Baseball is boring. Most of the time, the players are stationary: waiting around as the pitcher rubs the ball, removes and replaces his hat, tugs on his belt and peers in towards the catcher’s calloused fingers for a sign. There are too many commercials, too many pitching changes, too many strikeouts. The stakes for each game aren’t life and death, and the worst hitter gets as much opportunity as the very best. For these reasons and countless others, young people don’t like baseball, don’t watch baseball and don’t care about baseball. Baseball is a dying sport.
This week, all 30 Major League teams play baseball again. In the Spring Training locales of Arizona and Florida, all the simple joys of the greatest game are back again. After a long winter of transactions, the action once again becomes the story. A fastball pops in a catcher’s mitt. The bat unleashes a mighty crack on a long home run. A player slides hard into second base to break up the double play. Mike Trout, Clayton Kershaw and Manny Machado will all play baseball this week. Baseball is back.
For the next seven months, there will be baseball practically every day. The best team will lose at least one third of its games, and the worst will win at least one third. Each day, the worst team has a very real chance of beating the very best team. No one player is as important to his team as Stephen Curry, Tom Brady or Lionel Messi is to his. My favorite team will lose three or four in a row and look completely helpless. They will win nine out of 11 and look unbeatable. A superstar will lose the season to a fluke injury, and a team will vastly over perform its projection through some combination of luck and hidden talent. So much will happen before the next champion is crowned. The games this week don’t matter at all.
The games this week do not count yet, and the teams won’t try all that hard for the entire month. But baseball is a game of time and attrition, and there can be none of the unforgettable games of September and October without the unmemorable simplicity of those in March. I will never argue with those who opine on the monotony of baseball. If I wasn’t the kid memorizing Derek Jeter’s batting stance and throwing a tennis ball against the foyer wall each and every day, I might even agree with them. But I was that kid, and baseball holds perhaps too important a place in my heart. Baseball is perfect.
Almost 100 years ago, the great Rogers Hornsby said, "People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring." Well, spring is finally here, the bases are 90 feet apart, and I can’t wait for Opening Day.
Flashes of Brilliance: Spring Training
