We are in the heart of summer, and to a lot of people, that can mean only one thing: we are also in the heart of the baseball season. Summer is heaven for baseball fans; you'll see them outside playing catch, you'll see them picking up newspapers just so they can look at the standings, you'll see them hanging out at bars, staring intently at the TV hanging over the bar and ogling the spectacular left field basket catch that made the highlight reel.
Baseball fans are different from any other kind of sports fan. You can see it in the way they watch movies. A real baseball fan, no matter how manly they act, will always tear up at the end of "Field of Dreams." The retort to this is always, "But football fans always cry at the end of 'Brian's Song'." This is true, but everyone cries at the end of "Brian's Song." That's the natural guttural response.
Baseball fans cry at the end of "Field of Dreams" because Kevin Costner asks his dad to play catch. There's no real logical reason why that should evoke such a strong emotion in a viewer, but yet to a baseball fan who has a father, this makes perfect sense. Baseball fans get more distraught over ideas and concepts than they do over actual tangible things.
The heartbreaking moment didn't come when Lou Gehrig died; it came when he gave his speech at Yankee Stadium.
Tracing its roots back to the Civil War, baseball also has a sense of history that distinguishes it from other sports. Teams have a sense of dynasty, and their rises and falls are recorded throughout the past hundred years. There are the perennial winners and losers. In fact, the Philadelphia Phillies are currently 14 losses away from 10,000 franchise losses. Some people would see this as a failure, but baseball fans look at it as a commitment to the tradition of failure.
Every team and every player has an assigned niche, some role to play in the grand scheme of things. These are the subtle nuances that define baseball fandom, yet it is also what drives many people away from baseball.
Last week I was sitting around with one of my friends who is not a baseball fan, and he was trying to get me to explain to him how I could be so interested in such a complicated game that seems to make no sense. I had to explain to him that baseball was interesting because it is complicated.
I started comparing baseball to professional wrestling and making lame analogies. I compared George Steinbrenner to Vince McMahon and his dictator-like managerial style. I likened Roger Clemens to Stone Cold Steve Austin - two overpaid Texans who should have packed it up a long time ago, despite their lingering superstar status. I called Barry Bonds the Million Dollar Man, because everyone hates him. I equated Derek Jeter with The Rock - two prettyboys at the top of their game who you don't really want to like, even though you do.
And as I was doing this, I had to stop and think to myself, "Why am I comparing baseball, something I love, with something I think is trite and stupid and haven't watched in six years?" And I realized that it is because baseball's themes are universal. I could compare baseball to anything. I could compare baseball to the grocery store (The Cubs are the cereal aisle: all flash and marketing, but no substance).
The ideas in baseball relate to anything. It's about the grand slam, the triple play, the perfect game. Baseball is about trying to reach the unattainable, and that's why it's America's National Pastime.
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