Don’t speed up baseball; we need to slow down us

When you’ve worked at the same newspaper for many years, readers get to know you. Too well, sometimes. I received an email this week from a gentleman who said he first became aware of my work when, as a boy, he overheard his parents arguing over something I’d written. “This was years and years and years ago,” he wrote, apparently referring to a time when my fellow journalists and I scribbled with goose quills on parchment and used words like “thou” and “thee,” as in:

Wouldst thou, dear reader, please deign to keepeth thy mouth shut when it cometh to thine fusty mem’ries of an ancient scribe?

Anyway, the man then added, “Now it’s the start of baseball season. The weather is beautiful, and I can predict

Wasting time is something we used to do really well, and now we stink at it, and baseball is the best way to restore our expertise. That is, as long as Major League Baseball doesn’t screw it up, which it seems intent on doing.

what you’re going to write. I want to tell you not to do it. With all the crazy stuff going on in Washington, D.C., and at the state Legislature, I’m hoping you are not going to write your yearly love letter to baseball and how it is a metaphor for life or some such nonsense. You are NOT going to do that, right? You are NOT going to waste my time, are you?”

Indeed, mine own esteem’d young sire … I am. At least, I hope so. Because wasting time is something we used to do really well, and now we stink at it, and baseball is the best way to restore our expertise.

That is, as long as the commissioner and other bigwigs at Major League Baseball don’t screw it up, which they seem intent on doing. They are convinced they need to speed up the game, that there isn’t enough action to satisfy sports fans living in a world where instant gratification isn’t quite fast enough. No. The question is not: “How we can speed up baseball?” But: “How we can slow down … us?”

Years ago I met a man with seemingly no time to waste, and whose only wish was to waste a little time.

I was outside Scottsdale Stadium before a Cactus League game when I noticed a young couple not far from the main gate. Their names, I found out later, were Eric and Lynne Holden.

Eric was thin and frail, struggling just to stay upright. He held onto the fence near the ballpark’s front gate. Lynne, tall and athletic-looking, pulled an oxygen tank behind her with what appeared to be a rack of pill bottles on top of it. I would find out later that Eric and I were born in the same western Pennsylvania town; that he was a music teacher and band leader; that the couple were the parents of three young children; that Eric was dying of cancer.

It took a long time for him to steady himself and gain enough strength to get into the stadium. Because of the delay, the couple missed the playing of the national anthem. And the first inning. And part of the second.

But that is OK in baseball. There is time to waste. For now.

In the major leagues this year, an intentional walk will involve no actual pitches. The manager need only motion to the umpire that such a walk is intended, and the batter will be awarded first base. There are other changes as well. With more to come. I wish the league executives suggesting such foolish notions could have spoken to Eric.

His plan on the day I first saw him was to get out of the hospital, just for a bit, and get to the ballpark, where he could remind himself of what’s important in life. Baseball can do that for a person. A few weeks before he died, Eric told me all he wanted to do that day at the ballpark was sit in the sun on a spring afternoon and watch a few innings of a game. And not think about the hospital. And not think about his pain. And not think about his family’s struggles or the years of his children’s lives that he would never be around to see.

He didn’t want to think about anything except perhaps a young pitcher trying to control his curveball, or a veteran player who couldn’t yet find his swing. Or how gentle the breeze was in the stands. Or how the sun shined. He got that for a few hours. It was a complete waste of time, he told me.

And it was worth every minute.