4, with two runs batted in. Or a respectful silence, please: The pitcher is working on a no-hitter.
Part of the appeal is the pastoral setting, the vast green field. For some it satisfies the yearning for a softer age. And the continuity, which cannot be underestimated. Father takes son to the park; a generation later, the son is a father and takes his son. A crucial rite of renewal.
The DH, a recent intrusion, was introduced 20 years ago to change the offensive-defensive balance. The slow-footed slugger is no longer a defensive liability. Previously, if he hit a home run, the wonderful danger remained that he would butcher a routine fly ball in left field.
The balance has been maintained because of the remarkable ingenuity of the pitchers. They continue to improve. The skillful pitcher still has the advantage. He may have as many as four or five pitches in his arsenal, some of which he can throw at varying speeds.
Play ball! I’m ready for the new year.