The Popcorn Stand: The Greatest Game There Is
Baseball is the greatest game there is. Throughout this nation’s history, we’ve seen our share of difficult times like we’re experiencing in 2020. As James Earl Jones said as the fictional author Terrence Mann in a “Field of Dreams” the one constant in the American fabric of life has been baseball. (In the W.P. Kinsella’s book Shoeless Joe in which the movie “Field of Dreams is based on, Ray Kinsella kidnaps real life author J.D. Salinger).
Anyway baseball has always been there for us. Baseball is the greatest game there is. That statement was made by Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver after his heavily favored Orioles lost in five games in the 1969 World Series to the Miracle Mets.
After that fifth game of the World Series in which shoe polish of all things helped the New York Mets come from behind for their Series clinching win, Weaver was asked about the series of events that led his team losing series and he responded: “That’s why baseball is the greatest game there is.”
There’s something reassuring about baseball because it’s always the same, no matter how many changes there will be to the the game. There will always be nine players on the field and four bases.
But yet even though the game remains the same, it still evolves and it always provides something new. As the saying goes, you can go to the ballpark every day and see something that’s never happened before. Like the Mets (allegedly) proving Cleon Jones he was hit by the pitch because his shoe polish was on the ball, sparking their World Series-winning rally.
I don’t consider myself a traditionalist when it comes to baseball. When it comes to the shift, let the infielders play where ever they want — just as long as they stay on the dirt in the infield. They’re infielders after all.
This year because of COVID-19 the last league that played real baseball — the National League
— has finally relented and is using the designated hitter. That’s understandable. But my fear is it’s permanent.
The one thing I would like to see in baseball is keep the catcher in the catcher’s box. Yes, they still pace that catcher’s box before the game starts and it was placed there for a reason.
You want to see better pitching, better hitting and better umpiring keep the catcher in the catcher’s box.
Any other rule or change like time clocks, I’m pretty ambivalent about.
But no matter now many changes you make to the game, it will always stay the same. George Carlin has a wonderful routine about sports. He also has an absolutely hilarious bit comparing football to baseball.
In his bit about sports, Carlin says virtually every major sport is just a version of ping pong. And it’s true — football, basketball, soccer, hockey — they’re all just versions of ping pong.
But not baseball. Baseball is the only sport in which the defense has the ball. And something else wonderful about baseball, the bases will always be 90 feet apart. That will always be the perfect distance.
Baseball wasn’t invented so much as it evolved. And how those who developed baseball came up with 90 feet was simply genius.
One-hundred feet would be too far. You wouldn’t have the bang-bang plays at first. Infielders wouldn’t be able to turn a double play. Again, genius.
And Major League Baseball is back. Sure, it’s back in a sort of sanitized, shortened way and it would obviously be so much better if we could all go to the ballpark.
But in this not so uplifting year of 2020, there’s still something uplifting about being able to watch baseball again.
Terrence Mann was right. Even in 2020, baseball remains a constant in American.
And Early Weaver was right. Baseball is the greatest game there is.