I take my fair share of abuse from non-baseball-country friends about my affinity for baseball. It is somewhat remarkable how much of this judgment comes from people who enjoy cricket and call cookies biscuits, so I take it with a teaspoon of salt.
May the abuse rain down o'er me. Many have said this before, but it's worth saying again: Baseball is the greatest game in the world. Here's why:
Baseball is as much game as it is sport, and that's a good thing.
John Kruk of Philadelphia Phillies fame once told a woman critical of his bad habits and general shape: "I ain't an athlete, lady. I'm a baseball player." Kruk - now a commentator and ever the good-natured and relatable sporting professional - has always had an easy way about himself. He was, for example, brilliant describing his distaste for running to David Letterman in 1993. While no one disagrees with Kruk - he never was any sort of an athlete - the best players out there are pretty impressive athletes, and the plays that end up in baseball highlight reels are some of the most skillful, challenging, lightning-in-a-bottle feats in sport. I mean, just look at Bo Jackson throw a baseball. Magnificent.
At the same time, in baseball there's a break about every ten minutes at every half-inning, players get to sit around and talk all the time, and big ol' fat dudes can become legends. Back to Kruk - he was a three-time All-Star, a batting title contender, and a key everyday player on a pennant winner. That's a solid resumé, and he was a big ol' fat dude.
Check out Matt Stairs in the 2008 National League Championship Series. I think the ball still hasn't landed, and Stairs clearly loves himself some frosty bevvies. And have you ever seen Daniel Vogelbach? He was once an All-Star, too. It's perfect that, as of the publication of this article, he plays for a team called the Brewers - give that man a beer and a bratwurst!
And then there's Bartolo Colón - god bless - and Colón pitched forever. And he won a Cy Young Award! That's a big deal. An even bigger deal? He hit a home run! Case closed.
Food - almost none of it healthy - is ingrained in baseball culture. Certain pre-game meals are the stuff of legend. Babe Ruth drank bourbon every morning and ate three hot dogs before every game. Good day to you, sir. Wade Boggs - perhaps the most superstitious man in the history of the world - ate fried chicken before every game. Bryce Harper downs Eggo waffles before every game. Justin Verlander eats Taco Bell before every start. Read about these dietary habits and many more in MLB stars with unbelievably weird diets on mlb.com.
Baseball food culture is for the fans, too. Start with the staples: hot dogs, peanuts (oh! A healthy one!), nachos, Cracker Jack. Every ballpark has its specialties, too: cheesesteaks, Crabfries®, and the Schmitter in Philly; Mexican street corn at Dodger Stadium; grasshoppers and sushi in Seattle; curry and bulgogi at the Tokyo Dome; and perhaps the least healthy thing a person can eat not made at KFC or Dairy Queen: the Churro Dog at Chase Field in Phoenix.
Baseball rewards physical prowess, but it doesn't judge fitness levels. Love inclusion? Welcome to baseball.
You don't even have to be a player. There are endless possibilities for armchair analysts to predict what will happen on a given pitch, and nothing is better at getting grandparents and grandchildren talking than a shared understanding of baseball. See? Baseball: the game that brings families together.
You don't even have to play baseball to play baseball. You can just throw a ball around - it doesn't matter if you're eight or eighty. You can hit, bunt, or play pepper with just two people. You can hit all by yourself in a batting cage. Baseball isn't just a game; it's a collection of kids' games that involve sticks and balls and special, funny-looking gloves. It's a game that rewards - but does not require - typical sporting traits.
Baseball has no clock - and that's the way it should stay.
Baseball is fast, slow, and every speed in between. Just look at Dave LaRoche's eephus pitch.
Many decry baseball for being 'slow.' Even the Commissioner's Office has bought into this nonsense. Somehow this nebulous, fallacious opinion has convinced MLB to put measures in place to speed up games. Dumb. Also - unnecessary. The lack of a clock is the most charming element of baseball, and a nine-inning professional baseball game still wraps up in less time than a basketball or American football game.
Have you ever been to a professional American football game? Almost none of the four-hour made-for-television marathon involves any football - there's exactly an hour of football and three hours of nothing. I now propose an idea that will make many heads explode: there is far more action in baseball than there is in American football. In baseball, over half of the roughly three-hour event actually involves baseball players playing baseball. In absolute time, this gives baseball at least 50% more action per game, and by proportion it's not even close. American football gives you action for a mere quarter of the event, and, because there is a rigid clock, you know when every segment starts and ends. No surprises, no variation. In baseball, a play doesn't end until it ends. No whistles, no countdowns.
I know, I know - the tea and paella crowds are crying because I used the wrong football to make my point. I can hear it now: "fútbol has a clock, but it's flexible! The action only pauses once at halftime, mate! Nearly 100% of the event is actual playing!"
Ok, ok, fine then. Let's place baseball against the 'beautiful game': ah yes, this is where so many think my argument hits a sturdy wall. Nope! Let me preface this: I enjoy soccer; I enjoy watching it and playing it. However, most of every match is inconsequential passing. Fight me. The ball might be moving most of the event, but most of it just doesn't matter that much. And stoppage time? Those crybabies need to get off the ground and put on their big kid pants. None of this is meant as insult, and I don't think any of it makes soccer bad. It's just true.
In baseball, on the other hand, every single pitch is of immediate consequence because the score can change on every single pitch. Would anyone say the score can change every single time a foot strikes a ball in soccer? No? Well, a baseball score can change every single time the ball leaves a pitcher's hand, and the game is never decided until the final out is made. It's instant drama all the time if you have any sort of attention span.
There are so many ways to score in baseball.
In basketball: put ball in net. In soccer: put ball in net. In hockey: put puck in net. In curling...I don't know - sweep the ice?
In baseball: walk, get a hit, get hit by a pitch, reach base on a dropped third strike, reach on a fielding error, reach on a throwing error, reach on a fielder's choice, reach because of catcher's interference, advance on a balk, advance on a wild pitch, advance on a passed ball, steal a base, tag up on a fly out, or score on a ground out.
And I'm probably missing some. I'm sure Grandpop will let me know.
Fans are part of baseball games more than they are of any other sport, and it's not close.
How many game-used souvenirs do the kids get to take home from a football, basketball, soccer, hockey, rugby, tennis, or pro badminton match? Not a whole lot and often none. Baseball? Dozens upon dozens every single game without exception. Balls galore and sometimes even a bat (or part of one)! I got a ball once with a major assist from my dad. Gregg Jefferies, Veterans Stadium, Philadelphia, Pirates at Phillies. I was a medium-sized human at the time. I'll never forget it.
Special bonus: if you catch a significant ball - a player's first home run or a special milestone home run, for example - the team, the player, or both totally hooks you up with authentic, autographed swag and sometimes even meet-and-greet experiences. Just for being in the right place at the right time.
Every ballpark is unique.
No, I don't abuse the word 'unique' in the way people typically do these days to mean 'cool' or 'rare.' This English teacher has some self respect. I mean truly unique: one-of-a-kind. The asymmetrical, vintage-style ballpark renaissance that the Baltimore Orioles began with Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 1992 brought baseball out of some dark architectural days - yes, I'm looking at you, Reds, Pirates, and Phillies - between the early 1970s and early 2000s. Unique ballpark architecture is not a new thing, though. Baseball has simply returned to the good place. Ballparks are once again an architect's dream.
Every ballpark has the same diamond, yes - this preserves the integrity of the game. The outfield and foul ground give each ballpark its particular flavor.
The ivy at Wrigley field; the Green Monster in left field (and wacky center field dimensions) at Fenway Park; the warehouse in right field at Camden Yards that Ken Griffey, Jr. hit in the 1993 Home Run Derby; The twenty-one-foot tall right field wall in Pittsburgh in honor of Roberto Clemente; the Western Metal Supply Co. warehouse in left field in San Diego; the short porch in right field and cavernous gaps at Yankee Stadium; the setting right on the water for adventurous kayakers in San Francisco; the outfield overhang at old (and tragically forgotten) Tiger Stadium; the (since removed) hill in center field in Houston - simply being in one of these remarkable buildings is an experience, and then there's the baseball! Even just the vast expanse of foul ground at the Oakland Coliseum has a tangible effect on Athletics games. A unique home - now that's real home-field advantage.
We all speak baseball.
Ever call anything a 'home run,' 'touch base' with someone, or 'take a swing' at something? If so, you've referenced baseball. Have you ever tossed anything 'around the horn'? That's baseball, too. Familiar with the idea of being 'out' after three strikes? That's a peculiarly baseballian idea. Yes, I just made that word up - because I can. You know why? Because in baseball you can do that. Just ask Yogi Berra. Most people know at least one Yogi-ism. If you know 'the game ain't over till it's over,' you know Yogi (although that this exact phrase was ever actually uttered in the first place is disputed). You can also thank Yogi if you've ever experienced 'déjà vu all over again' or if you know to take the fork in the road when you come to it.
Watch out, though, because Yogi himself will tell you "I really didn't say everything I said" - this is, in fact, the subtitle of The Yogi Book. Yep, that's a real thing that exists.
Basketball has the 'slam dunk.' Baseball has almost every other cultural idiom. That, literature students, is the literary element metonymy.
And baseball is most certainly international. The Latin American influence on baseball cannot be overstated. Have you seen the Miami Marlins' City Connect jersey design inspired by the Cuban Sugar Kings? Tight hot fire. Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are, of course, also crazy about baseball.
There is even a Mainland Chinese professional league: the China Baseball League - not to be confused with Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) - and the history of baseball in China goes all the way back to 1863, when the Shanghai Baseball Club was formed. Baseball was quite popular in China until Mao decided it and all other things Western were evil...except basketball because he liked basketball. Yeah, way to subscribe to your own monolithic ideals, bro. Ahhh, now the whole China-basketball love affair makes sense...
As reported by Kendall Baker on Axios in April 2021, nearly one-third of Major League players on opening day rosters this season - 28.3% or 256 out of 906 - were born outside the US. Twenty nations and territories were represented in MLB on opening day this year. Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani of the Angels might just be the best player ever. Just because your country doesn't love baseball doesn't mean it's not a thing. Let's shed that antiquated colonial mindset, mate.
You can fail seven out of ten times and be an all-time great.
People these days blather on about developing a 'growth mindset' and 'embracing failure' as though these are new ideas. Please - that's so the contemporary marriage of business and education: recycling well-established ideas, branding them, selling them, and clearing a tidy profit. Sorry to burst your TED talk bubble, everyone, but these mind-blowing ideas are foundational knowledge for six-year-old baseball fans.
Hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sport - this isn't a new idea, but it is worth repeating. Baseball is the only sport in which the defense controls the ball, and the offense just has to deal with whatever the pitcher gives them. Again - not a new idea, but worth repeating.
Hank Aaron was the greatest hitter ever; Willie Mays had the best combination of hitting, baserunning, and defense ever; Pete Rose had the most hits ever; Ken Griffey, Jr. was the greatest player since Willie Mays. In their careers, they hit .305, .301, .303, and .284, respectively. They all failed about seven out of every ten times they came up to bat, and they were the best.
The best player right now? Mike Trout. What's his overall batting average about halfway through his career, one in which he already has three MVP awards, eight silver slugger awards, and nine All-Star appearances? .305 - same as Aaron.
In case you were wondering, Mike Trout is also the world's biggest Philadelphia Eagles fan.
The numbers are everything, and they don't matter one bit.
Statistics are the fabric of baseball culture to an extent that no other sport can approach. When I was young, I wanted to study math and work in baseball. I had no idea how the two went together, of course. The tragedy, though, was that nobody else really saw how the two went together at the time, either, and the idea slowly drifted out of existence.
Fast-forward to today and look at the front offices around baseball. Billy Beane's Moneyball was just the beginning - barely twenty years on, it's almost prehistory (I say almost because some teams that were even further ahead of the curve than Beane's Oakland Athletics don't get the credit they deserve: see the 1980s Chicago White Sox managed by some youngblood whippersnapper named Tony LaRussa) with how advanced and precise the statistical analysis has become, but I lost sight of that by the age of twelve, and now I'm an English teacher, and all the top math students and MBAs in the country are MLB executives. Go figure. At least I've parlayed my teaching career into a platform for traveling and writing about baseball and cats for an audience of approximately eleven devoted readers.
But the numbers don't matter. A hitter who is 1-for-35 against a pitcher can hit a game-winning home run off that pitcher. In the playoffs. In an elimination game. For a team that hasn't won anything in thirty years.
Sometimes a late-inning defensive replacement comes in and wins the game on offense. That just happened five days ago in the Cardinals-Dodgers 2021 National League Wild Card game.
Sometimes a defensive replacement comes into a game, makes a defensive error that almost costs the team the game, and then wins the game on offense. In the playoffs. Kim Batiste (talk about obscure!) did exactly this for the Phillies against the Braves in 1993. If that's not enough, earlier that season, on August 13, Batiste - the fielding specialist - hit a walk-off grand slam against the Mets. He had not come up to bat once that month to that point, and he had recorded but one hit since early July, almost six weeks earlier.
Sometimes a hitter mired in an 0-for-21 slump hits a home run for the only run in a game in a tied playoff series between two of the oldest rivals in sports, the Giants and Dodgers. This, in fact, happened the day after this article was originally published, and I simply had to update it. It certainly has been a week of ups and downs for the Dodgers.
You can't make this stuff up, yet it happens all the time in baseball.
A pitcher can throw a no-hitter in his first career start - it's happened more than once. A closer, Mitch Williams, can connect for a walk-off hit to finish the latest game ever at 4:40 a.m. A rookie relief pitcher named Daniel Camarena can hit a grand slam for his first (and, as of right now, only) career hit off three-time Cy Young Award winner and future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer on the same day that he was called up to the big leagues - and Camarena's 2021 blast was the first grand slam by a relief pitcher in thirty-six years. Relief pitchers rarely hit, and closers almost never hit.
Steve Rogers can beat Steve Carlton in a playoff elimination game. Captain America pitching for Canada. Go figure. Still stings. That's baseball.
And remember - Bartolo Colón hit a home run. Cy Young Award winner Bartolo Colón.
From 1903 to 2004, no team had ever overcome a 3-0 series deficit. In 2004, the Red Sox - who had not won the World Series in eighty-six years - fell behind 3-0 in the American League Championship Series to the mighty Yankees, who had appeared in six and won four out of the last eight World Series. Bet you can't guess what happened. Yeah. And then they swept the Cardinals right out of the World Series, too.
In 1960, The Yankees outscored the Pirates 55-27 in the World Series, and Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson was named the series MVP. The Pirates won the 1960 World Series.
Harvey Haddix (a member of the 1960 Pirates) pitched the single greatest game in baseball history in 1959: he threw a perfect game through twelve innings and lost the game in the 13th. Anyone wish to comment right now on baseball not being a team game?
The 2014 Kansas City Royals were not only an extremely unlikely World Series team; they were also the team that hit the fewest home runs in MLB during the regular season. They hit more home runs than any other American League team that postseason en route to winning the American League - and they would have won the World Series, too, if it weren't for that damn Madison Bumgarner...so it's fitting that they were the unlikely WS champions in 2015 - and good on them for beating the Mets.
Baseball movies.
Think of great sports movies. It's pretty much boxing and baseball with a couple basketball, hockey, and golf ones sprinkled in. And Rudy, I guess. In so many ways it's like we never left 1920s America (more ways, in fact, than I'd like to discuss here...).
Take out the boxing flicks, and what floats to the top? Major League, Bull Durham, A League of Their Own, Field of Dreams, Pride of the Yankees. We already mentioned Moneyball. And there are even more for those with more particular tastes: The Natural, Bang the Drum Slowly, Eight Men Out, Sugar...baseball wins.
And finally...Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins.
Chase Utley is more than a man. He is a world f*#^ing champion. His words, not mine. If you haven't seen Mac wax poetic about Chase Utley on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, do it right now. Stop reading this article, watch it, and come back. Then you can see Chase Utley's response here.
And then there's Jimmy Rollins...I was once quite critical of the Phillies shortstop - harsh, one might even say. Then I attended a Phillies-Rockies game in 2004. It was a great game to be at - tons of hits, tons of home runs. Jim Thome hit two home runs and so did the pitcher, Randy Wolf; Chase Utley hit one, of course. It was quite a game - a precursor to the coming golden age of Phillies baseball.
The most consequential event of the evening, though? The Jimmy Rollins home run. I attended the game with a big Jimmy Rollins fan who did not share my various criticisms of the young shortstop. During one of his at-bats, my friend complained about my comments on Rollins' hitting approach, and I said: "Ok, fine. If he hits a home run on the very next pitch, I will never, ever say anything bad about him ever again, but it has to be this pitch, no do-overs, no second chance." We shook hands.
Jimmy didn't just hit a home run on the next pitch. He almost hit it right to where we were sitting. It was like a movie. We just looked at each other, jaws on the concrete. It was the most improbable thing that could have happened, so perhaps we should have expected it because that's what happens in baseball.
Let it be known that I have said nothing derogatory about Jimmy Rollins now for over seventeen years and counting.
Some people count sheep to fall asleep at night. I list MLB pennant winners in chronological order, and you should, too.
If you love baseball, too, share why in the comments!
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