The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game – it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come. — Field of Dreams
Baseball Goes the Other Way
Baseball doesn’t follow the typical framework of most team sports.
The team with the ball is playing defense.
It’s a team sport, where no individual can determine the game, but the matchups are effectively one-on-one, pitcher vs batter.
Perhaps most relevant, at least from my perspective: the game is not measured by clocks. In fact, the runners circle the bases counter-clockwise, going against the grain of time.
(I’m grateful to my yoga teacher Kyle Henry for reminding me of this every week.)
How long does a baseball game last?
A standard game is nine innings. But maybe 8.5 innings, if the home-team is leading after the top of the 9th. Or maybe it goes into extra innings, if it’s tied at the bottom of the 9th.
You play a baseball game until the game is over.
So, how long does it last?
It depends on how long each inning lasts. Clocks and calendars don’t have any power here.
That’s the beauty of baseball. You get to the ballpark, you settle in, and you watch as the game unfolds.
What Makes Baseball Exciting
If you get up and walk around during the game, or even if you lose presence with what’s happening on the field, you do so at the risk of missing the big plays.
No clocks means no buzzer beaters, which means that a game-defining moment can happen any time.
The moment may come in the bottom of the 9th, but it also may come in the top of the 3rd.
The “exciting action” may be a big grand-slam or a walk-off home run, but it also may just as easily be a string of infield hits and a sacrifice fly to bring runners home. It could be a once-in-a-generation defensive play.
You don’t know what will happen, or when. It’s unpredictable.
That’s what makes it exciting.
These days, many people seem to be bored by baseball. Baseball has fallen out of favor in recent years, as faster sports with more “action” have claimed attention. Some people complain that the game is too long.
They want new rules to make it shorter so they can have certainty about how long the game will last. They don’t want to commit to a game of unknown duration.
They want more scoring and more home runs.
These things that people have complained about in recent years are what make baseball so great.
Anyone who thinks baseball without big home runs is boring has never tried to sit through a perfect game, which puts you on the edge of your seat even though nobody gets on base.
The magic and excitement of baseball is in the subtleties, in what’s not happening as much as what is happening.
Baseball is a game where even the best players fail far more often than they succeed. And the ones who get the ultimate honor — the Hall of Fame — aren’t necessarily the best in any one category. They have greatness that transcends the numbers of hits or wins or home runs.
When it is at its best, baseball is a game where character matters, where leaders earn their titles rather than being assigned their positions.
Baseball is Life
Baseball teaches us presence, patience, and persistence. It teaches us the power that comes from taking your time, pausing, and waiting for the right pitch to hit.
Good qualities to cultivate at any time, and certainly in a time like this.
Baseball is a game that emulates nature: it is measured by the cycles, not clocks. The cycle is a fractal, revealing itself in the shape of a season, an individual game, each inning, each runner’s trip around the bases, even each at bat.
Like nature, like the individual chapters in our own lives, we don’t know how long an at-bat, an inning, a game, or a team’s season will last. Some may be short and sweet, others may be long and soul-crushing.
But each eventually ends. The at-bat, the inning, the game, the season, is eventually over. And then the cycle begins again.
Coronavirus and Baseball
If you’ve given up on baseball, or if you’ve never learned to love the game in the first place, now is a good time to rekindle your love of America’s past-time.
The coronavirus pandemic is a baseball game:
We’re not even in the second inning of a nine-inning game at this point. — Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, discussing antibody tests for coronavirus, as quoted in The New York Times
And the famous James Earl Jones speech from Field of Dreams feels more relevant than ever. We are being given this moment in time to pause, to remember a time when life moved at a slower pace, when spending an afternoon at a baseball game was a worthy endeavor, just for the love of the game.
America been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.
The season may be on hold, but baseball is more relevant than ever.
If you’ve never seen Field of Dreams, watch it. This is not optional viewing.
Love it? Hate it? What do you think? Don't hold back...