Ball Park Tours™, Hot Stove League Banquet

February 12, 2000

The Prom Ball Room

Oakdale, Minnesota

 A Baseball Zealot Speaks on Sports

    I have the opportunity tonight to speak to an audience assembled for only one reason. We are all baseball fans, and, most probably, Twins fans. Being a baseball fan in Minnesota tonight is not easy. There is little news, less hope. But we are still baseball fans, even in the land of Moss, Garnett and the Wild, who have the advantage of still being an abstraction, by which I mean that it is still possible to think of Eric Lindros and the Wild at the same time. As baseball fans, you probably wonder why it is that you are drawn to this wonderful game.

    Marketing research has shown that baseball fans consider themselves to be the most intelligent of sports fans. Among the literati, it is axiomatic that one must be a baseball fan to be accepted into their ranks. There is no football or basketball equivalent to The Natural, Universal Baseball Association, Field of Dreams, Bang the Drum Slowly, Babe, The Glory of Their Times, The Long Season, The Summer Game and the rest. North Dallas Forty, forget about it.

    This attraction for the game starts to make sense when you recognize that you probably are the smartest of fans. But what specifically is it that attracts you? I think it is the game itself. In its subtlety and complexity, which is all done with the appearance of simplicity. To understand that, we need to look at each of the other major games, do an analysis, and compare them to baseball. By the way, all of the other games are termed "back and forth" games

    First football. The game of football, in its art, matches bulk against bulk, and speed against speed. Bulk is at the line of scrimmage. Speed is behind bulk on both sides of the line. The science of the game is getting speed past bulk, or using bulk to block speed. The biggest imbalance is where a speedy receiver is matched against a bulky linebacker. If the Titans had gotten that fast receiver one more step on that bulky linebacker, the Super Bowl would have been changed.

    Football has three zones of play. The line, all bulk near the line, an area just behind the line, and the secondary. In these areas there is little science. Fast guys race fast guys and bulky guys hit bulky guys. That's it, there isn't any more.

    Basketball is enjoying enormous popularity, but is a game that cannot survive analysis. If you thought about what it is that you are watching, you would all turn it off. For the game of basketball is the art of putting a nine inch ball in an eighteen inch hole. Think about it. That's all there is . And there's a back board to help you. Next spring, try putting with a 2 x 4 behind the hole. This act of putting the ball in the hole is done from as far away as 21 feet, a third of the way from the catcher to the pitcher. Wow! they get an extra point for that. This act is so easy that teams regularly score two hundred points in 48 minutes of play. Think about it, that's all there is .

    Hockey, I simply don't understand. First they're on ice and slide around. Sure....I just don't know what's happening on the rink, but it seems that there is some order. But I asked two fans recently what icing was and got two different answers. I have a theory that hockey started when some angry Quebec teacher threw all the hyper active boys out of the class and a hockey game broke out on the frozen playground. I've searched for thought in the game and watch tv to find out if there is any. Recently, I heard this hockey player say that the smartest thing he could think of was to stand in front of the goalie while a teammate took a slap shot from the blue line. So the goalie can't see the puck. Duh- So hockey is the art of shooting the puck past the goalie, hitting versus fielding, so to speak. It's curious, by the way, that goal tending is the essence of hockey and is illegal in basketball. Other than that, I think chaos theory applies to hockey.

    That gets us to baseball. First, it is unique. It starts with the field. Where the other fields are rectangles with objects at both ends, baseball has a single starting and ending point. The least used part of the other fields, the corner, is the absolute focus of baseball. From this point at the adjacent home plate, two lines, perpendicular to each other, extend out to indicate fair ground from foul. These "foul"lines are fair, by the way. In its original construction, there were no outfield fences. It was not until fans started standing out there and the game moved into the city that fences appeared. There is no other reason for fences, as baseball fields are designed to be finite at home and infinite in its outfield. As there are no limits on its time, there are few on its space, either.

    The field has three bases 90 feet apart, again at right angles, forming a diamond with home plate at the base. There is a pitcher's mound on the home/second line with a pitcher's plate 60 ft 6 inches from home plate. There are no other marks on the field, except for the batter's and catcher's boxes, which are essentially outside the field. Football fields are marked every five yards with a line and every ten yards with a number and an arrow pointing to the nearest endzone. Knowing footballers as we do, we can understand why the field must come with a complete set of instructions. Can you imagine a baseball field with a line between first and second that says, "Second base - 45 feet," and an arrow pointing to it.

    The game itself is one of intricate balance. Where the other games are bulk against bulk for example, baseball finds disparate skills being played against each other. The pitcher's ability to throw against the batter's ability to hit. Then the batter's ability to run, he/she becomes a runner when he/she hits, against the fielder's ability to field and throw. So finely tuned is this balance of distance and disparate skills that a ball hit to the deepest part of a field will be pursued by a fielder, thrown to another, whose throw home beats or misses a runner by fractions of seconds. It is a game that makes fractions of seconds look like eons. How close is the runner who gets thrown out by three steps? We say, though, that the runner was out by a mile. This balance is so precise that a ball hit to a shortstop, if fielded well and thrown accurately, will catch 99% of the runners, but if the ball gets stuck in the glove for an instant, that percentage drops to about 50%, and if the ball is bobbled at all so as to hit the ground, the percentage drops to near zero.

    This intricate balance is the stuff of baseball, it is found no where else in sports unless you count chess. When played out over a year, the bobbles and missteps are more important than the ninth inning homers and crucial strike outs. The competitive balance that exists because of this intrinsic balanced structure is what the game's lords must protect. The best teams win 60% of the time and the worst 40% . That means that championships are based on the winner of every fifth game, all teams having won two of the preceding four. When this gets out of whack, the game is in trouble, but it is the best of the games for the reasons mentioned here and the many others that each of you have as your own reasons for making it your game.

    Be brave, the snow will end, and spring training is right around the corner.