I’m watching the Oakland Athletics currently running the table on the Boston Red Sox from Fenway Park. It is 4-1 in the bottom of the sixth. I came into the game in the fifth inning, and after a little bases-loaded merriment, Boston failed to score. A lead-off home run in the top of the sixth led to Oakland’s fourth run.
Baseball is in full swing for the 2021 season after a shortened season last year due to (what else?) Covid-19. I didn’t watch much of the truncated 2020 season. Depression, worries about the world, and restlessness kept me from enjoying my favorite sport.
This year, having survived my own bout with the coronavirus, I feel newly alive, and with that my passion for the best game on the planet reignited. My team hails from Cleveland. I watch them every day that I can, usually catching at least half the game. Then I like to drop in on any game or interesting matchup still in progress. Today I watched Cleveland beat the Chicago Cubs 2-1 in the bottom of the tenth; then I caught part of the San Diego Padres at the Colorado Rockies; and now the A’s and the Red Sox. It’s been a good day of baseball.
Baseball, I argue, is the most exciting, most nerve-wracking, most enjoyable sport to watch for those of us not blessed to play it. But I’ve had a bit of a revelation about the nature of the game. This year I have watched two separate no-hitters. One was almost a “perfect” game, but a hit batsman reduced that to a mere no-hit bid. Regardless, the game was stellar from the pitcher’s mound and the defense behind it. Yet that game wasn’t that enjoyable. It was certainly exciting and nerve-wracking, especially as I followed every pitch, every swing of the bat, every spinning hop on the infield as the ball gyrated toward a defender ready to send it hurtling toward first base and (hopefully) another out. But enjoyable? Not really.
I would rather see a game with a mounting tally of hits, guys with infield dirt smeared over their uniform pants and jerseys, and plenty of crooked numbers on the score columns of each inning. Looking back on all the baseball I’ve watched, the games which made me laugh out loud in pure joy were the ones in which the ball was being smacked all over the ballpark, and I don’t mean home runs, either. Sure, those are majestic. Seeing that white and red-stitched orb being absolutely crushed into the summer evening to land in the upper deck is exciting. However, I again argue it isn’t really that enjoyable, for all that it does launch a crowd to its feet to roar for their mighty hitter. It is possible, after all, to win a game 1-0 behind a stellar pitching performance and with exactly one hit, a home run. That kind of excitement lasts long enough for the home run hitter to touch all the bases, but once he returns to the dugout, what do you cheer for?
Give me a game in which there are stolen bases, sacrifice bunts, shots in the gap, doubles, and balls slapped down the line from both teams. Sure, the pitchers’ stats will take a serious blow, ERAs will be sky high, like the fly balls that ricochet off the wall. But when a baseball bounces around the outfield corners like a recalcitrant youngster avoiding the recess bell, all the while a runner tears around the bases throwing up dirt like a thoroughbred at Churchill downs – that’s enjoyable baseball. When a guy dives headfirst, fingers outstretched, desperate to catch a corner of home plate so that his team can edge ahead of their opponent – that’s enjoyable baseball. Catchers like squat powerhouses muscling balls into the outfield to keep the offensive line moving or like armored tanks firing lethal projectiles toward second base hoping to gun down speeding devils intent on thievery? That’s enjoyable baseball! That kind of baseball will make the crowd chant, cheer, and roar their throats raw. Nine innings of that makes the fans positively euphoric.
A perfect game is like a well executed masterpiece of writing perused while sipping a fine Chardonnay. (I guess. I don’t drink Chardonnay.) But a 8-7 affair with plenty of running, hitting, and wild plays? That’s like a dime-store adventure novel that you can’t wait to read again as soon as you’ve finished it. You wear out the pages on those books just as the runners wear out the base paths trying to score home. One may be an exemplar, but one is arguably more enjoyable.
All my growing up days, there was exactly one scenario I dreamed of: two strikes, two outs, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded. What happens next? A grand slam to walk off with the win. But how do you get there? One, by being down by three runs, and two, by loading the bases. That means plenty of hits and runs, not 27 outs, one after the other. I never once dreamed of throwing the final strike of a perfect game, that’s for sure!
So maybe you do drink wine and enjoy Crime and Punishment or whatever Russian masterpiece is collecting dust on a bookshelf. Me? Give me the Hobbit one more time with a bunch of filthy dwarves hunting for dragon gold. Give me a hit and run with one out followed by a double in the gap. You can keep your perfect game. It’ll be one for the history books, but I just might be having more fun at the ole ballpark.
(Boston lost, by the way. Just couldn’t string together enough hits. Now I’m headed to DC. The Washington Nationals are trying to beat the Philadelphia Phillies in extra innings.)
a simple man 