October 23, 2009--Take TV Out Of the Ballgame
Summers and winters are long and thus we need baseball to help us get through them.
Some complain that a 162-game season is too long and the games too slow for our no-attention-span era especially since post season now lasts forever. And with the distractions of football and basketball, which conveniently fill in the time when baseball is in suspension, who any longer needs a Hot Stove League—long gone are the winter days where men, yes men, would huddle by wood fires in cast iron stoves in general stores across America to replay in their minds the last innings of every critical game--should the Dodgers have left Ralph Branca in the game to pitch to the Giants Bobby Thompson; or who was the best centerfielder—Willie Mays, Duke Snider, or Mickey Mantle; or was Jackie Robinson safe as the umpire said or out when stealing home in the opening game of the 1955 World Series? Did Yogi Berra, as he still claims 54 years later, make the tag?
Now with things so speeded up and technology so sophisticated and omnipresent, at least Yogi’s phantom tag could be resolved by super slow-motion instant replays from at least half a dozen different angles. But if we had all of this then what would the guys have had to talk about up in Caribou, Maine in the middle of January, when spring training’s pitchers-and-catchers was still months away and it was pushing 20-below outside.
We, on the other hand, know for certain that the Los Angeles Angel’s catcher did in fact compete a double play by tagging both Jorge Posada and Robinson Cano out at third base the other night during the American League Championship Series. He blew the call and, if we didn’t have instant replay, not knowing for certain what happened would have kept a lot of baseball fans (the etymological root of “fan,” by the way, is appropriately “fanatic”) going during an endless string of short days and endless-feeling winter nights.
What we are left with is not the actual game to argue about but the umpiring (see linked article), generally thought to be adulterated in quality like so many other things in our society—we can’t seem to get anything right: high-quality fuel efficient cars, wars, or tag plays at third base. So I suppose, as it has been for more than 100 years, baseball continues to be a metaphor for our collective lives. Think football or basketball if you want to see how unmetaphoric a national sports pastime can be.
After that third game of the ALCS game out in Anaheim (what kind of a place is that by the way to have a Major League team—isn’t Disneyland enough for a city like that?) I was talking to a friend and all he wanted to discuss was the umpiring. I was eager to argue about the game itself, the momentum swings back and forth that first favored the Yankees with Jeter and A-Rod hitting solo homeruns and then the Angels rallying to overtake them and turn the ALCS into a competitive series. Did the managers make all the right moves and decisions?
“Too bad they weren’t playing at the new Yankee Stadium,” he said with vicarious pride in that new billion-dollar facility. “There they have that huge Jumbotron out in centerfield so you can watch the game on TV and not miss anything. Including the umpires’ calls. And if you’re downstairs on line getting a hot dog or taking a pee they have all these high-definition TVs all over the place so you can watch from there. Even when you’re in the men’s room!”
“That’s why I refuse to go there. I’m tired of the DJ’d music pounding away all the time and all the TVs. I find them distracting. When I go to the ballpark I want to watch the game. If I want to watch it on TV I prefer to stay home and lie around in my pajamas and save a few hundred bucks. I’m not paying $200 for a ticket and $10 for a hot dog. And, to tell you the truth, I’m even beginning to want to ban the TV networks from showing replays. I don’t want to have everything resolved. Every ball, every strike double-checked by videotape. I like not knowing everything to such a degree of certainty. Call me old-fashioned, as I know you will, but I’m even thinking about turning off the TV and listening to the games on the radio so I can use my imagination again.”
“You actually are an old fogey!” I chuckled in agreement. “And how about that ‘old fogey’ bit? Old-fashioned enough for you?"
He roared with laughter and hung up before I could ask him what he thought about the series Alex Rodriquez was having. Or agree with him about what I fogey I’ve become.
Some complain that a 162-game season is too long and the games too slow for our no-attention-span era especially since post season now lasts forever. And with the distractions of football and basketball, which conveniently fill in the time when baseball is in suspension, who any longer needs a Hot Stove League—long gone are the winter days where men, yes men, would huddle by wood fires in cast iron stoves in general stores across America to replay in their minds the last innings of every critical game--should the Dodgers have left Ralph Branca in the game to pitch to the Giants Bobby Thompson; or who was the best centerfielder—Willie Mays, Duke Snider, or Mickey Mantle; or was Jackie Robinson safe as the umpire said or out when stealing home in the opening game of the 1955 World Series? Did Yogi Berra, as he still claims 54 years later, make the tag?
Now with things so speeded up and technology so sophisticated and omnipresent, at least Yogi’s phantom tag could be resolved by super slow-motion instant replays from at least half a dozen different angles. But if we had all of this then what would the guys have had to talk about up in Caribou, Maine in the middle of January, when spring training’s pitchers-and-catchers was still months away and it was pushing 20-below outside.
We, on the other hand, know for certain that the Los Angeles Angel’s catcher did in fact compete a double play by tagging both Jorge Posada and Robinson Cano out at third base the other night during the American League Championship Series. He blew the call and, if we didn’t have instant replay, not knowing for certain what happened would have kept a lot of baseball fans (the etymological root of “fan,” by the way, is appropriately “fanatic”) going during an endless string of short days and endless-feeling winter nights.
What we are left with is not the actual game to argue about but the umpiring (see linked article), generally thought to be adulterated in quality like so many other things in our society—we can’t seem to get anything right: high-quality fuel efficient cars, wars, or tag plays at third base. So I suppose, as it has been for more than 100 years, baseball continues to be a metaphor for our collective lives. Think football or basketball if you want to see how unmetaphoric a national sports pastime can be.
After that third game of the ALCS game out in Anaheim (what kind of a place is that by the way to have a Major League team—isn’t Disneyland enough for a city like that?) I was talking to a friend and all he wanted to discuss was the umpiring. I was eager to argue about the game itself, the momentum swings back and forth that first favored the Yankees with Jeter and A-Rod hitting solo homeruns and then the Angels rallying to overtake them and turn the ALCS into a competitive series. Did the managers make all the right moves and decisions?
“Too bad they weren’t playing at the new Yankee Stadium,” he said with vicarious pride in that new billion-dollar facility. “There they have that huge Jumbotron out in centerfield so you can watch the game on TV and not miss anything. Including the umpires’ calls. And if you’re downstairs on line getting a hot dog or taking a pee they have all these high-definition TVs all over the place so you can watch from there. Even when you’re in the men’s room!”
“That’s why I refuse to go there. I’m tired of the DJ’d music pounding away all the time and all the TVs. I find them distracting. When I go to the ballpark I want to watch the game. If I want to watch it on TV I prefer to stay home and lie around in my pajamas and save a few hundred bucks. I’m not paying $200 for a ticket and $10 for a hot dog. And, to tell you the truth, I’m even beginning to want to ban the TV networks from showing replays. I don’t want to have everything resolved. Every ball, every strike double-checked by videotape. I like not knowing everything to such a degree of certainty. Call me old-fashioned, as I know you will, but I’m even thinking about turning off the TV and listening to the games on the radio so I can use my imagination again.”
“You actually are an old fogey!” I chuckled in agreement. “And how about that ‘old fogey’ bit? Old-fashioned enough for you?"
He roared with laughter and hung up before I could ask him what he thought about the series Alex Rodriquez was having. Or agree with him about what I fogey I’ve become.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:25 AM
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