Saturday, October 5, 2013

Baseball

 Baseball is America.We marvel at it's width and  breadth, gaze at it's splendor, rejoice in it's simplicity and shake our heads at it's foibles. The purity of the game reflects the purity of the freedom's promised in our own constitution yet equally as guilty in reflecting how society has oppressed those freedoms from certain groups over the years. It is a game played by men and women, whites and blacks. by Columbians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Koreans and Japanese.It is a game that has changed the entire culture of nations. A game that can make a man leave his family behind for the possibilities of a new future. It is a game that can do no wrong for those who love it, but yet, like America, it promises you nothing.
  It is a game that can make us feel the beauty of what it is to be an American regardless of where we come from, where we are, or where we are going. It is a game that makes grown men weep, and young men squeal with delight. It is a game that can make us all feel shame and disdain at those who try to work outside the ropes, yet delight in their achievements all the same. Because baseball, like Americans, loves an underdog, likes to see a bad man make good and secretly, likes a good man to go bad (as long as he doesn't get caught, then we are merciless).

 Baseball is about draft picks and farm teams,free agent contracts and waiver wire steals, 16 year old children and 45 year old men.Trades,salary dumps,mutual interest and screwing the "other guy".  It's a game of never ending statistics yet can be explained quickly to a novice viewer. It is a game that can make the poorest of us wealthy and the wealthiest of us cry in pain at just a single loss, just a single loss out of  162 games....Yet it is these 162 games that make baseball what it is. It is the sport where the best team loses 60 and the worst team wins 60 and nobody runs the table. It is a game of marginal victory and we Americans love marginal victory, we love to think we are just one extra hit away from the big time and we are, if we can just choke up a little bit more and swing away.

 But most of all, Baseball is uniquely American because it is a game about failure. It is a game where failing to get on base 60% of the time will make you an all time great. A game where good pitching means failing less, because ALL pitchers fail and most pitchers fail EVERY SINGLE GAME and they fail often. America is about failure, and learning from failure and rising above that failure to become a better person for it.

 Baseball is a game played in many lands, in many ways and with many levels of skill, yet it is uniquely American. It is our game, because it welcomes all, forgives those who want for forgiveness and yet endeavor to persevere through any scandal, because, at it's root, the game ,just like America, keeps trying to get better.