An Ode to Baseball
With the 2024 MLB season ending: "How can you not be romantic about baseball?"
In an age where the NFL nearly triples the viewership of Major League Baseball, it is hard to envision an era when baseball was truly America’s pastime. It feels as if the game has lost its grip on the nation. The most common complaint held against baseball is the pace of play; I’ve heard the same phrase ad nauseam: "It’s so boring, nothing ever happens." In an era of unprecedented technology, where the world is at our fingertips at all times, it seems as if nothing can hold our attention. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have found that since 2003, our attention span has dropped by 67%. A mind wired for constant engagement and excitement struggles to enjoy the game of baseball. Games can easily last over three hours, with only 10% of the game constituting “action.” The novice fan may find the sport's intricacies and quirks daunting. Moreover, the plethora of statistics readily available and discussed may prove even more intimidating. Yet, for all the faults one can find in baseball, there is a reason it's permanently etched into the cultural fabric of our country. Babe Ruth, Dubble Bubble gum, sunflower seeds, Joe DiMaggio, chewing tobacco, hot dogs, dollar beer night, Cracker Jack, pine tar, leather mitts, chalk, rosin, and dirt. These images evoke Americana, a nostalgia for an inaccessible, romantic era that has seemingly passed us by. However, I contend that notion. Memories exist not as a reminder of what’s lost but as a reminder of what’s possible. Life has not passed us by. It is here, now, and accessible, just like baseball. Life can be romantic if you choose it to be, and so can baseball, if you let it.
After allowing yourself to embrace the romance of baseball, you encounter a certain aesthetic: an innate romanticization of baseball. The ballplayer, suntanned and spitting seeds, pounding their fist into their leather mitt, chattering at the opposing player at bat. The broad-chested, bare-knuckle ballplayer, like the mighty Casey in Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s immortal poem Casey at the Bat. Casey’s at-bat ends in infamy: “there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.” Yet, I find this capacity for catharsis within baseball to only fuel the romance of the sport. Moreover, the baseball season commences with the dawn of spring and concludes with the arrival of fall. Such coordination with the seasons enhances the romanticization of the sport.
Envision the following: As the frost of winter begins to melt under the newly anointed spring sun, ballplayers begin to loosen their arms and break in their gloves. Spring brings hope; the promises, failures, disasters, and all-for-naught efforts of the previous year are in the past. The sun is shining, and baseball is here to stay. The promise of a better year for yourself and your team makes you brim with aspiration; your idealism carries you into the summer months. As the sun grows ever more poignant and the sweat builds upon your brow, you find yourself doting. A light breeze makes your porch bearable as you recline in the only available shaded area. You turn the radio up, the announcer’s voice oscillating in conjunction with the natural ebbs and flows of the game, finally rising to a crescendo with just one crack of the bat.
Your team has caught a hot streak against all odds. They weren’t supposed to be doing this well, yet they are. The summer days are long, but the months are quick, and the time you swore would never end has finally brought the fall’s first cool wind. The once-flush trees are now, one by one, turning yellow and brittle. Your team has fallen off the deep end, struggling to keep it together as winter glances menacingly around the corner. How could this have happened? The year, once filled with such promise and intrigue, has only played a sick joke by repeating the same script once again. Finally, your team is eliminated, and the season ends. You relied on baseball, relied “on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive. And just when you need it most, it stops, and summer is gone.”
The leaves begin to fall off their branches, and all seems lost. You curse yourself, damning your childlike, irrational optimism that led you to believe this year could be any different. Winter nights seem colder, and the days grow shorter and shorter. With your heart broken into a million pieces, there seems to be no recourse. Yet, you continue pushing forward. With each passing day, the hurt becomes less palpable. The days become less cold. You begin reading the sports section again, priming yourself to get hurt once more. In the face of excruciating loss and hurt, baseball fans' wounds don’t calcify. Against all better judgment, baseball fans let the evergreen hope of spring wash over them—of a new season, a new chance. There’s always next year. What else is there to do except hope? What if this is the year? As the calendar turns and spring approaches, your recent heartbreak seems like ancient history. Baseball fans open themselves to the endless possibility of emotion that the baseball season and the year bring along.
The events of a year are hard to determine and impossible to predict. However, a stubborn commitment to relentless optimism and a shocking willingness to have one’s heart broken a million times only serve the baseball fan. As the 2024 Major League Baseball season comes to a close, and my Boston Red Sox sit at home during the playoffs, I find myself checking the Major League Baseball app unconsciously, only to remind myself of their absence. Coming off the heels of another mediocre finish, my heart is scorned, and I swear to never fall victim to the promise of spring again. Yet, I know, like last year and the year prior and for every year I can remember, my heart outlasts my rationality. No matter the conditions, the circumstances, the state of the team, spring brings forth a hope that stands in the way of all nihilistic arguments and beckons that this year will be different. Romance is not to be limited to a mere descriptor for Hallmark movies and Valentine’s Day cards, but a certain attitude about reality: staring in the face of the unceasing passage of time, the fear that one’s circumstances just won’t ever change, that things will never be different. Bleak attitudes lend to bleak results. So, as the Boston Red Sox finish in third place and miss the playoffs for the fifth time in six years, I refuse to allow winter to furnish an icy exterior for my heart. In the face of it all, I choose to be romantic about life, and about baseball.
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