Today is a good day to love BASEBALL even though there is no major league game being played anywhere across the fruited plains today: it’s the All-Star break.
What’s so great about baseball? I like that it’s not about violence, which isn’t the case with every sport. The pinnacle of achievement in one sport is to beat your opponent unconscious. Literally. In another, the aim is getting a ball across a given line. Along the way there is plenty of mayhem, so much so that concussions and other serious injuries are a major problem.
In baseball, there is a nice balance between action and complete calm. Speed is essential. Pitches are thrown at nearly (and sometimes above) 100 m.p.h. Base runners and fielders both need great speed, athleticism and agility. There is a tremendous amount of strategy involved in playing the game. At the same time, you could attend a game and find it relaxing enough to read the newspaper; I’ve seen people do it, even at MLB games. While it requires a remarkable amount of skill (if you don’t believe it, go to a batting cage and try to hit even a 70 m.p.h pitch), little kids can and do play this game all the time in every city and village across the country.
A friend of mine once attended an MLB game and an NFL game at the same venue just weeks apart. He told me the atmosphere at the baseball game felt like the essence of wholesomeness – the whole baseball, hot dogs and apple pie thing – while the football game felt completely different, the crowd dominated by middle-aged men, serious drinking, and a sense that something ugly was simmering just below the surface that could erupt at any moment.
While baseball evolved from other sports, it’s kind of amazing to contemplate inventing a game (as Abner Doubleday is widely but erroneously credited with doing for baseball) and then see it catch on and be played all over the world in back yards, parks, empty lots, and huge stadiums packed with tens of thousands of people. Can you dream up a sport that doesn’t exist today, one that you think will be played everywhere a century from now? Probably not.