Baseball: A Review

"People pay to see others believe in themselves...on stage in the midst of rock and roll, many things can happen and anything can happen, whether people come as voyeurs or come to submit to the moment," Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth (1983)

"People pay to sit around while watching other people sit around as well as, occasionally, stand around." Stefan Ravalli on Baseball (2009)

Though confined to many "so-not-punk!" rules, many professional sports can generate the same ecstatic wonder as rock and roll. Yet it's difficult to muster the same enthusiasm for a sport that can be played while chewing masseter-contorting amounts of carcinogens (that, to boot, relax the nerves; and if both hands weren't occasionally needed, the other would doubtlessly be holding a beer). As entertainment, suspense is its major stock in trade, which I suppose will inevitably burble out of an environment where nothing is really happening in the first place.

Admittedly, baseball requires no shortage of skill to be excellent, but so does lawn bowling...and darts...and staring competitions. The question is really how awe-inspiring the required physical prowess looks (see: basketball). The dexterity needed to hit a fastball no less the reflexes to rein in some truthful contact is doubtlessly impressive...but also invisible to the viewer. The only compelling dimensions are its flashes of instantaneous scale: speed (pitching) and distance (hitting). Particularly distance. The most famous players usually have the most home runs. That's because the sport would be unwatchable to anyone but die-hard fans without the promise of an "ultimate" achievement of said scale. That's why cricket is worthless to this country. There are no "goal posts" or "fences" demarcating the herculean achievement that stimulates our North American "jackpot" mentality - just smooth gradients of success, incrementally, "boringly" tallied.

Another thing that makes baseball deliciously American is its team's unique system of group individualism. With only fleeting moments of teamwork, building a team is not based on formulating the right dynamic of talents, but just getting as many good players in each position as possible. No one really works together, they just hope that when it's their turn, they don't fuck it up, which unlike virtually every other team sport, leaves only the cold language of numbers to define one's contribution to the whole (averages, jackpots, successful attempts at thievery, more fucking averages).

And it's funny how the pace of the game hasn't changed much, but its players are in increasingly in better shape. How much excitement can a professional athlete get from a sport whose training is more grueling than the game itself? It lends so much more to the concept of baseball as a "pastime" when all one can think of is how foolishly it's been invested; such physical hardship in preparation for a sport that demands almost no real exertion of it. Kind of like getting a phD in English only to work at a library. (Or an honours degree in film only to work at a bar...oh shit).

So a tip of the cap (people don't actually still wear those, do they? Like "fashionably" I mean) to all those in attendance of the home opener today. May the first trickle of statistics quench your thirst for some meaningful dimension of the game. May it fill the riverbed that is otherwise barren of any visual pleasure. May tombs of statistics fill the archives of your hungry mind, flooding out whatever the fuck that Dostoevsky guy was talking about. May you feel comfortable paying to watch your heroes believe in themselves. And don't worry, they're accomplishing no small feat out there on the playing field. After all, what's more stoic than dedicating oneself to something trivial?