The Game That Matters

On Saturday, something that had not happened in twenty one years took place during the afternoon Tigers/Yankees game. The situation was thus:

Runners on the corners, Clemens on the mound, Posada behind the plate, the count was full, there were less than two outs. Jim Leyland, Detroit's manager, called for a double steal. For the edification of the baseball-ignorant, a double steal is a play by which the man on first attempts a steal of second, with two possible positive outcomes. If the catcher throws to second, the instant the ball leaves his hand, the man at third guns it for home. Even if the man stealing second is tagged out, the man from third easily scored and you gained a run. If, fearing a double steal, the catcher does not make the throw, the man on third stays put and you very simply stole second base, not only placing another man in scoring position but taking the ground ball double play out of the equation.

The double steal is a relatively quotidian occurence, particularly when aggressive managers like Leyland are around. He called the double steal this time, and the runner at first took off. Clemens threw a fastball which struck the hitter out, and Jorge came up gunning for second. As the double steal dictates, the man at third--Brandon Inge--immediately took off for home.

What Inge did not anticipate--heck, what no one anticipated--was that Clemens would stick his glove out and intercept the ball. This, of course, left Inge stranded between home and third, and Clemens easily tagged him out. It was a beautiful, rare (the last time it happened was in 1986) scenario which reminds all watching of the pure elegance of baseball.

Baseball is a game in which nine innings can go by without an unexpected event, or which a single inning can contain three uncommon, outrageous happenings. Baseball is above all a game, however, and it maintains that distinction with a pride and dignity that other sports could never hope to attain. No other game could see itself affected by the third basemen surreptitiously taking the ball from the pitcher, only to tag the man at third out when he takes his lead. No other game can elicit such sandlot trickery without losing some of its honor and its integrity. In baseball, the fact that it is a game is its honor and integrity. A rundown between second and third is every bit as plausible in a major league game as a little league game, and that makes sense because baseball is the game that connects generations like no other.

Baseball is a game where intelligence is valued, athleticism is helpful, but more than anything, simply skill is required to win. In football, you can be the greatest mind with the greatest throwing arm of all time, but if your body is smaller than everyone else, you will get crushed into tiny little pieces and never walk again. A linebacker can't simply be good at football. He also has to be big and fast. In basketball, even the greatest shooters languish on the bench if they can't jump out of the building and run past a train. In baseball, David Eckstein is a major leaguer.

Now obviously, to pitch you need a special arm which can throw it 95 mph. But then for every Joel Zumaya there is a Jamie Moyer, craftily outwitting hitters for years by throwing stuff that wouldn't scare me. Fielding doesn't so much require outlandish, eerie athleticism but awareness of the field, the hitter, the pitcher, the wind, a good jump on the ball, a quick throw to the right base. And heck, you could even pretend to forget there were only two outs, wait for the guy on second to sprint to third, then immediately gun him down. It has been done, and only baseball could do it with a sly grin rather than a sheepish frown.

So many fail to understand baseball's majestic greatness, and from a certain perspective that is understandable. If you don't care who wins the game, the right fielder moving ten steps to the left, the guy on second stealing signs, the fastball up and in begin to lose their transcendant qualities. You start to worry less about why the pitcher has shaken the catcher off four times and more about why he won't pitch and get the inning over with already. You start to lose sight of the elegant nine-inning format where the game itself keeps time, and wonder why a buzzer wouldn't go off so you could watch your beloved OC coming up next.

But when the pitcher is your pitcher, and the hitter belongs to the most underhanded, duplicitous, dirty, abhorrent team in America, the wheel play takes on celestial significance, the hanging curveball evokes somniferous horrors, and the umpire who calls too small a strike zone is a regular Jekyll when your team is batting, a loathsome Hyde when your team is pitching.

The counter-intuitive aspects of baseball which seem so inane to college football fans are the reasons baseball lives on. Yes, the defense does have the ball, and no, the pitcher's duel is not boring. When Joba Chamberlain wipes out the heart of Detroit's order, and Edwar Ramirez follows by throwing changeups that don't seem slow until you realize you struck out and the ball hasn't even hit the catcher's mitt yet, anyone with a heart can only rage with enthusiasm as the young guns are throwing the ball right by--or way in front of--the seasoned Tigers lineup.

There is nothing wrong with watching football or basketball or any other sport (save soccer). In fact, it could be argued that playing those sports is just as enjoyable or moreso (particularly given that I have played basketball my entire life). But for the James Bond flicks that are basketball games, there are the timeless baseball Godfathers. While football creates war movie epics, baseball crafts Citizen Kane, 2001 and Field of Dreams (the latter quite literally!). Not everyone udnerstands them, not everyone gets them, not everyone cares, but in a hundred years, no one will remember who Ethan Hunt is. I'm betting they'll remember who Dave Bowman is.

Call baseball elitist, call it esoteric, call it slow, call it an old man's game, call it an old game period, but just remember: Miguel Cabrera swung at an intent ball and won the game with it. That didn't require thought or muscles or reaction times. All it required was the puerile art of a kid who had played baseball his whole life, and knew he had done the same thing when he was eight years old.

Roger Clemens stuck his glove out. He is 45 years old. He probably did the same thing when he was ten. Here's to the ageless game, in every sense of those words.

~The Sports Maunderer~