MLB Commish Bud Selig is apparently continuing his quest to suck the soul out of the game:
http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/story/_/id/8206550
Seems he's pretty confident he'll get MLB and the players and umpires unions to agree. Someone please explain to me why this is a good idea. At least he's leaving calls at the bases and balls and strikes alone (for now). I'm sure that's next. Queue "The End" from Apocalypse Now.
The horror, the horror.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Why Baseball is Beautiful
Baseball is a beautiful thing.
It is more beautiful than an old park that is asymmetrical and quirky.
The way the field fans out, the choreography of the sport, the pace and rhythm of it,
The fact that the pace and rhythm allow for conversation, and reflection, and opinion, and comparison.
It is a pastime, something you do. It is entertainment, something you watch. And it is shared experience, something you talk about.
And that is marvelous.
What makes baseball special, is that it is the best game that has ever been devised.
It measures just nine inches in circumference, weighs only about five ounces, and is made of cork, wound with woolen yarn, covered with two layers of cow hide, and stitched by hand precisely two-hundred and sixteen times.
It travels sixty feet, six inches from the pitchers mound to home. And it can cover that distance at nearly one hundred miles an hour.
Along the way, it can be made to twist, spin, curve, rise, wobble, or fall away.
The bat is made of turned ash, less than forty two inches long, not more than two and three-quarter inches in diameter.
The batter has only a few thousandths of a second to decide to hit the ball.
And yet the men who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game's greatest heroes.
It is played everywhere, in parks and playgrounds, and prison yards, in back alleys and farmer's fields.
By small boys, and old men, raw amateurs and millionaire professionals.
It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed,
The only game in which the defense has the ball.
It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime, and ending with the hard facts of autumn.
Americans have played baseball for more than two hundred years,
While they conquered a continent, warred with one another and enemies abroad,
Struggled over labor and civil rights, and the meaning of freedom.
At its heart lie mythic contradictions, a pastoral game born in crowded cities.
An exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating.
And has excluded as many as it has included.
A profoundly conservative game that often manages to be years ahead of its time.
It is an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to fathers and grandfathers.
And it reflects a host of age-old American tensions between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective.
It is a haunted game in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before.
Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home.
Ken Burns and Others
It is more beautiful than an old park that is asymmetrical and quirky.
The way the field fans out, the choreography of the sport, the pace and rhythm of it,
The fact that the pace and rhythm allow for conversation, and reflection, and opinion, and comparison.
It is a pastime, something you do. It is entertainment, something you watch. And it is shared experience, something you talk about.
And that is marvelous.
What makes baseball special, is that it is the best game that has ever been devised.
It measures just nine inches in circumference, weighs only about five ounces, and is made of cork, wound with woolen yarn, covered with two layers of cow hide, and stitched by hand precisely two-hundred and sixteen times.
It travels sixty feet, six inches from the pitchers mound to home. And it can cover that distance at nearly one hundred miles an hour.
Along the way, it can be made to twist, spin, curve, rise, wobble, or fall away.
The bat is made of turned ash, less than forty two inches long, not more than two and three-quarter inches in diameter.
The batter has only a few thousandths of a second to decide to hit the ball.
And yet the men who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game's greatest heroes.
It is played everywhere, in parks and playgrounds, and prison yards, in back alleys and farmer's fields.
By small boys, and old men, raw amateurs and millionaire professionals.
It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed,
The only game in which the defense has the ball.
It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime, and ending with the hard facts of autumn.
Americans have played baseball for more than two hundred years,
While they conquered a continent, warred with one another and enemies abroad,
Struggled over labor and civil rights, and the meaning of freedom.
At its heart lie mythic contradictions, a pastoral game born in crowded cities.
An exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating.
And has excluded as many as it has included.
A profoundly conservative game that often manages to be years ahead of its time.
It is an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to fathers and grandfathers.
And it reflects a host of age-old American tensions between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective.
It is a haunted game in which every player is measured against the ghosts of all who have gone before.
Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home.
Ken Burns and Others
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