Throw the Ball

I love baseball. Always have, always will. There's no doubt in my mind that it's the greatest game ever. Yet that doesn't mean that I'm blind to its flaws.

Major League Baseball is set to end the seven inning double header games as well as the runner on second rule for extra inning games next year. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say. But the National League is expected adopt the Designated Hitter for the pitchers next year. I don't like that but it's hard to fight the future. Still, I am happy that Shohei Ohtani stuck to his guns as a pitcher in that he wants to bat too. He may be the most complete player in the history of the sport.

What galls me the most though is the pace of the game. In watching old ball games I notice that the pitchers, at least with no one on base, tend to deliver pitches about ten seconds apart. The locally famous Fidrych game on Monday Night Baseball in June 1976 in just under two hours was exciting and compelling and Fidrych THREW THE BALL with a decent pace, a pitch every ten to twelve seconds as I alluded to a minute ago. I know: I began timing, because I was amazed at the pace. These days pitchers stare at the catcher, set, look around, stare at the batter, and finally offer a pitch every twenty seconds or so. And that's if the batter hasn't asked for time, to saunter into his own delays.

Throw. The. ball. Stay in the batter's box. You're either overthinking things or playing a stupid intimidation game of some sort and both stink. Play the game. Throw the ball. That by itself ought to cut half hour off game times, and would be a whole lot more entertaining to boot.

Opening Day 2021

Yesterday the baseball season began, and thankfully it was no cruel April Fools Day joke. 13 of the 15 scheduled games were played. Hopefully we can get an entire season in, with increasing attendance.

I got in from a road trip in time to catch most of the Tigers first game, followed by the end of the Toronto-New York Yankees match. In the best tradition of organized sports I will offer my first objection to new rules: I do not like, I do not like at all, starting extra innings with a runner already on second base. It takes away from the last at bat advantage, among other things. But more unwanted analysis on that later. This is a time to be happy and excited that baseball is back.

On that front, to use the stilted but clever and funny verbiage of cartoonist Nathan Pyle, my regional orbcatchers are 1-0 and on a pace to finish 162-0. It's a good feeling. An Opening Day kind of feeling. 

Everyone is in contention, on Opening Day, to win the World Series. And as my beloved Detroit Tigers won and have today off before playing game two of the 2021 Season tomorrow, I get to bask in that glow. Too soon the inevitable alternate reality, the alternate reality which comes, sadly, to 29 of the 30 MLB teams each year, sets in.

Let it wait until Saturday. Or, God willing, Sunday. Or maybe, just maybe, until the final out of the 2021 World Series is made. That is the ultimate hope of Opening Day.

Super Bowl 2015

Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings

- The Wall Street Journal

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, that day not really a holiday yet feels like it just the same. It should be a fun day, and that's all well and good. But for those of you who think that all the hoopla makes football America's game, here's a bit of medicine for you.

It's not.

There is no denying that football games in general and today's match in particular carry with them a lot more drama than a June baseball game or a November hockey square-off. Yet there's need to jump to conclusions: if there were only 16 to 19 baseball or hockey games per season per team, you would get a tremendous amount more hype for every one of those too. It's the numbers, or, rather, the lack of them, which appear to make football more appealing to the sporting masses than the other games. To borrow an idea from the economists, simple supply and demand tell us that the fewer there is of something the greater the interest.

Look at the facts: for all the talk about all the excitement in each game, there's barely ten minutes of actual play. There again, the point can be made that, as there is a lot less going on than in most games, each play means more. We see that the rare numbers are what manufactures importance rather than actual play.

Still, go ahead, have your party and eat too much and hoist a cold one. But remember that it is the high atmosphere which creates the excitement, and not the game itself.