Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. American national pastimes mixed into a jingle. Growing up in the 1960s and 70’s, baseball seemed like every day, hotdogs anytime, apple pie tasted good, and Chevy was another car. These are all rooted in the experience. Baseball happened to be numero uno for me. We played it all the time. What started out informally with waffle ball and pickup games, eventually became organized for school and town teams. The major league game was on every day from April Fool’s Day through the World Series. Radio broadcasts and box scores were staples, games on TV were a look forward to luxury, and the visits to the ball park were fantastical and mesmerizing. When the season would end it would feel like a good friend had moved out of town. The focus would then train on the hot stove for the count down to pitchers and catchers. It is a yearly cycle with the other games, and leagues, decorating the interest of the baseball/sports fan. Baseball, the numbers based, situational, game of legend, lore, and multi athletic skill ability was as much a part of this experience as anything.
Fast forward to today. If one were to have fallen asleep in 1995,. and woken up in 2025, baseball, as it is played in its highest profile, would be unrecognizable. Over the years, a discontent with the game’s popularity (another way to say ability to generate revenue) meant that among the “owners” of the game, changes had to be made to make it more interesting to more people. The subsequent alterations by rule, philosophy, and structure messed with a game that has an unbelievably majestic symmetry, situational subtlety combined with explosive action, requires all kinds of alacrity, awareness, and ability to effectively play. Situations have been created that traditionally never existed, and ones that did have been eliminated. It is a different game. Combine this with the fantasy league features of player movement, inter league mixing, intensely watered down standards of success, and the brand of baseball played at was once the highest level is, in my view, has become a discredited bastardization of its century old predecessor. It has little connection to its own heritage. There is no coherent relation to the statistics and numbers that make up this numbers game. It is one big asterisk. Pitch by pitch the game is played. Baseball looks like an unprepared clumsy hulk right now compared with the game that was played through our growing up. Until one went to bed in like 1995 you would have never guessed.
Culture is full of artifacts. Knowing where you are relates to where you’ve been. It’s part of an identity. The relationship with baseball is the game itself. It dawned on me that baseball exists between the pitches. With each one thrown the situation changes. There is no clock. The pitch has to be thrown to effect the status. Today there’s a clock. When the clock expires, the situation changes. Balls and strikes can be called arbitrarily, and four balls can counted without throwing one pitch. Baserunners arrive in scoring position by rule, not play. There is all kinds of situational components of live games happening without ever putting the ball in play. That’s a different game. Somewhere the rumor went viral that the game is too slow, in spite of the fact that it is continuously happening. Here’s how slow baseball really goes… If you look away for a second, you miss something. If you look away for two seconds, you could miss an entire play. The game is not slow; you gotta know what you’re watching. I may, or may not, like a game, but there’s a big difference between bearing down to keep a runner on first in a close game, and having your hands tied, by rule, in the ability to do that. It’s a different game. So many of the game’s intricacies are lost. They have been displaced with a type of careless idiocy. Whenever a game is on my TV it is immediately apparent that what really matters, by and large, is whether or not you can throw the ball one hundred miles per hour and hit it five hundred feet. That’s boring!
This harangue could go on and on. It won’t. It would be remiss to not mention one thing about baseball that is consistent, and speaks directly to its integrity / legitimacy… Gambling. What once crushed the game is now a built in feature. Players are wired. It’s not a reach to say that nearly every pitcher has a telecom device wired right into their uniform. When Fanduel says it’s time to throw a ball, the wire easily beats the pitch clock, the rest of the now gross exhibition can wait, the pitcher wastes the pitch for posterity, and Vegas counts the algorithm-ic loot. Like many other expedient features of the prevailing modern world that is serving to press the subtitles of bliss from life, two words… You’re out!!!