December 24, 2008--Hot Stove League
As the days shorten and snow and cold seize the country, for more than a century people have been gathering in general stores to sit by the glowing pot-bellied stove and talk about baseball.
Someone will note that it’s still seven weeks to pitchers and catchers. The day they are required to show up for spring training in Florida and Arizona. Another will say it’s only seven weeks and won’t it be good to begin to hear about the players stretching the kinks out of their bodies in the southern sun.
Inevitably, in recent years hot-stove league talk turned to off-season trades such as the one that brought the great closer K-Rod, Francisco (K for Strikeout) Rodriquez, to the Mets and how much the Yankees are paying to sign free agents. In these recessionary times, a fortune--$160 million for seven years for the big right hander C. C. Sabathia and $180 million for eight years for all-star first baseman Mark Teixeira.
Indecent someone is sure to claim. Not like in the old days when a Mickey Mantle played for just $100,000 per season. While another, up on the details of the Yankee budget, will add that they have to sign these kinds of players if they want to get back to post-season play and fill seats in their new stadium where the best seats will go for between $500 and $2,500. That’s per game!
The talk around the stove will go on and on, helping everyone survive the winter until boys in old men’s bodies will emerge into the sunlight once again, as from out of hibernation, and stretch their weary arms and legs, and gather in small town and big city ballparks to listen for that familiar crack of the bat and shouts of “Kill the umpire!”
Likely lost in this talk about spoiled players and greedy owners will be the kind of more finessed conversation common in the past about the inner aspects of baseball, including why, in spite of these obscene salaries, it remains America’s Pastime because it continues to serve as a series of metaphors about life in America. Including current ones fit for our Gilded Age.
Are any folks wondering about the relationship between the Brooklyn Dodgers signing Jackie Robinson back in 1947 and the election of Barack Obama? They should because there is an intimate connection between these two historic events.
And did anyone notice that William S. Smith died recently? The guy who, while a law student at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote of the analogy between one of baseball’s most intriguing rules and the development of common law--“The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule”? (See linked New York Times obituary.)
The infield fly rule, adopted in the 1890s, was instituted so players could not take advantage of a force-out situation at third base. It states that when there are fewer than two outs, and there are men on first and second base, or if that the bases are loaded, any fly ball that in the judgment of the umpires can be caught by an infielder “with ordinary effort” is automatically deemed an out. Otherwise, for example, the shortstop could intentionally let the ball drop, pick it up, whip it around the bases to his fellow infielders, and thereby turn it into a double play.
In effect, the infield fly rule was a remedy for sneaky behavior that would not have occurred in earlier years when baseball was a gentlemen’s sport. In other words, to preserve the gentlemanly aspect of the game, which was turning into a professional sport, the rules of the game, as in common law, needed to evolve.
Steven’s law review piece was so widely read and regarded that it gave birth to the law and baseball movement! See what I mean—baseball is not just a game but about life itself.
And as with life, it adapts to the times. Yes, there are its pastoral origins. Yet, in spite of the fact that it was originally played in a genteel way appropriate for its times, and the infield fly rule as one example attempted to keep it that way, the are other rules that allow for various forms of less-than-gentlemanly behavior.
After all what are stealing bases about if not a recognition that there is this troubling thing about human nature—how we are simultaneously capable of committing the noblest and basest acts.
Thus, taking this into consideration, the rules of how one is allowed to steal a base put limits on what is permissible. And as so many cultural traditions have unraveled, baseball reminds us still that we must continue to struggle to strike the right balance between these contradictory sides of our imperfect nature.
Someone will note that it’s still seven weeks to pitchers and catchers. The day they are required to show up for spring training in Florida and Arizona. Another will say it’s only seven weeks and won’t it be good to begin to hear about the players stretching the kinks out of their bodies in the southern sun.
Inevitably, in recent years hot-stove league talk turned to off-season trades such as the one that brought the great closer K-Rod, Francisco (K for Strikeout) Rodriquez, to the Mets and how much the Yankees are paying to sign free agents. In these recessionary times, a fortune--$160 million for seven years for the big right hander C. C. Sabathia and $180 million for eight years for all-star first baseman Mark Teixeira.
Indecent someone is sure to claim. Not like in the old days when a Mickey Mantle played for just $100,000 per season. While another, up on the details of the Yankee budget, will add that they have to sign these kinds of players if they want to get back to post-season play and fill seats in their new stadium where the best seats will go for between $500 and $2,500. That’s per game!
The talk around the stove will go on and on, helping everyone survive the winter until boys in old men’s bodies will emerge into the sunlight once again, as from out of hibernation, and stretch their weary arms and legs, and gather in small town and big city ballparks to listen for that familiar crack of the bat and shouts of “Kill the umpire!”
Likely lost in this talk about spoiled players and greedy owners will be the kind of more finessed conversation common in the past about the inner aspects of baseball, including why, in spite of these obscene salaries, it remains America’s Pastime because it continues to serve as a series of metaphors about life in America. Including current ones fit for our Gilded Age.
Are any folks wondering about the relationship between the Brooklyn Dodgers signing Jackie Robinson back in 1947 and the election of Barack Obama? They should because there is an intimate connection between these two historic events.
And did anyone notice that William S. Smith died recently? The guy who, while a law student at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote of the analogy between one of baseball’s most intriguing rules and the development of common law--“The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule”? (See linked New York Times obituary.)
The infield fly rule, adopted in the 1890s, was instituted so players could not take advantage of a force-out situation at third base. It states that when there are fewer than two outs, and there are men on first and second base, or if that the bases are loaded, any fly ball that in the judgment of the umpires can be caught by an infielder “with ordinary effort” is automatically deemed an out. Otherwise, for example, the shortstop could intentionally let the ball drop, pick it up, whip it around the bases to his fellow infielders, and thereby turn it into a double play.
In effect, the infield fly rule was a remedy for sneaky behavior that would not have occurred in earlier years when baseball was a gentlemen’s sport. In other words, to preserve the gentlemanly aspect of the game, which was turning into a professional sport, the rules of the game, as in common law, needed to evolve.
Steven’s law review piece was so widely read and regarded that it gave birth to the law and baseball movement! See what I mean—baseball is not just a game but about life itself.
And as with life, it adapts to the times. Yes, there are its pastoral origins. Yet, in spite of the fact that it was originally played in a genteel way appropriate for its times, and the infield fly rule as one example attempted to keep it that way, the are other rules that allow for various forms of less-than-gentlemanly behavior.
After all what are stealing bases about if not a recognition that there is this troubling thing about human nature—how we are simultaneously capable of committing the noblest and basest acts.
Thus, taking this into consideration, the rules of how one is allowed to steal a base put limits on what is permissible. And as so many cultural traditions have unraveled, baseball reminds us still that we must continue to struggle to strike the right balance between these contradictory sides of our imperfect nature.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
8:07 AM
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