baseball
- Michelle Wood: SWCD
- March 5, 2018
- 1547
Some things are just worth the wait. Consider, for example, the four years it took for da Vinci to paint his “Last Supper” mural on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Or the eight years it took the United States to put a man on the moon. And when you think about the fact that it took 16-17 million years to carve the Grand Canyon, well, time becomes irrelevant.
But what’s got the baseball world all in a tizzy this spring? That’s right, pace of play, hereafter shortened to POP.
It’s based on the silly notion that if the game is shortened by a few minutes — estimates range from 10-30 — that young people will find it more attractive. To which I say, leave my game alone, just go away. You don’t deserve baseball.
Millennials, those who came to “adulthood” after the year 2000, have become the most desired demographic in all of American consumerism. And that’s fine. I’m part of the Baby Boomer generation, so I understand the appeal that disposable income has on corporate giants. Heck, the first new car I bought was a Mustang Fastback. But there’s a chasm of difference separating my generation from the current one.
For one thing, as I’ve written, we put a man on the moon. For another, we stopped a war. Oh, and we kicked out a president.
I could go on and on, but we’re not the kind of folks who like to brag. Instead, we’re content to live life the way it was meant to be lived: with purpose, with an eye out for the other guy and with a dedication based on making sure we don’t destroy the planet.
I’ll turn 63 next week, and it gives me pause. My mother died before she made it to her 65th birthday, so I know what’s lurking there, deep in my genetic makeup.
Mom loved baseball. So did my father. It may have been the only thing — aside from raising their three children the right way and, well, Shakespeare — that they agreed on.
So I had it good from the start: baseball games on the radio from Easter until past Labor Day, statistics, not to mention columnists who made the game vital, and once or twice a summer, vacations that almost always included a trip to Fenway Park, Busch Stadium, Riverfront and, most memorably, Wrigley Field.
Faithful readers might recall that in August of 1969, somewhere between the moon landing and Woodstock, my family was lucky enough to witness a no-hitter thrown by Cubs’ lefty Ken Holtzman. No one complained that day about POP.
But since it was, at that moment in history, the only no-no authored by a pitcher who had no — repeat zero — strikeouts, the game moved along at a brisk pace.
Some no-hitters last as long as three hours, some nearly four. That’s the thing about baseball that makes it special. There is no clock. As long you keep hitting, keep the line moving, you can play forever or at least until the other team records 27 outs.
Its singular beauty is that you never know how long it will take. And now, because Millennials apparently have the attention span of hamsters on speed, there’s a hue and cry building like a computer-generated tidal wave to artificially shorten the game.
It’s so wrong and so misguided and so short-sighted, but hey, that’s the world we live in.
So the powers that be have been slowly and incrementally introducing time-saving gimmicks as using a pitch clock, limiting mound visits and giving a batter an intentional walk without actually throwing the ball toward the plate.
Kelly Leak of “Bad News Bears” fame would disagree with that.
And that’s the worst thing about this ham-fisted appeal to young people. If they didn’t love baseball as kids, they won’t as adults.
Spring training is currently underway in 30 places scattered around Arizona and Florida, but even that vernal ritual has been tinkered with to the point that batters can barely step out of the box to collect their thoughts without being hit with a strike on an invisible pitch. They risk a penalty, in other words, as they try to do their job better.
One thing that the lords of the game never address in their attempt to make POP happen is the number of commercials. You’ve noticed that, too, I’m sure. This is, if not hypocrisy, then transparent greed.
I mean it’s one thing to encourage players to limit their idiosyncrasies, but it’s an entirely different matter to tell car companies and breweries that their air time is being reduced. Dollars, don’t you know?
Speaking of the cost of things and the POP landscape, there was a new invention called the Swinger camera, which made its debut right around the time my family was sitting on the third-base line that historic day in Wrigley Field. I had been given one as a present for Christmas or my birthday, and I liked it a lot because it spit out black-and-white photos in no time.
See, back then you had to take your roll of film to the drugstore and wait a week or so until it came back. Had I taken the Swinger to the game that day, though, those images would have probably washed away in seconds because that was the flaw in the machine.
Thankfully I carried my trusty old-fashioned camera, loaded with film, and seven days after we returned home, I had a set of color prints from that afternoon that survive to this day.
Are they a little blurry? Sure. The place was crazy that afternoon. But those images have stood the test of — dare I say it? — time.
Mike Dewey can be contacted at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join the fun on his Facebook page.