TAKE ME OUT OF THE BALL GAME

I am often accused of hating baseball, simply because of nine or ten things I’ve written in the past two and a half years. I’d like to set the record straight. I do not hate baseball. In fact, under the right circumstances, I’ve been known to watch as many as three or four at-bats of a televised game, providing that no football, hockey, golf, tennis, indoor lacrosse, bowling, competitive spelling, backgammon, keno, Candy Land, or peek-a-boo games are being broadcast at the same time.

Okay, it’s true. I do pretty much hate baseball. But I want you to understand, dear reader, that my hatred is not entirely irrational. Compared with a fitting candidate like, say, college football, baseball is severely lacking as a pastime.

We’ll start with the first and most obvious complaint: Nothing ever happens in a baseball game. Well, not “ever;” sometimes as many as 60 of the 240 or so pitches thrown in a baseball game result in something happening. In fact, I believe that there have been baseball matches in which there were as many as twenty actual base hits. So it wouldn’t be fair to say that nothing ever happens in baseball. Let’s call it “next to nothing” instead.

But when something does happen, hoo boy! Get ready to hear an exhaustive dissertation on the historical and statistical importance of that bloop single you just saw! Baseball fans have stats for everything, and some of them even make sense. They’ll tell you that a lifetime .300 hitter is really something, even though that stat compares unfavorably with Bo Schembechler’s bowl-game record (or John Cooper’s record against Michigan, if you prefer). They’ll break down how Player X bats with runners in scoring position, or with a left-hander on the mound, or with a bad case of Cuervo’s Disease, or whatever. They’ll even come up with stats that show this particular pitcher can’t get this batter out, since the batter is a left-handed utility man with an unusually open stance and a tendency to pronounce the word library as “liberry,” while the batter doesn’t stand a chance against the pitcher because he can’t hit a pitcher who throws a side-armed split-finger fastball, trims his sideburns to the exact midpoint of that flap that sticks out where his ear canal is, and always remembers to put the toilet seat back down. So, since the batter can’t hit off the pitcher, but the pitcher can’t get the batter out, that means one of two things: (a) you’re about to witness an intense struggle between two implacable combatants, locked in a battle of fierce pride and tribalism, ending only when one of these warriors’ wills prove more indomitable than the other, or (b) you’re about to witness a nine-pitch walk.

Never mind, of course, that there are seven players on the field at all times who have essentially nothing to do but stand around and wait for something to happen. And never mind that a really active play might involve three of those seven players. Nope, it’s all about that ego duel between the pitcher and the batter, with the catcher serving as an oddly-dressed consultant. The combination of endless, semi-meaningful statistical manipulation and all the conceivable action centering around 20% of the participants reminds me of one other thing: Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, watching baseball is a lot like watching people play D&D, except D&D’s magic system makes considerably more sense than the infield fly rule.

So, since there’s seldom anything happening on the field, most baseball fans retreat into the meta-game, the real “inside baseball” stuff, if I may steal that cliche back for a second (I promise to return it to the political wonks shortly). But even here baseball’s a dud. It doesn’t have heroes right now, since we’re now mostly convinced that a lot of the recent offensive heroes have been, well, “enhanced.” (I realize it’s not fair to paint with such a broad brush. I wish that 93% of all power hitters didn’t have to give the other 7% such a bad name.)

Baseball can’t even come up with a good villain. The best they can do right now is Barry Bonds, who (a) hasn’t played a lick all season, and (b) is about as threatening as a bunny with the sniffles. (If you can’t tell the difference between Bonds and a true athletic villain like, say, Steve Spurrier, well, it’s nice to meet you, Adam, and please don’t take any dietary advice from your wife.) Baseball freaks love to tell you that they love the way Barry Bonds plays the game, but they just wish he’d be a little more connected with his teammates and a little more forrthcoming with the media. Otherwise, they say, he just might not be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Honestly, I can’t believe that the threat of having to wait one more year for his inevitable indictuction into Cooperstown hasn’t caused Bonds to get his act together. It’s probably keeping him up nights as he tosses and turns endlessly on his bed of cash.

Who are you kidding, Baseball Fan? The reason Bonds and his ilk treat you like leftover French toast is because you’ve proven, time and again, that you’ll take whatever disrespect they can dish out, and you’ll come wimpering back once you hear those magic words, “Pitchers and catchers report.” They don’t care because they cannot possibly put a product on the field which is so dreadful that you won’t watch it. People lose all sense of rationality and perspective when baseball is involved. Heck, here in southeastern Wisconsin we pay–we volunteered to pay–an extra half-cent-per-dollar sales tax to build a stadium for the Milwaukee Brewers. At the time of that vote, this was sort of like people in Atlanta voting to subsidize the William Tecumseh Sherman Interpretive Center, right there in downtown on the corner of Peachtree and Peachtree.

So maybe the owners are to blame? Quick, name three baseball owners other than George Steinbrenner and Ted Turner. Can’t do it? Neither can anybody. I came up with Mark Attanasio and Carl Pohlad, and that was it. But shouldn’t George and Ted qualify for true villainy? Bosh. Ted Turner is the Wile E. Coyote of baseball; his season always ends with him cowering under a pink parasol, holding up a little sign that reads “help.” And Steinbrenner’s team just isn’t good enough to hate anymore.

(You know, it’s funny. When Daniel Snyder bought the Washington Redskins, his actions seemed so ill-informed and tyrannical that people started calling him “Boy George,” an obvious reference to Steinbrenner. But now, in 2005, who’s got the lineup that might’ve scared everybody silly if it was still 1998?)

Nothing (OK, next to nothing) ever happens. Most of the guys on the field just stand around trying to look athletic. There’s nobody you can hate, but there’s nobody you can really like, either. It’s no wonder NASCAR has now eclipsed baseball as America’s number-two televised sport. At least in NASCAR, things are always moving (albeit in the same direction), and there are plenty of drivers you can hate. It’s enough to make a guy happy they call baseball the “national pastime” and not the “national interest.” To be an interest, you must be interesting.

I don’t mean to rain on tonight’s Some-Star game, but for somebody like me, this is one of the greatest nights of the year. After all, there’s no baseball tomorrow.