Where Are You, Chico Carrasquel?

This past Monday, there surfaced once again the Annual Midsummer Abomination—Major League Baseball’s Home Run Hitting Derby.*

The Home Run Derby totally distorts what baseball (indeed, all sports) is all about—a test between offensive power and defensive resistance. Sports are trials, challenges—like climbing mountains. As George Leigh Mallory replied when asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest, “Because it is there.” Consider soccer: the challenge is to put one more ball into the opposition’s net than they can deposit into yours. Your team must not only attempt to contrive an offensive threat to the opposition, but to prevent the opposition from mounting a decisive threat against your goal. It would be all so easy if you were the only team on the field, but as Jean-Paul Sartre has stated, “In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.”

And the opposite team is not necessarily your equal. It is often the case that a less talented side will set up to manfully defend against an opponent of greater offensive prowess. If the more fancied side doesn’t prevail, its manager will often complain afterwards that the opposition “parked the bus,” a term coined by José Mourinho. Expressed here is the attitude that offensive skills shouldn’t be negated by defensive tactics. “Let us play how we want, you rascals!” But looked at from the defensive point of view, the proper response is, “If you’re so good, prove it! Try to break us down.”

In baseball, the game is not about serving up powderpuff pitches to be hit over fences. In a way, the essence of the sport was captured well over a century ago by Wee Willie Keeler: "Hit 'em where they ain’t." The offense tries to find holes in the defense, while the defense is alert to close the holes. Think of a shortstop going deep into the hole between short and third to snare a ground ball seemingly destined to be through into left field. 

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Willie Mays, who died last month, was one of the outstanding talents in the history of baseball. He was a massive offensive threat throughout his 23 seasons in Major League Baseball. He hit 660 home runs. But out of all his feats perhaps what he is most remembered for is “The Catch.” In game one of the 1954 World Series, Cleveland Indian power hitter Vic Wirtz hit a massive fly ball to the deepest part of center field of New York’s Polo Grounds; Mays raced back to within a foot of the wall, made an over-the-shoulder catch, and, with cap flying off his head, swung around to throw a dart back to the infield.**

That is what sport is about: great defense against great offense. 

Without a defensive challenge, sport would be like taking candy from a baby—no kudos for that.

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* Did you think I was going to say “the Republican Convention”? That’s the Quadrennial Midsummer Abomination.

** https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MiqbL39Fu4Q