Miles's blog

This blog is NOT about Tim Tebow or Peyton Manning.

I spent a few days in Orlando watching spring training baseball.  My brother has a house there and his son and daughter-in-law live nearby.  They bought these homes when the market was its most depressed, and they scored incredible deals.  

The baseball was fun, but very much different than watching a regular-season game.  The teams are not playing to win, only a few regulars played at all, and most of them not the entire game.  The teams change pitchers all the time, so by the end of the game the field is filled with minor leaguers, has-beens, and never-will-be’s.  During one game the Astros batted numbers 90, 91, and 95 in order.  

There were a few things I took away from watching spring training:

·        Can we please start the season?  I am already sick of watching games that don’t count between players who aren’t regulars in situations where neither team is trying to win and they will just settle for a tie.

·        Baseball players are big.  I knew this, but standing close to them one cannot help but be impressed with their size and strength.

·        But you don’t have to be big to play baseball.  Houston’s starting second baseman is Jose Altuve.  He is listed at 5’5”, but my brother swears he is 5’2”.  Before you laugh, he hit .380 in the minors last season, and 12 home runs altogether.  Ironically enough, he rarely walks.

·        The game is too great to ruin.  The commissioner and the owners in their never-ending search for the last possible penny to wring out of a great sport, have installed many new features (expanded playoffs, games on foreign soil, replay, World Series games ending after midnight) which sorely test my love for the sport.  And yet, when I sit in the stands everything good about the game (see, James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams) comes roaring back. 

·        People who think baseball is boring are missing the beauty of the game.  Most have not been properly trained to appreciate the game, and people confuse how baseball is played from the essence of the game.  Today’s game is often played boringly, but the game itself is rarely boring (only when the pitchers cannot throw strikes).  But no matter what you think of baseball, sitting in the shade on a sunny afternoon, eating shaved ice, while watching a baseball game unfold is the closest to heaven I will ever come. 

·        Children today have been raised to be selfish mercenaries.  They scream to get baseballs and autographs and express their entitlement to these rewards.  Almost none of them actually watch the game itself and they seem disinterested in what is taking place on the field.  The majesty of a home run, the excitement of a blazing fastball, and the beauty of a double play are meaningless to them as long as somebody gives them a ball.

·        That last is an outgrowth of the current culture of baseball, which is about “me” at all times.  Baseball fans these days are more concerned with the temperature of their beer than the ability of their teams.  They spend more time seeking out a vendor or standing in line at a concession stand than checking the scoreboard.  I am willing to bet that 75 percent of the people in the stands do not know the score in most stadiums.  Many, many people watch baseball only to keep track of their fantasy teams so they understand little about the playing of the game despite voluminous knowledge of statistics which have no context for them.  They go to work, I think, not to revel in the success of “their” Rockies, Diamondbacks or White Sox, but to crow about their fantasy team’s pitcher who threw eight shutout innings in a loss.

·        Keeping score is a sublime art, practiced by a few cultists like myself.  We are becoming more like people who wind watches or write letters.  Sure, ESPN sells an app for keeping score, you will never see me use it.  Seeing my scorebook in my handwriting is my hobby and is just as precious to me as the creations of those who hand-make jewelry or stain glass. 

·        Don’t underestimate the pleasures of good concessions.  The prices are outrageous, the lines frustrating, and the nutritional value nonexistent, but hotdogs, beer, ice cream, and shaved ice are gourmet food in a baseball stadium.

·        The prices have gotten egregious.  Over $30 for spring training, plus $7 to park.  Is there no end to what baby boomers will pay for entertainment?