Opening Day

Sitting at the breakfast table this morning as has been my routine for nearly the past two months, I read an article in the New York Times about the latest goings on in Ukraine and Russia. While reading an account of a Russian citizen insisting his fellow countrymen are justly fighting American-backed Nazis in Ukraine and adding: "wouldn't it be simpler if Moscow just nuked the United States and got it all over with...", a voice came over the radio noting that today is Opening Day of the baseball season. 

Part of me thought, how completely frivolous to think of baseball at a time like this, while the other part of me thought, God how I need to hear that right now. 

On January 15, 1942, barely one month after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote a letter to Kenesaw Mountain Landis, then Commissioner of Baseball. The president responded to Landis's letter of the day before, offering to suspend all baseball operations for the duration of the war. The following are excerpts from Roosevelt's letter to Landis:

I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before.

And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before.

Here is another way of looking at it - if 300 teams use 5,000 or 6,000 players, these players are a definite recreational asset to at least 20,000,000 of the fellow citizens - and that in my judgment is thoroughly worthwhile.

It is said that Roosevelt's "Green Light Letter to Baseball" written at the onset of one of the greatest crises in American history, perhaps more than anything else, solidified the game's status as "Our National Pastime". It could be argued that as the first major victory in the battle over civil rights in the United States, baseball's integration five years later with the signing of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers, set the stage for the sweeping changes in this country that took place in the subsequent decades. 

An impromptu game of baseball in the States, a rarer and rarer sight these days. New York, 1986.

Perhaps baseball isn't so frivolous after all.

On the flip side, the dearth of U.S. born black players on major league rosters today, does not necessarily signal baseball's going into retrograde as a vehicle for equal rights, but rather its decline in popularity especially among, but not limited to the African American community.

Nonetheless, baseball is still referred to as "our National Pastime", I think more out of nostalgia than anything else. Judging by TV viewership, American football is by far the most popular sport in the United States. Perhaps more telling, while Little League Baseball still rules the roost as far as organized youth sports go in this country, as far as "pickup" games go, the games kids (i.e.: the future) play on their own, baseball doesn't hold a candle to touch football, basketball and even soccer in the parks and playgrounds across America. 

So the burghers of baseball have decided that something must be done to correct that. Some folks object, saying that baseball has not, should not now, nor should ever change. To that I offer another excerpt from Roosevelt's Green Light Letter:

Baseball provides a recreation which does not last over two hours... and which can be got for very little cost. 

HA!!!

The truth is, the cost of taking a family of four to a Major League Baseball game these days could run into the hundreds of dollars, prohibitive for many families including my own. And honestly when's the last time you've seen a two hour, nine inning MLB game? 

In your dreams perhaps. 

Unfortunately MLB doesn't seem too concerned over the ever increasing cost of their product, but they sure are worried about the length of their games.  

There are many reasons why baseball games played today are much longer than the ones played back in the day, but one reason is obvious just by watching an inning or two of a game played in the past. 

For example, this one perhaps one of the greatest games ever played, unless that is, if you're a Yankees fan. 

If you're used to watching baseball today, you might be a little jarred at seeing the rhythm of the 1960 game, namely the amount of time it takes between the time the pitcher receives the ball from the catcher and the next pitch. I'd say the average is roughly ten seconds in this game, fewer if there are no runners on base. 

Today between pitchers rubbing the ball while circling the mound, batters stepping out of the box, pitchers shaking off signs from the catcher, and numerous other delay tactics from both sides trying to throw off the opposition, thirty seconds is not an unusual amount of time for the pitcher to hold on to the ball between pitches. Those ten to twenty extra seconds between pitches add up when you consider that the average total number of pitches in a baseball game is close to 300.

A simple solution for this is a pitch clock. If a pitcher doesn't make a pitch within the allotted time, say 20 seconds, the batter is awarded a ball in the batting count. Likewise if the batter calls time with less than five seconds left on the clock, the pitcher is awarded a strike.

Kind of makes sense doesn't it? On the other hand, baseball is a game famously NOT ruled by the clock. As such, while pitch clocks may not present an existential threat to the game, they do threaten the clockless perfection, the rhythm, the groove, the mojo, the je nai se quoi, and most important, the what-have-you of the game. Worse yet, pitch clocks displease the baseball gods, I know that for a fact, maybe not as a mortal sin but definitely a venial one. 

Besides, there is evidence that pitch clocks don't shorten games that much if at all. 

Nevertheless, expect to see them in a couple years in the majors. 

This year we are about to see the introduction of another brilliant idea, communication devices between catchers and pitchers that will eliminate all those primitive finger signs catchers used to use to call pitches. The real purpose of the technology is to eliminate something that has gone on from time immemorial, the stealing of signs.*

The hope is this system is going to solve once and for all this age-old problem as it's inconceivable that anyone could possibly hack into it right? 

Right.

The other alleged reason for implementing these doohickies is to shorten games by eliminating the need for all the complex coded signs catchers need to flash in order for them not to be readable by the opposition.

We'll see how that all works out. How the baseball gods will react to this is anybody's guess, my feeling is they're probably already laughing their heads off.

What's really sending the gods off the deep end is the National League's decision to implement the designated hitter rule. The DH has been a regular feature in the American League since 1973. 

Next to whether or not Pete Rose should ever be inducted into the Hall of Fame, this is perhaps the most hotly debated topic in baseball. It seemed that the nearly fifty year history of one major league adopting the DH while the other did not, was a reasonable compromise. I have a good friend who gave up being an American League Chicago White Sox fan in 1973  in favor of the National League Chicago Cubs because of his abject hatred of the DH.

Now he's in a quandary over where to find "real baseball", as the DH will be in effect practically everywhere, even in high school ball.

The debate over the DH was illustrated perfectly this morning on the radio as the host suggested to his guest that the designated hitter is frowned upon by many managers who will mourn the loss of the classic conundrum of whether or not to pull a pitcher who is doing well in the crunch time of a game for a pinch hitter, something that he, the host will miss as well. To which the guest, a baseball writer for the Washington Post responded: "perhaps, but the pitchers will appreciate the fact that they will be able to remain where they belong, on the mound." 

To which I, not a fan of the DH myself, would reply: excuse me, but pitchers like everyone else on a baseball team, are baseball players first and foremost. Baseball is not a game of pure specialists like football, and asking a pitcher to hit is not like asking a field goal kicker to play nose tackle. Besides, most big league pitchers played outfield in high school and even college as the kids who were pitching to them back then, more than likely long ago burned their arms out trying to throw curve balls before their arms were developed enough for it. And being outfielders, today's big league pitchers were most likely once the best hitter on their team. 

God, if only these were the worst of our problems. The nice thing about sports is that we can argue endlessly over such trivial matters, yet remain friends at the end of the day. 

Alas, the same can't be said about practically anything else these days. I can't agree to disagree for example, with someone who believes that the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol Building was valid political discourse. And not until hell freezes over if then, will I ever agree to disagree with someone who argues that we need to understand Russia's point of view regarding their invasion and rape, both figurative and literal, of Ukraine. 

But if you like the pitch clock, the catcher-pitcher thingy and heck, even the designated hitter, so be it, as long as we both agree to play ball.

After all, even during a time of war, life goes on.

* It's possible that one of the most famous moments in baseball, NY Giant Bobby Thomson's 1951 ninth inning come-from-behind, three run walk-off home run in a win-the-pennant-or-go-home playoff game off Brooklyn pitcher Ralph Branca, was the result of a sign stolen off Dodger catcher Rube Walker. In those days the Giants were allegedly using an elaborate sign stealing system (which was not illegal at the time), starting with a coach or team member sitting in the Giant clubhouse 600 feet away from home plate in the Giants' Polo Grounds center field clubhouse, using a telescope to read the catcher's signs, then relaying them via an electric switch that set off a buzzer in the phone in the Giants' dugout that the batter could hear, one buzz for fastball, two for an off-speed pitch. Or was it the other way around?

In either case, that home run was among other things dubbed: "The shot heard 'round the world." Indeed it was. The Korean War was going on at the time and U.S. troops who happened to be baseball fans tuned into the game from half way around the world. One particularly poignant story I read was about a letter received by Bobby Thomson in the 1990s. It was written by one of those veterans. Here's an excerpt:

I was in a bunker in the front line with my buddy listening to the radio. It was contrary to orders, but he was a Giants fanatic. He never made it home and I promised him if I ever got back I'd write and tell you about the happiest moment of his life. It's taken me this long to put my feelings into words. On behalf of my buddy, thanks, Bobby.