10 things I love about baseball

I’m 54, and I’ve been watching baseball since I was 6. My first memories of the game are some TV images of the Mets and of going to Shea with my dad. I apparently was at Tom Seaver’s near-perfect game against the Cubs, and I can remember wanting to be Tommie Agee as a kid, and then later wanting to be Felix Millan.

But why am I a fan. Here are some things I love about the game:  

• The Mets. You cannot be a Mets fan unless you are a committed baseball fan. The franchise’s history, as Hari Kondabolu pointed out on Edge of Sports, essentially sums up what it means to be human. It was the sad-sack of all sad-sacks, but somehow managed to win a World Series against one of the sport’s most talented teams. It descended into abject ineptitude not just once but several times, because its ownership opted to pinch pennies. It fielded one of the greatest squads to play, winning a World Series and then underachieving. Two of its greatest stars wasted their talents so greatly that they have become cautionary tales. I could go on with this. Suffice to say that being a Mets fan has caused me great joy, pain, agita, anger — which sums up what the game is about.
• The stolen base. The steal has fallen out of fashion thanks to the obsession with metrics, but there are few things in sports as remarkable as watching the baserunner, pitcher and catcher play cat and mouse, the pitcher hoping to keep the runner close in the hopes of giving his catcher a chance in case the runner takes off. Guys like Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran in their prime, Tim Raines and Rickey Henderson, Lou Brock, Maury Wills and so on, brought a dynamism to the game that I fear we may lose. The value of the steal when you watch someone like Noah Syndegaard pitch. Thor throws 100 mph with movement and a collection of unhittable secondary pitches that result in fewer baserunners. His weakness? Keeping runners close. So teams run, which means more runners in scoring position and a better chance to score.
• The triple. Back when Reyes was a baseball pup, his at bats were required viewing. Not  because he might launch one into the stratosphere, but because he might poke the ball into the rightfield corner setting off a race between Reyes and the fielders. Flying down the first-base line, cutting the bag with the precision of a wide receiver, revving to a new gear as he flew into second, peaking over his shoulder to see where the ball was, and then hitting hyperdrive as he exploded into third base — few things in sports can compare.
• Good pitching. I grew up watching Tom Seaver and then a young Dwight Gooden dominate. I loved it when Seaver and Steve Carlton would match up, when Fergie Jenkins would come to Shea, when a guy like Jack Morris would put his team on his back and pitch it to a title. One of the greatest moments in Mets lore was the game when Gooden and Fernando Valenzuela locked horns, tossing zeros inning upon inning upon inning.
• Personal flair. Baseball can be a bit corporate at times. Following the Yankee rules — no facial hair, keep your hair trim, and so on, does little more than force the game into a comformity that is unhealthy. Who do we remember, after all? Willie Mays and his basket catch; Ken Griffey Jr. taking batting practice with his cap on backward; Mark Fidrych talking to the ball; Luis Tiant’s crazy pitching windup; Al Hrabosky, the Mad Hungarian, and his aggressive facial hair; Oscar Gamble’s 2-foot Afro; the Red Sox and their long hair; the Mets’ trio of long-haired flame-throwers. I want players who are distinctive and seem to enjoy themselves.
• The bat flip. Imagine that it is the bottom of the ninth. Your team is down a run and there is a man on. There are two outs. A win clinches the division, or keeps you alive down the stretch, or is just a win. Adrenaline is pumping. You have two strikes on you and the pitcher delivers. You swing, connect and drive the ball into the stands. Two runs. You win. It is your stage. You are the hero. You preen a bit, strut, flip the bat — no different than some of the histrionics witnessed on the football field or basketball court following an important score. But in baseball, it is considered taboo. This is absurd. You just won the game with a dramatic home run and you react with an ostentatious display, a celebration, an expression of emotion. The game is fun. It is meaningful. You’re not a robot. Rock it. As a fan, as I said, enjoy yourself.
• The move away from artificial turf. While it did create a couple of the more distinctive teams in baseball history — mid-’70s Royals and mid-’80s Cardinals (both managed by Whitey Herzog), it was hard on the legs and appears to have shortened many careers.
• The pace. Baseball, to those who do not like it, is slow. But for me, it is the deliberate pace that makes it intriguing, gives it a literary feel. The game unfolds as a narrative, play by play. Each at bat is a narrative unto itself, each pitch having a purpose and setting up the next one. Each play leads to the next play. There are not a lot of moving parts. In this way, baseball is both the most team oriented and most individually oriented of the major team sports.
• The pace (part 2). This pace also allows the game to make sense on TV, radio and the Internet in a way that the other sports do not. The speed of the action in basketball — I love basketball, by the way — and the sheer number of moving parts make describing the action without a picture unsatisfying. Same goes for football — you can watch to see the big pass, but it helps to understand what the offensive and defensive lines are up to and so on.
• Statistics. I don’t mean the new metrics, which have some usefulness even if I am not a fan (see below). I love old-school stats. I essentially taught myself math and improved and perfected my math skills by being a bit of a stat geek. And I love that, for the most part, the stats are the same across eras. A strike out remains a strike out, even if it might occur in different situations. (The save, a stat category that appears to have undergone some revision over the years, is one of the exceptions.)

And, here are some of the things I dislike about the modern game:

• Sabremetrics and the influence the new stats have on the game. There are things that can be quantified, but not every action on the field can be. Consider the strike out — it is just an out, many in the metrics community say. But that’s not exactly true. If you put the ball in play, you always have a shot — an error can put you on first, the fielder might opt to let a running move up a base, and so on. When you strike out, you just strike out. My other criticism of the stats-obsessed nature of today’s game is that stats can be as biased as anything else. The numbers are the numbers, true. But the numbers we prioritize, the calculations we opt to make, the analysis of the numbers, all of this is done by humans with their own biases. Every stat involves someone making a choice — WAR assumes we can define an average replacement. Range-factor assumes we can define normal fielding range. Fielding independent pitching — well, that’s just an absurdity. Every pitcher makes use of the men behind him and the ball park in which he is pitching. If you have a stacked fielding team, you can pitch to contact. If not, your approach will change.
• The lack of complete games. I’m old-school on this. I understand why teams and the sport has moved away from this — getting fresher pitchers in earlier, lessening the number of pitches thrown means a pitcher can air it out more frequently, the batter’s chances grow the more times he sees a pitcher in a game. But I also think the game has lost something that cannot be quantified, something I think contributes to my own love of the game. Baseball has a mythos. The history of the game rises to myth and performances like Jack Morris in the 1991 World Series (a 10-inning complete game 1-0 win to give the Twins the series) are the stuff of legends.
• Roster construction. This is tied to my previous point, but teams carry too many pitchers, because they tend to use too many pitchers. The Mets at this moment have a four-man bench (one being a catcher who is rarely used off the bench), with 13 pitchers, and this is not unusual. Deep benches used to be the norm.
• The designated hitter. I think every player should have to play both offense and defense. It just how I feel.
• Not enough day games. I don’t want to see an end to night games, but it would be nice if baseball could schedule a few more daytime contests.
• The new intentional walk rule. Meant to speed up the game, it just removes an element of uncertainty.
• Instant replay. Umpires make mistakes — as we all do. Instant replay hasn’t addressed this so much as slowed the game down.
• Unwritten rules. Some make sense, but most do not. No bat flipping. No show boating. No bunting to break up a no-hitter. (What if the score is 1-0? Isn’t the batter’s job to get on base anyway possible?) The Latin American game — by this I mean the game as played in Spanish-speaking countries — is flashier. The same was the case with the old Negro Leagues. There is nothing wrong with this. Professional sports are entertainments and a certain amount of showmanship should be expected. Let the players be themselves. Stop trying to squeeze the modern game and the modern world into a 19th/early-20th-century box.
• ESPN announcers. They are awful. Just dreadful. ESPN would be better off contracting with the local announcing teams and using them.
• Baseball highlights. They can be fun, but they often distort what is being highlighted. The great catch often — not always — is the result of a bad read on a fly ball (I call this the Bo Jackson/Jose Canseco rule). In his heyday, a guy like Andruw Jones rarely made the highlights despite being acknowledged as the best defensive centerfielder of his era because he made everything look so easy.

Send me an e-mail.