Play Ball!

Slated to be published April 9, 2003:

Spring is in the air, and with spring comes baseball. Baseball has always been America’s pastime, but ask a sports fan whether or not they think of it that way, and you’re bound to get a different answer.

Football, basketball and baseball are widely known as “the big three” when it comes to professional sports. Football is one of the most popular spectator sports in America. Take a drive down any given neighborhood street and at least one house will have a basketball hoop in the driveway.

Baseball has a reputation of being “boring,” or, “slow.” It’s a sport laden with economic problems, drug and gambling scandals, and labor issues. Still, there is something about the sport that makes it different than any other.

Think about it. At its simplest, baseball is a sport with no play sets, no formations, and no inbounds plays. Hit, run, catch. That’s all there is to it. It’s so easy, we begin learning the basics as early as age five, when we start smacking the wiffle ball around in the backyard.

Most of us get involved in Little League soon after that, and as soon as we’re able to sit through an entire game, usually around age seven or eight, we can experience a game live and in person, in a big league ballpark.

It doesn’t cost a whole lot to go to a game, and you don’t need to know the ins and outs of a 2-3 zone or a 3-4 defense to have a good time. All you’re required to do is eat some peanuts and Cracker Jacks and soak up the sun.

Once we’re a little older, say 12 or 13, we can learn some of the nuances of the game. We might start keeping score, collecting baseball cards, and following certain players. All the while, we’re bonding with our parents, grandparents, brothers, and sisters.

See, with baseball there’s no clock, no time limit. You don’t have to be on the lookout for last second shots or Hail Mary passes. You can talk—and not necessarily about baseball. What was once slow becomes relaxing.

After a few more years, when we’ve had a little more experience with the game, we start to form our own opinions about it.

We no longer like the A’s just because that’s who our dad liked. We like them because we remember the heartbreak we felt when Kirk Gibson hit a home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series for the Dodgers. We like them because we remember the elation we felt the following year when they beat the Giants in the Battle of the Bay.

We begin to see that “boring” is not boring at all. We learn that all that time between pitches when it doesn’t look like anyone is doing anything is some of the most interesting action of all.

If there’s a downside to baseball at all, it’s that the longer you’re around it, the more you begin to love it. As different as baseball is from other sports, it’s the same in that it has its problems. Those problems usually hurt the people who love it most.

As much as we’d like to, 24-year-old baseball fans cannot avoid the talk about economic shambles the game is in. News that steroid use in Major League Baseball is prevalent among 25 to 40 percent of its players cannot be ignored. Stories about gambling scandals and contract disputes make us angry and maybe even a little sad.

It’s good to know then, that the best thing baseball has going for it is that if you let it, it has a way of making 24-year-olds feel like kids again.