Baseball, it is admitted by even its most fervent devotees, can require a bit of patience.
At least an inning’s worth, anyway.
During a recent Dunedin Blue Jays game at TD Ballpark, though, a row of three young women sitting near home plate decided they’d had enough by the third.
“I’m afraid this is pretty dull, ladies,” said one laconically, immediately indicating that WWE Wrestling, with its fireworks and body slams and silly outfits, was more her speed. Perhaps the scene would have been more interesting if the bats were coated with kerosene and the balls contained small explosives. The foul lines could be set ablaze to increase speed down the basepaths, and the bases themselves would contain randomly placed sharp objects to satisfy the urge to see blood on the field.
Boom! Crack! Sizzle!
Now that’s entertainment!
Alas, the creator of the game who most likely wasn’t Abner Doubleday, did not include pyrotechnics in the rules. There are some risky plays that could result in injuries and subsequent fan morbid curiosity about the injured player’s well-being, blood always being a bonus.
But the former National Pastime was not built for such violence.
The brushback pitch — which was once a way for Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale and Nolan Ryan to enforce the strike zone on batters who dared to encroach on “their” plate — is practically banned. Umpires tend to tut-tut “chin music” throws at batsmen’s heads. They tend to threaten practitioners with dismissal from the proceedings, and often do.
Boo!
Sal “The Barber” Maglie would no longer be able to provide “close shaves” to batters, and we’re all at a loss as a result.
The suicide squeeze, which sounds violent, rarely is because no one uses the tactic anymore. But it was always a titillating play.
A story about the giant slugger Frank Howard, apocryphal though it may be, had it that the 6-foot, 7-inch, 250-pound slugger took a massive swing at a pitch just as his 5-foot, 11-inch teammate, Maury Wills, the early king of base heists, broke from third base to steal the plate just as the man called “Hondo” took a mighty swing.
Fortunately, Wills slid under Howard’s swing and scored safely, both in the scorecard and in terms of his staying on the roll call of the realm of the living.
Hondo, aware that he might have killed his teammate with such a mighty hack, looked down at the supine Wills covering the plate and said sternly: “Maurice, don’t you ever do that again.”
Baserunners going in high on the shortstop at second base to end a double play, a specialty of Hall of Fame nasty man Ty Cobb, who also sharpened his spikes, is now verboten. As a result, one of the game’s most balletic plays is no more. (Perhaps for the best, at least in one case. San Diego’s odious Manny Machado, a filthy jerk of a player if there ever was one, went into second base spikes illegally skyward against Boston Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia on a double play. Machado gouged “Pedey” in his surgically repaired knee. Pedey’s well-established but still promising career and possible Hall of Fame career, just about ended right there. He was never the same and wound up retiring at 37 with a few years left in the tank.)
But perhaps our unfortunate baseball doubters did not notice the exciting new rules designed to provide more “action” for casual fans. Bigger bases! More steals! No more infield shifts!
“Zombie” runners who did not earn the privilege of getting to second base without using their bat to get there are now placed at second in the 10th inning in order to “speed up the game” for busy fans.
Replay has all but eliminated the often-hilarious manager-umpire set-to’s over the umpire calls because the camera never lies when a bunch of guys in a dark room full of television monitors in New York have rendered the umps superficial to the game.
Gone are the spectacular, often hilarious, spitfire arguments featuring long-gone managers such as Earl Weaver, Billy Martin and Leo Derocher who could argue the time of day with the game’s on-field arbiters. Imagine now the fate of robotic Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell if he heaped dirt on home plate during an argument, a special form of protest by Martin, under the new regime. Of course, even the evidence of Counsell’s pulse would be a comparative shock.
Yes, the pitch clock, which should be unnecessary and didn’t exist for more than the game’s over 100-year history, has made the game more streamlined. It was the pitchers themselves who introduced the pitch clock to baseball — Egad! Time is not supposed to exist on the diamond — because they had begun to spend more time considering life, the universe and everything between throws than actually participating in the game.
Sorry, but they haven’t yet introduced flash pods during the game. Trapeze acts during the seventh inning stretch probably aren’t on the way, although Rob Manfred, baseball’s Chief of Money Grubbing, might find that appealing.
Baseball is played at a slower pace than hockey or basketball.
But if you think the Grand Old Game is dull, consider that most football games take more than three hours to complete 60 minutes of gridiron thrills punctuated by 5-minute intervals for beer and truck commercials. Basketball, with the last two minutes of the game dragged out to half-an-hour by replay reviews, team fouls and timeouts, also has its moments of inaction.
As for baseball, give the game a chance to unroll itself. Patience will be rewarded by moments of sudden action and the sweet tension and sudden release that builds to the last at-bat. Despite the best efforts of the game’s powers that be to strip the game of its identity and vitality, the game can still be more fun than a barrel of mandrill baboons.
But at least wait five innings before heading for the exit before the apes escape.