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Thursday, April 14, 2005
Inscrutable
This probably won't make much sense, but I've been reading a lot of Herman Melville for class.
It occurred to me that a lot of what I like about baseball, a lot of what makes me think about it so much, is that, sometimes, it just seems so damned arbitrary. I haven't done the math to prove the point, but I remember hearing in Bull Durham that the difference between a .250 hitter and a .300 hitter over the course of a season is an extra hit per week. "One seeing-eye single, one dying quail" is enough to forever change how people view your performance that season. Over a career, a certain amount of skill is required to gain a Hall of Fame reputation. But just within the context of one game, how many small, seemingly insignificant events occur that result in our terming one team the winner and the other a loser? It just seems to me that baseball more closely reflects life than hockey, football, or basketball.
Imagine that it's the bottom of the ninth, and your team is down by one with two outs and a runner on first. The batter hits a drive deep to center field; it looks like it's going to be the proverbial walk-off home run. It lands five feet short of the fence, though, and bounces over for a ground-rule double. Had the fence been a foot taller, or the warning track a little damper, the ball stays in the park and, at the very least, the runner on first scores. Instead, the way it works out in this particular reality, the pitcher who gave up a monster shot ends up looking like a hero, because he strikes the next guy out on a questionable slider on or off the inside corner, depending on whom you ask. You lose a game more because of landscaping than because of the skill of your team. The other team is invariably credited with possessing the "intangibles" necessary to win the close games, but in your heart you know that that's absolute nonsense (and somewhere deep inside, so do they).
In Moby Dick, Melville says that the events of your life are determined by a combination of necessity, free will, and chance. He's careful to point out that chance gets the last word. Watch enough baseball and you see what he means.
It occurred to me that a lot of what I like about baseball, a lot of what makes me think about it so much, is that, sometimes, it just seems so damned arbitrary. I haven't done the math to prove the point, but I remember hearing in Bull Durham that the difference between a .250 hitter and a .300 hitter over the course of a season is an extra hit per week. "One seeing-eye single, one dying quail" is enough to forever change how people view your performance that season. Over a career, a certain amount of skill is required to gain a Hall of Fame reputation. But just within the context of one game, how many small, seemingly insignificant events occur that result in our terming one team the winner and the other a loser? It just seems to me that baseball more closely reflects life than hockey, football, or basketball.
Imagine that it's the bottom of the ninth, and your team is down by one with two outs and a runner on first. The batter hits a drive deep to center field; it looks like it's going to be the proverbial walk-off home run. It lands five feet short of the fence, though, and bounces over for a ground-rule double. Had the fence been a foot taller, or the warning track a little damper, the ball stays in the park and, at the very least, the runner on first scores. Instead, the way it works out in this particular reality, the pitcher who gave up a monster shot ends up looking like a hero, because he strikes the next guy out on a questionable slider on or off the inside corner, depending on whom you ask. You lose a game more because of landscaping than because of the skill of your team. The other team is invariably credited with possessing the "intangibles" necessary to win the close games, but in your heart you know that that's absolute nonsense (and somewhere deep inside, so do they).
In Moby Dick, Melville says that the events of your life are determined by a combination of necessity, free will, and chance. He's careful to point out that chance gets the last word. Watch enough baseball and you see what he means.
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