For the Love of the Game

I’ve been watching a lot of baseball over the past couple of weeks. It is my favorite sport and my favorite way to share time with friends and family. I learned to love the game as a member of the Astros Buddies starting at six years old. I got to meet the players and run the bases in the old Astrodome. It was glorious. My dad even knew one of the starting pitchers. These were my heroes.

I know that many of you find baseball boring, but I implore you to rethink that position. I have mixed feelings about the new rules that speed up the game. Pitch clock good, extra inning changes bad. The idea that baseball lacks action is objectively and relatively false. The average major league game contains 18 minutes of time when the ball is in play and around 300 pitches.  Compare this to football which has an average of 11 minutes of action and about 120 plays. Baseball is exciting.

The strategy of the game changes pitch by pitch. What is the score? What is the count? Who is up? Lefty or righty? Pull hitter? Power hitter? Are there runners on? What bases? How long or short is the left field fence? The number of permutations that affect pitch selection and defensive positioning are almost incalculable. Yet, the great minds of the game take in all the data and make a choice.

If that is too much work for your brain, then buy yourself a hot dog and a beer and really talk to the person you are with. No phone required. Last Monday, I went to the Astros game with my 80-year-old father and we had the longest conversation we’ve had in over a year while the Astros lost badly.

There is a reason there are so many more movies made about baseball than any other sport. It is the connective tissue of the country that transcends every dimension of American life. Old-Young. Rich-Poor. Red-Blue. Black-White. Rural-Urban. Smart-Not-so-Smart. This is our national pastime. Grab a friend and go immerse yourself in the glory of baseball. Do it for the love of the game.