2+2=?

The World Series is underway. As a native of Brooklyn, should I root for the California Dodgers for some residual nostalgic reason? Or, should I root for the Toronto Blue Jays to exhibit solidarity with our sorely-beset neighbors?

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Actually, although I was a baseball freak in my younger days, I no longer follow the game. Well, it’s more like the game left me.  

Once upon a time, the Major Leagues consisted of two leagues—the National and the American—each of which had eight teams playing 158 games a season. At the conclusion of the regular season, the teams with the best records—the pennant winners—squared off in the World Series. How excited New Yorkers would be with the anticipation that the National League Dodgers or Giants might meet the American League Yankees in the so-called “autumn classic.”

Now, however, there is no guarantee that the best regular-season teams will meet in the Series, for there are 30 teams in six divisions, and the Series participants are determined by a playoff. (It so happened that this year Toronto was the best team in the American League, but the Dodgers were far from the best in the National.)

(I will get back to the playoffs later.)

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The abduction of the Brooklyn Dodgers by the scoundrel Walter O’Malley to some hole in the ground on the West Coast was a bitter blow. But still, baseball as we knew it went on. Until 1973—when the American League adopted the designated hitter rule, which allows some shlub who can’t move around the field to bat instead of a weak-hitting pitcher. 

Defenders of the designated hitter like to rationale the rule by proclaiming—as if they have discovered the phrase juste—“I’d rather see the shlub hit than the pitcher.”

I once had a board game called Tom Hamilton’s Football. Both teams had a mixture of players ranked as stars, seconds, or scrubs. Each of the coaches had to juggle his squad, and never had enough stars to cover all eleven positions. In other words, there was no possibility of a perfectly accomplished team. As a coach you had to take the good with the not-so-good. Like life.

And that’s what was grand about baseball, which gave us the expression “good field/no hit.” It understood the trade-offs that needed to be made in life. 

But baseball—and other sports—no longer want trade-offs. What is wanted is offense—power. Consider one of the prime events these days at baseball’s All-Star game—the home run hitting contest. The spotlight on hitting home runs places all other aspects of a complex eco-system into darkness: the cat-and-mouse between batter and pitcher; the fleetness of the base stealer; the cockiness of the bunter; the range of the slick-fielding shortstop; the nay-saying of the rally-stopping relief pitcher.

Basketball has a similar mono-focus with its slam-dunk contest and games that all seem to end 148-145.

The famous soccer coach José Mourinho complained that opponents dared employ defensive tactics against his sides, saying, “They parked the bus.” What he neglected to admit was that in his sport both offense and defense are legitimate and that if you think your side is better than us, then prove it by trying to get around our defense. 

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As noted above, in days of yore it was with great anticipation that one awaited the pennant-winning team from the other league. How would the teams compare? It was the season-ending highlight as the two best teams finally met. But now there is in-season inter-league play. So the Mets meet the Yankees again and again (yawn).

And the playoffs. They are not a meritocracy. The best eight teams do not automatically get into the quarter-finals. The fifth and sixth placed teams in each league get to play the third and fourth placed teams (as “wild cards”). 

The National Hockey League has the most famous of all play-offs—the Stanley Cup. The 32 teams of the NHL compete over an 82-game season for one of the 16 places in the playoffs. Despite the urging of some media types, the League has not yielded to the call for a play-in. The argument that I have heard for a play-in is that it would give the fans of the ninth-placed teams in each conference something to cheer for at the end of the regular season. Well, on that basis, why not let the fans of the tenth-placed team or eleventh have the fun of a playoff game? (We can get really reductionist here.) 

You played 82 games and you couldn’t beat me; why should you get an 83rd? The line has to be drawn somewhere. This is it—genug!

Or perhaps we should all accept a near-miss as being a good-enough result. 

Something like 2+2=5.

 

  

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