As opening days in baseball are upon us, I get a familiar thought running through my head, which is “Maybe I should follow Major League Baseball more closely this year.” Seeing I’m much more of a hockey and football fan, baseball acts as a nice gap-filler when it comes to spectator sports.
I know better of course. The reality is that the baseball season is just so long and packed that it becomes nearly impossible to follow. Game times are all over the place and are back-to-back in some cases. Matinee games are the norm even during the week. All I can picture in those situations is the old Flintstones episode where Fred and Barney skip out of work to catch a game. In addition, the 162-game schedule allows teams to go on a twenty-game skid and still have a shot for the pennant. It is definitely a marathon and not a sprint.
But maybe that is the beauty of baseball that I never grasped.
In football, every game is important! Home games are must-win. Divisional games are must-win. Conference games are must-win. The whole season becomes a pressure cooker. Games are once a week to emphasize their importance (this is not the reason games are once a week I know, but it adds to the urgency).
Hockey has similar pressures. Even with an 82-game schedule, teams often find themselves in a situation where they look back on games blown in the first month of the season and wish to have them back. Although some games are deemed “meaningless” at the time they are played, they quickly add up.
A completely different dynamic exists in baseball. The downtime within games and an “oh well” attitude afforded to fans after a loss makes for a welcome low-stakes sporting environment. Perhaps the biggest point of contention for fans is the price of beer and food that has to be spent for sitting through a loss. Nonetheless, the ability to sit back at a game and talk, mull over player statistics, or bet on whether the hot dog or hamburger will win the race around the perimeter of the outfield is a luxury that should be embraced.
As I sit here and think of it, I do not remember the last time I saw a video of outraged and drunken baseball fans getting into a brawl at a regular season game because there was too much time to jaw at each other during the 7th inning stretch. Amazing what does not happen when fans can chill out a bit.
Baseball acts as a nice break from a society that embraces stress despite claims that we want to reduce stress in our lives as much as possible. I guess the “stress in our lives” should be, um, stressed. See, we do not want to be under stress, but we love to see others hot under the collar. If the coach of our favorite sports team does not make the playoffs or get to the championship game, then we want him/her fired. Reality television show contestants sabotage each other to eliminate one another, and we love it. Heck, cooking shows take pots and pans away from chefs just to see them figuratively crap their pants (or maybe literally, there is a lot of editing in those shows)! Oh, and that co-worker who takes too many vacations? Yeah, you hate them.
Stress is a weird thing, though. Theodore Roosevelt looks at stress as being essential to personal development. He established that the strenuous life was almost an obligation of man at the onset of the 20th century. It is hard to deny that stressful situations reshape who we are. Becoming more perseverant does not happen while on vacation. unless you break off from the group on that hike in the mountains, that pop quiz in survival may be unpleasant. Still, tough experiences and hurdles teach us how to overcome and find solutions. Those who seek an easy way out of problems and choose not to confront and work toward solutions are perhaps weak and compromised by others. It is a fight-or-flight situation.
The need to evolve socially and technologically is a response to uncertain conditions placed before us either by nature or our constructs. Man’s desire for the elimination of uncertainty and penchant for control is part of the root cause of our physical and intellectual strain. All I know is that we should seek ways to reduce more of the unnecessary strains. I suggest maybe following a sport that forgot to evolve, like baseball.
