Fascism is rising and democracy eroding worldwide. A vile child monster, by most polls, is leading in the presidential race, propped up by an evil pantheon of reactionary politicians and immoral, serpent-tongued propagandists. While greedy fools fiddle, the atmosphere burns, at Code Red en route to Code Dead. Russia is arming to attack NATO Europe and threatens nuclear holocaust.
Whatever. Cue Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Baseball has returned. It is Holy Week.
As you read this, geese and Major League teams are flying north to resume the cycle of life. If you, by any chance, are like me, a lifelong Philadelphia Phillies fan, October 24, 2023 was Good Friday. Now Easter beckons. Opening Day is the Resurrection, plus beer and hot dogs. We are maybe not redeemed, but we are awash in optimism. Everything is possible. Victory. Serenity. Even Johan Rojas hitting .300.
But please understand I’m not speaking just for myself, nor followers of other juggernauts. I’m speaking for even the most casual fans and the most benighted franchises. It’s still March. The Oakland A’s are not yet mathematically eliminated. Hope springs eternal … at least until June. Such is the paschal promise, the perennial equinoctial optimism that dangles liberation tantalizingly within reach. Ask the Apostle Paul, or Moses, or the ’69 Mets. It’s the story of the ages.
Yet Holy Week is no less relevant today than it was in antiquity — such as 1927, when in late March the New York Yankees had won zero games and the lowly Phillies had lost none. The Yankees and Babe Ruth, it turned out, went on to a 110-44 record and won the World Series. The Phils went 51-103. With a few breaks here and there, they could easily have finished 53-101, but there was always 1928 to look forward to. Because: tabula rasa.
The limitless purity of a clean slate.
In the course of 162 games, that slate will be heavily scribbled upon with transcendence and calamity alike. There will be no-hitters and walk-off home runs sending stadiums into a frenzy, and there will be sluggers mired in slumps. Fly balls misplayed. Cutoff men not hit. Bunts popped up. Rally-killing double plays. Season-ending injuries. Blown 9th-inning leads. Clubhouse conflict. This is 2024, so don’t bet against a couple of drug suspensions and assault arrests. But let us for the moment focus on the inevitable home-run heroics. Thoughts of scandal and Tommy John surgeries will keep ’til summer.
What’s so curious about the promise of spring has not changed, though in many ways the game is barely recognizable from the one I grew up with in the 1960s. Those were supposedly the good old days, before free-agency, when players were chattel and the 1962 roster was reliably identical to that of 1961. Jackie Robinson had long since broken the color barrier, but the vestiges of segregation were stubborn. The ’61 Phillies team picture looked like a Klan meeting or the Republican National Committee. The designated-hitter rule — instituted in 1973 to remove pitchers from the batting lineup — was like ending the Latin mass. The pitch clock installed to make games less unendurably long eroded not only baseball’s unique languor but also much of its deliberate game-within-a-game strategy. Sacrifice bunts and pinch hits are endangered species. Complete games are all but extinct in the wild.
Never mind. It’s still baseball. The season is Shakespearean, annotated by the endless aggregation of team and individual statistics. And each game is a self-contained drama of its own, performed on the Euclidean masterpiece of the diamond by athletes whose virtuosity is at once thrilling and poetic. And so, along with the daffodils, it rises anew. In its glittering majesty and crushing disappointment, baseball is and always has been a thrilling metaphor for life itself.
Plus beer and hot dogs.
Indeed. Lifelong SF Giants fan here, who -- after enduring a long, boring winter of not watching the NFL, NBA, or NHL (except for the Super Bowl, which I watch every year because the Constitution demands it as a requirement to retain my US citizenship) -- now awaits the daily drama of baseball with bated breath.
Or is that baited breath?
Details...
I was not in favor of the pitch clock at first, but have come around. If I never have to endure another five-hour RedSox/Yankees game on Sunday Night Baseball, it'll be too soon. The only real downside is that now a guy like Jon Miller (who calls the Giants radio games out here) has less time to tell stories, which is a definite bummer. I don't like the automatic walk rather than throwing four balls to put a runner on first, nor do I like the extra-innings man-on-2nd-base atrocity, but some of the newer rules -- especially the prohibition on extreme defensive shifts -- actually did bring more bunting and stealing bases back to the game, and have marginally diminished the obsession with launch-angle and home runs. Small ball may not dominate, but at least a game is no longer considered a failure if it doesn't feature a home run derby.
Good luck to your Phillies. I hope they win their division, then lose to my Giants in the playoffs.
Go Phils! See you at the game (checks weather and emails)... Friday?