I’ve had an affinity with baseball since I was kid. I remember explaining to my gran how I’d found my way to the game as she responded with a wry smile. She had worked in Goodison as a young woman and enjoyed baseball games as the troops came over to play, “it’s in your blood” she told me.
It was August 22nd 2018 and I finally got to go to my first game and it did not disappoint. The sights, the sounds, the smells, baseball is an intoxicating experience in a way no other sport can match in my opinion.
From the minute I saw Fenway Park I was hooked. It may sound trite to refer to the stadium as a “baseball cathedral” but to many, including myself, it holds a reverance that can only be described as spiritual.
When I stepped foot inside Fenway, I knew I was in a place of great significance. As a foreigner it was only natural that this experience would be, well foreign to me, and yet it felt anything but. It felt as if I was supposed to be there and I was where I belonged.
After ordering my Fenway Frank and a beer, my companion to this game and I made our way to our seats. I was still in awe of the confines – yes I know confines is more associated with Wrigley but work with me here. Speaking of which, what a strange oxymoron that is, “friendly confines”, “confines” being a word outside of baseball used to describe a prison and yet here meaning the complete opposite. You never feel freer than at a baseball game.
Now we come to the crux of the matter. A ticking clock. What do you think of when you think of a ticking clock? In life, when is a ticking clock ever a welcome sound? To me a ticking clock is an annoyance at best and at worst one of many reasons I had to take part in therapy sessions. Thanks to said sessions I can now see the importance of a clock in life and how meaningful it makes every interaction for the better, but, can we say the same of baseball?
It speeds up the game, but to what purpose? Well it makes it more exciting apparently. I do not agree, in fact, I strongly disagree. A ticking clock in American Football, in Basketball and in Ice Hockey makes perfect sense because it adds drama. The adulation as your team beats the clock to score a last second winner? Priceless; but how so in baseball?
I’m yet to see a single good reason for the pitch clock that doesn’t equate to “I can beat the traffic” or something equally uninspiring. The best way to beat the traffic is to not go, problem solved.
You already had highlight packages that were getting shorter and shorter for your convenience, fast food baseball if you will. Why must everything be whittled down and more accessible for your consumption?
What next? Do we put timers on books? Will the book punish you for not finishing a paragraph. within 15 seconds? Wouldn’t that be fun?! The sad fact is that we as a society have been so conditioned to consume our lives at haste that we now are effervescent to swap the gourmet meal that was baseball for a from frozen burger and if “progress” is anything to go by, that will soon be replaced with a pill to replace the hassle of having to bother to chew.
Archibald ‘Moonlight’ Graham told of how he’d love to wink at the pitcher in his wind up to let him think he knows something the pitcher doesn’t, he’d barely have time to step up to the plate now let alone wink.
Do I still love baseball? Yes, I do, but as with many things just not in the way I did. I enjoy that there’s more shortball in the game now but that could have been achieved just by changing the size of the bags, it didn’t need a pitch clock. I don’t like that a pitcher is limited in pickoff attempts but I can understand it and it has served a purpose within the game of baseball as has the banning of the shift whether we like it or not. Where is the purpose that the clock serves though?
The World Baseball Classic had no clock, it was as perfect an example of what baseball can be. Ohtani staring down Trout and giving his country the ultimate prize could have been the finale of a Hollywood western. In that moment you can find what hooked me to this game, it lasted more than 15 seconds per pitch.
I haven’t even mentioned the upturn in injuries to pitchers, probably just a coincidence as we make human beings more robotic, don’t worry though, AI will take care of all of this and you’ll have every pitch thrown within 15 seconds and be home before you know it and all those wonderfully nuanced moments that made the game unique will be lost in time like tears in rain, tick, tick, tick …
All In The Game 