This is one of my favourite times of the year as a sports fan. There is something incredibly magical about the baseball playoffs. Between this and the NCAA’s March Madness, I am in heaven. You can have the Super Bowl; you can have the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but I will revel in the World Series. You can have the Olympics, soccer’s World Cup, the NBA championships, the Masters, Wimbledon, the Kentucky Derby, you can have it all. I will take baseball’s grand prize thank you very much.
All my life I wanted to be a professional athlete. The sports changed, but not the desire to make it to the show. When I was five, I wanted to be a professional hockey player. When I was ten, it was baseball and when I was 15, I wanted to play in the NFL. In retrospect I am glad that did not happen. But in my 20’s my appreciation for baseball was rejuvenated and that flame has never fizzled out. Quite the contrary, it has grown stronger every year.
What is it that makes baseball so appealing? It is something that everyone has done, both male and female, and yes, there are a lot of very good women baseball players. You do not have to be 6’20” like you do to play basketball. You do not have to be 300 lbs with muscles coming out of your ears like you do in football. Your physical size does not prevent you from playing the game. It is not a game of physical size, but of hand and eye coordination, timing and finesse.
Hitting a baseball is the most difficult thing to do in all of sports. You have a round ball, a round bat, and you have to hit it squarely. The best hitters in the league fail seven out of ten times. It is not an easy thing to do. A projectile is coming at the batter in excess of 90mph and you must react in a split second. Is the pitch high or low; is it inside or out; is it a fastball, curve, slider, or change up; is it coming at my head? Failure is the norm which makes success that much sweeter and when a home run is it, it is total jubilation.
Baseball is entrenched in society. It is in our vocabulary. It can be used to describe a make-out session as in “He got to second base with her”. It is used to describe the success of a business presentation as in “He knocked that one out of the park”. And it is used to describe a valiant effort as in “At least he went down swinging”. Hollywood has made many baseball movies. Kevin Costner has made three of them. Poetry has been written. Tinkers, Evers, and Chance will live in infamy and songs have been sung. We all know the words to Take Me Out to the Ballgame.
Baseball has had its shortcomings too. Scandals have surfaced. Players have taken illicit drugs like amphetamines and performance enhancers. Cheating has been detected with corked bats, scuffed baseballs, and a sign stealing conspiracy. And gambling almost brought the game down with the Black Sox scandal of 1919 not to mention the all-time hit leader, Pete Rose, getting a life-time suspension from baseball for placing bets.
Despite its shortcomings, baseball is rooted in tradition. Our grandparents played it and so will our grandkids. There is a wholesomeness about it that is lacking in society. It encourages family outings. I loved taking my kids to a ballgame and now they are taking me. It is a constant reminder of what we dreamed of doing when we were kids. It keeps us young at heart, and it is an escape from our problems for at least a few hours. It brings communities together and if your team should be so fortunate to win it all, there is no feeling like it. Let’s play ball.