“The one thing you can count on in life is that there is a first baseman and a shortstop and a catcher, and they are right where they were last month… Baseball positions are anchors in a shifting world, and to have given the most indefinite names to the personnel at these most dependable positions is to have made brilliant use of comic irony” – Frank Deford, “Spring Has Sprung”. Sports illustrated. April 10, 1978
Good comedy and good baseball are high art. And to evoke both beautifully in the same sentence is almost too much for me to bear. The above quote is from an excellent anthology called simply Great Baseball Writing. It’s obviously about the Abbott & Costello skit “Who’s On First.”
Deford estimates the comedy duo performed the skit 15,000 times. That sounds unbelievable. And tedious. But so does baseball to many.
In fact, 15,000 isn’t at all a big number in baseball. If you took 15,000 swings in your lifetime, you’d be a shitty hitter. I bet some players do that in the batting cages in a single season. Same with pitches, ground balls, throws to first.
I have friends who won’t watch baseball, who think it’s boring, that it’s not even a sport. I understand where they’re coming from, sort of. So much standing around, so many isolated movements, so much repetition. What’s the point?
But that’s exactly the point. For the fielder, every hit that doesn’t come to you makes the one that does more important. You only get so many chances.
For the pitcher, no matter how many perfect strikes you’ve thrown that game you know that the next one could ruin it. A quarter of a second from now you’ll hear that crack and in another 3 you’ll watch the ball disappear over the fence.
Every swing not swung in the batter’s box is victory or a defeat. You and the pitcher are in a different place than you were before that pitch. You’re ahead now or you’re behind. But nothing happened.
And then from all that tension, that inaction, all that nothing of the surface, chaos explodes. Suddenly everyone and everything is moving and nobody knows exactly where it’s all going until it gets there. It’s beautiful.
Stand up comedy is the same. Just one (or in this case two) guy on stage. He’s just talking! Nothing’s happening! But all it takes is the right turn of phrase and your frame of reference is gone and you love it. One word, delivered right (after being delivered a thousand times before in the mirror probably) and you have no idea where he’s going with this but you’re laughing your ass off.
So stop telling me baseball is boring and pay the fuck attention.