So You Don't Like Baseball?

Obviously there is a disconnect.

But I ask: what are the reasons?

The game is too slow.

Too many cheaters and chemical enhancers.

Too much greed.

Too many spoiled egos.

Disparity in the budgets of the big and small markets.

The game is too slow.

The game is not fast enough.

Some players are fat.

Some scratch and sniff themselves.

The seasons are too long.

Some of these players are not real athletes.

Some guys don't even speak English.

It is boring.

It is so dulll...

But not to this soul.

No way can it be boring. There is too much intellectual depth.

Relaxing? Certainly. Refreshing. Steadying. Calming.

And ever stimulating, under its layers and levels and annals and pages that reach out to us, like a good classic novel from a tome in a musty old library.

I have heard many similar comments about history, desultory observations alike. And books. And stuffy, dull names who in actuality were dynamic heroes.

Comments of the unloving are arbitrary to me.

There are many "students" at all levels of education both formal and otherwise, who are not really by definition students, who complain of their lack of interest in studying history.

I definitely put this en par with appreciation of America's game.

Baseball is history. It is America, more than anything else that we possess as a culture.

Too boring?

I suppose maybe, to many.

George Washington, a face on a bill?

Babe Ruth, a candy bar?

Abraham Lincoln, a lanky man with a tall black hat?

Hank Aaron, a man of color who broke the Home Run record of the Babe?

Richard Nixon, a man who professed, "I am not a crook".

Barry Bonds, a steroid using megalomaniac. Literally.

If this is all you can sum up of history, particularly American history and simultaneously its pastime, then maybe you are doomed to miss the absolute sublimity of this sport.

And perhaps sublimity is not a word.

But in this case, it should be if it is not.

They say that Thomas Jefferson and others played this ball and stick game in the 1700s.

Abner Doubleday gets more official credit a century later for being the creator of the game.

And then came the slow march of history. Have you heard of  this phenomenon? Causes and effects over time?

Walter Johnson.

Ty Cobb.

Cy Young.

Shoeless Joe Jackson.

The Bambino.

Hank Greenberg.

Josh Gibson.

Ted Williams.

Jackie Robinson.

Joe DiMaggio.

Micky Mantle.

Sandy Koufax.

Bob Gibson.

Roberto Clemente.

Reggie Jackson.

Tom Seaver.

Pete Rose.

Ken Griffey Junior.

Greg Maddox.

Perhaps this list of names means little to you. Or bores you. Perhaps it evokes a little bit of nostalgia or some mythic quality of time like hearing stories of yesteryear from your grandparents.

But perhaps it doesn't really grip you at all. Check yourself.

Perhaps Ernest Hemingway and his novelette "The Old Man and the Sea" is not a real classic too you.

Perhaps names of the Revolutionary War and Andrew Jackson and the Civil War generals and the World Wars and past wars mean little to you.

Perhaps.

Maybe poetry and literature aren't your cup of tea.

Or history.

But if you are a true student of the game, you just might understand.

I am trying to, and will continue these attempts the rest of my life.

And I am enjoying the game.

My team is down 5-0 in the ninth, but it is the march of history, the supernal nature of the spectacle and the humility of the grass roots that make every day a good day in baseball.

162 games per year. And a few more if you can last till the fall.

I hope I can make it again, just like that one cagey veteran who will not put down the glove or the bat.

Have you heard of Jamie Moyer?

Jim Edmonds?

Julio Franco? Omar Vizquel?

If you have not, you are missing out on what the lessons of life, history the United States of America offer us all.

And I know we are blessed, and it has been prophesied.

Baseball is a sport of destiny and glory.

Ask Japan. Or Cuba.

All of us understand the beauty and pageantry, the pathos and the pleasure of history.

Clinch