During the player introductions for this past Tuesday’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game, I realized that I recognized almost none of the reserve players outside of those guys I’d seen in the playoffs over the last couple of years (Evan Longoria, for example) the Cleveland guy (Victor Martinez), and anyone who’s seemingly so good that they become inescapable (Hanley Ramirez).
Most of the starters were famous enough for me to know, but I can’t say I was incredibly familiar with the majority of them. I know, for instance, that Lincecum has won the Cy Young, but I couldn’t talk at all intelligently about what makes him a great pitcher.
What I realized as Obama jogged out to the throw the first pitch was that my relationship with professional baseball has drastically changed.
Growing up playing sports, baseball was my best and favorite sport (those two things tend to go together). Around the age of 8, I got my eyes checked, my wonderful optometrist Dr. Stanley Lutz figured out that I needed glasses, my mom and dad paid for them, and all of a sudden I could hit. I spent the next four years as an overweight, but not unathletic, power hitter. We didn’t have fences most of the time, so I was a doubles hitter…but if my memory serves me right - and let’s be honest, who knows if it does - I was a very good hitter.
Throughout those years, I loved baseball - even though the Indians were terrible.
And then I turned 13, pitchers started throwing curveballs, and I stopped hitting. My baseball career officially ended later on when I was a junior in high school and was cut from the JV team after taking a year off to lose weight. The real issue though was that I wasn’t good enough anymore.
This didn’t, however, destroy my love of the game. I have many cherished moments from the Indians playoff runs in the late 90’s. I was going to college at NYU when Mesa blew the save. I watched Yankees fans riot in the streets of the East Village when their team won the World Series in 1998. And, to skip back in time, ask my dad how often I bring up him leaving the 1995 Red Sox-Indians division series game early…the game where Tony Pena hit a walk off home run in the 12th inning.
In fact, that moment was probably the real beginning of my relationship with sports as an adult because it re-introduced me to the greatest experience in professional sports - the playoffs - at a time when I could really comprehend the stakes. I was just a little boy for the Drive and the Fumble. I cried when they happened, but I was just being a wimp. I didn’t really get it.
Since 1999 though, something has changed. I put down 1999 as the demarcation point because it’s the last time I can remember the Indians making the playoffs (before 2007). I have no recollection of the 2001 ALDS versus the Mariners, even though I was in living in Northeast Ohio at the time. Even in 2007, although I was riveted throughout the playoffs - I’ll never forget the “Bug Game” or the 11 inning marathon against the Red Sox - something, I think, had already shifted.
You could argue that the cause of that shift was LeBron James.
If you’re paying attention you’ll notice that basketball is the current favorite sport of those of us who write for this site. On many levels, it makes sense - the Cavs are by far the best team in Cleveland and they have a small forward who’s going to go down in history as one of the best players to ever play the game. It’s simple to surmise why the Cavs are the most exciting and most compelling organization to write about in Cleveland sports.
Then again, my dad, Tim, and I were running up in Gund Arena for $10 tickets when Ricky Davis and Darius Miles were jogging up and down the court. In other words, our affinity for baskeball has always existed.
So…I think it’s more than that.
I believe the sport of baseball has not evolved at the same rate as the culture of, and the speed of life in, America.
Take, for example, the All Star pre-game. Major League Baseball trotted out a bunch of old presidents, had a great - but old - player give a baseball to the current president, whom then threw the ball 60’ 6” to home plate. We watched just to see if his throw would suck.
Later, the telecast cut to a shot of conservative columnist George Will chatting it up with Bud Selig in the commissioner’s loge.
In February, at its All Star game, the NBA sent Shaq into a crowd of crazy white masked dancers wearing his own mask, displaying hilarious gyrations.
In the crowd, we saw shots of people like Jay-Z and Beyonce.
Then there’s the pace of the regular season baseball game, which without DVR, is almost impossible to watch for three hours straight. And even without commercials, there’s so much time in between pitches and at bats that more often than not, you see every play more than once - sometimes the telecast has enough time to replay an entire pitch sequence in between the time an out is made and the next batter gets to the plate.
In a 21st century world that’s pieces are almost all digitally connected and instant gratification is the rule, not the exception, it’s no wonder that a sport where, literally, nothing happens for the majority of the game would struggle to hold an audience - especially a young, impatient one that’s more accustomed to rapidity and fragmentation than their parents and grandparents.
Add to this the performance enhancing drugs scandals, the incredible commitment it takes to keep track of an entire season of games, and the questionable athleticism of a lot of the players - I’m undoubtedly in better shape than Jhonny Peralta - and Jamie Moyer and Tim Wakefield are getting guys out at the age of 46 and 42 respectively, and what you end up with is a sport that almost demands you don’t pay that close attention to it in order to stay even remotely interested.
162 games, played at a pace that suggests every single second is packed with subtext and intrigue…okay, but there are 162 of these f’ing things…makes for tough viewing.
Part of me wants to lament baseball’s fall from grace or clamor for the sport’s executives to do something to “fix” the game, but another part of me - the less emotional side - understands that all good things come to an end. Nobody’s run lasts forever, and history is an unforgiving force of nature. I still love the game, but I’m not as captivated by its regular season as I once was, and if I ever have a son or daughter I imagine I’ll be hard-pressed to get them to sit in front of the TV with me for three hours, the majority of which are occupied by dead space, when the world is offering them so many other options.
Baseball…America’s pastime, for sure.
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