John Grisham has an excerpt of a new book in last week's Sports Illustrated. I didn't read it, but picked up on the fact that it was a baseball story. Which raises the idea that, of all of our national sports, none come close to the story-telling appeal of baseball. Even as the game evolves in this era of the Internet, there is an endless supply of plot lines, relationships and history.
The Game. There's always a game in a baseball story. Maybe even a double-header! Teams against teams. Towns against towns. The pitcher against the hitter. The base-stealer against the catcher.
The absence of a clock. Nine innings. Three outs per inning. Extra innings if tied after nine. Now this can get to be a problem when the pitchers dwaddle on the mound, or the hitters stall against a good arm, but the lack of a clock takes that buzzer-beater play out of the equation. I like that. If the clean-up guy gets to the plate in the bottom of the ninth against the other team's closer, game on!
The numbers of the defensive positions. Pitcher (1), catcher (2), first base (3), second base (4), third base (5), shortstop (6), left field (7), center field (8), and right field (9). In the Unofficial Baseball (American) League, they don't even make an effort to call the DH a numbered position.
The sacrifice bunt. What a play! And it's virtually taken out of the game by the existence of the DH except in unique, end-of-game situations. To the naive observer, it looks like a nothing play, but to the baseball guy, the wheels are really turning (on both sides of the ball).
Unwritten rules. Love this topic. If our country could play by the unwritten rules of baseball, we'd have lots fewer societal ills (and probably fewer lawyers!)
The Cut-off Man. How many games have been lost by the failure of the outfielder to hit the cut-off man on a long throw? I love telling the story of my shortstop at ND my senior year setting up for the cut-off in medium-deep left field when I was playing with a dead sore arm. I couldn't throw it 20 feet, but he had a gun. We made it work.
The pick-off play. The catcher with a cannon, the southpaw pitcher with the move to first, the devious shortstop, and, best of all, the potato play. Stories for each of these abound.
The Men in Blue. Well, usually I had no problem with the umps. Some had a wider strike zone than others, and sometimes a bang-bang play wouldn't go our way. But the thing about baseball is that, you play enough games, and things usually even out. Luck. Calls. Hits. Errors. But there can be endless stories written on the trials of the umpires.
Scoring the game. Why wouldn't you want to know how to keep a scorebook? A backwards K? Caught looking. E-5? Error at third. A traditional scorecard has a place for every play. Who needs Google and an iPad??
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Well, you get my drift. The game of baseball can be used to portray all of the personal and competitive drama that they now try to run as reality TV. Football and basketball grab the broadcast headlines most of the time, but a good game of baseball in StL can leave memories for a lifetime.
More on this another time. If you've never heard 3 recite in verse, I think, the differences between baseball and football, you should ask her for a replay. It's worth the price of admission.
BCOT
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