BASEBALL IS THE GREATEST GAME
by
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This book is a thesis. A thesis tries to prove something, or introduce original thought, or both. It attempts to advance an argument about a specific point, and the case I wish to advance in this thesis is that baseball is the greatest game of all. By greatest, I don’t mean most popular. Great and popular aren’t necessarily the same. After all, Americans don’t have a reputation for the highest taste. But if there was a debate between baseball—our greatest game—and football—reportedly our most popular—over which sport should be declared the National Pastime, baseball would have such an unbeatable lead by the debate’s second round the judges could go home. But, of course, there is no such thing as an unbeatable lead in baseball—“It ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” as Yogi Berra said—and the remaining rounds would be played anyway to give the football debaters a hopeless chance of catching up. If their side had been ahead in the late rounds, they would have tried to run out the clock. And with that, I make the first point of my thesis. Baseball’s 1969 World Series was a classic. The Series pitted the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles against the Cinderella New York Mets. But after the Series’ first four games, two of which were played in Baltimore’s unfriendly Memorial Stadium, the Mets led three games to one and were a single win away from a stunning upset and their first championship. In Game 5,which was played in New York, the Orioles took a 3-0 lead into the late innings and appeared to have the game won. But the Mets tied the score in the 7th and scored twice in the 8th to secure a 5-3 victory and the crown. In his postgame interview Oriole manager Earl Weaver was asked if he hadn’t thought the Orioles would hold onto their lead late in the game and bring the series back to Baltimore where they could win Games 6 and 7. “You can never do that in baseball,” Weaver replied. “You can’t sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You’ve got to throw the ball over the plate and give the other man his chance. That’s why baseball is the greatest game of them all.” There is no clock in baseball. Its games are not measured by time. Theoretically, a game can last forever, with both teams given an equal number of outs. In that way, the game is highly democratic. It means that no lead is so great the losing team can’t come from behind and win. “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over,”means that in the absence of a clock the game is played until somebody wins. Yogi was brilliant. He and Earl were saying the same thing, that a team doesn’t lose any of its allotted 27 outs just because time ran out. This thesis isn’t just about the major leagues; it’s about baseball played at any level. The game’s gifts are felt at every level. I once listened to a football fan complain that baseball was boring, its games were too slow, and there was a lot of standing around with nothing going on. My reply was football has too much standing around. After completing a play that lasts four to five seconds, football players go into secret huddles for the next twenty. I referred to columnist George Will’s famous line. “Football combines the two worst features of modern American life: violence punctuated by a committee meeting.” Then I got serious. I said baseball is not slow. It is a leisurely game played with interludes of explosive speed. Stolen bases and triples are two of the most exciting things to watch in all of sports. The leisure leaves time for contemplation and analysis. In between baseball’s action moments important decisions are being made by every player on the field and a curious fan can lean forward in his seat and speculate what they are. What kind of pitch will the pitcher throw? Why is the right fielder playing where he is? Is the batter going to bunt to advance the baserunners? There is suspense and anticipation as the pitcher comes to his stretch before delivering every pitch. When a batter puts a ball in play, everything happens at once. But—and here’s another reason why the game is the greatest—the fan takes it all in. He follows the ball and traces what every player involved in the play does. The outfielder chases after it. The runners round the bases. The pitcher backs up third base. The fan sees the entire play from start to finish without missing any of it and when it is over knows exactly what happened and why it happened because he was able to understand it all. The pitcher hung a curve. The outfielder missed the cutoff man. The third base coach waved a runner to a certain death at home plate. The fan saw all of this. There’s a lot going in football but its fans aren’t privy to it. After a football play is over and twenty-two guys pull themselves up from a pile, fans can’t tell why the play turned out as it did. They think they can. But unless they’re sitting at home in front of their TV with a color analyst and instant replay to show them what they missed, they really don’t know. Football has to be watched on TV if a fan is to understand what happened. If you don’t believe me, then answer this: when a football coach answers a reporter’s question after a game by saying, “I won’t know until I see the films”, where does that leave the fan?
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About the Book
Baseball Is The Greatest Game is a thesis proving that baseball is our greatest game and should be regarded as our only National Pastime. Besides being a pastoral game of great beauty—a double play is like ballet, the most graceful thing to watch in any team sport— baseball is attendant to our culture and history like no other. It matches the seasons and rhythms of our lives, coming to us each year with our rising hopes in the spring and leaving us as we retreat into the cold certainty of fall. Like no other sport, baseball has drawn the affections of our finest writers. Besides noted baseball scribes Roger Angel, Roger Kahn, and Thomas Boswell, celebrated authors like Barnard Malamud, Phillip Roth, and W.P. Kinsella have been inspired to write works of fiction about baseball that belong on the bookshelves of great literature. Baseball doesn’t forget its past. It comes back to us over and over on a timeless continuum that allows us to admire and compare the game’s present heroes and their accomplishments with all who have gone on before. Most of all, baseball is fun.
About the Author
Ted Field is the author of The Well (a novel), The Christmas Stories (a collection of essays), and American Trail (a novel). He attended his first Major League baseball game in 1958 and in the many years since has been an avid fan enjoying the game played at all levels. After his fourth visit to Baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Ted was inspired to combine his views about baseball’s place in our culture and history with what he read from great baseball writers like Roger Angel and Thomas Boswell, and write the definitive thesis that proves why baseball is the greatest game and our true National Pastime. Past the age of 70, Ted still collects baseball cards. He recalls advice he got from his father many years ago, when he told Ted on his 12th birthday that “ twelve is a tough age for a boy because he’s too young for girls and too old for baseball cards.” He wishes he could tell his father how mistaken he was, but admit that maybe a boy is always too young for girls. Ted and his wife live in Minnesota cheering for the Twins.