Baseball

 

I mentioned this back in 2011, in a blog about lots of different sports, for which I devoted a paragraph to baseball.   Attending quite a few games in the recent past, an update may be in order.

 First off, I never attended a baseball game as a kid, back when the Orioles were playing in the prior stadium.  My family weren’t big on sports.  No Redskins games at RFK, nor any Bullets games at the Cap Centre (RIP).  We may have seen one hockey game there, the Caps vs. the Colorado Rockies. 

 A few years ago my buddy Dave and I saw the Orioles play against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium.  We were up high and behind home plate.  I recall we had a good time, but Dave felt the PA was a bit loud – “Abu Gharib level”. 

 More recently my brother has tickets to the Washington Nationals, whose stadium, brand new, is in Southwest DC near the Navy Yard, a few blocks away from the War College.  We saw at least one World Series game vs. the Astros, but the final game was in Houston – which we still watched, with everyone else, at the Nats stadium.   Lately I’ve been attending more of the current season games, and his seats are well situated, upper deck over by third base.  You get a good view of the field and you’re high enough up that the fans are less inclined to verbalize their thoughts and comments, incessantly so, to the players down below. 

 Last weekend we saw the Nats play the Orioles at Camden Yards.  We had been to Hammerjacks twice, then M&T Bank Stadium next door for the Metallica concert in May 2017, but never to Camden Yards.  A good experience, except for a heckler right behind us, a Nats fan, who would NOT SHUT UP.  You know, the kind of guy overly impressed with his own wit and verbosity, the kind of asshole who can’t enjoy the game without ruining the whole experience for everyone else around him.  At a concert this would be the 6’5” jackass who insists on standing front and center, blocking everyone else’s view and insisting that he has the right to stand wherever he wants.  Or the mosher who wants to smash into everyone else instead of watching the band itself. 

 I found the food at Nats Stadium to be aggressively bland, like deliberately bad and overpriced as “the experience”.  The pizza at Camden Yards was good, and it’s hard to screw up a bottle of Pepsi.  I suppose the “CHARGE!” and “MAKE SOME NOISE!” exhortations to the crowd are less objectionable elements of the experience.

 Race!  The Nats have four mascot-type “Presidents” with oversized heads race against each other. They seem to be George Washington (#1), Thomas Jefferson (#3), Abraham Lincoln (#16) and Theodore Roosevelt (#26).  For the Nats I would recommend they use the full range of 45 Presidents racing against each other.  Hell, have Grover Cleveland (#22) race against himself (#24).  Come on, pick some more obscure or oddball presidents for the race.  William Henry Harrison vs. his grandson Benjamin Harrison!  John Adams vs. his son John Quincy Adams!  George H.W. Bush vs. GWB!  Andrew Johnson vs. Lyndon Johnson!  Kennedy vs. Nixon!  Gerald Ford and Joe Biden stumbling after each other!  FDR in a wheel chair!   Have Alec Baldwin play Millard Fillmore – or Trump.  I’m sure that will push his buttons. 

 Impressions.  We all know how the game works, so here are my little tidbits.

1.         Time.  Football, basketball, hockey and soccer are all timed.  Aside from overtime, you know when the game will end.  NFL games last 3 hours, except for the Superb Bowl, which lasts 4, due to that halftime nonsense no one really cares about.  But baseball goes by innings.  It’s not over until the ninth inning – or extra innings if the game is tied.  Again, even when timed games go into overtime, the overtime is timed… know what I’m saying?  We saw the England vs. Italy game go to penalty kicks. 

2.         Ninth inning.  I was intrigued by this.  If the team at bat in the top of the inning finishes the ninth still losing, the game ends there.  If the team at bat in the bottom of the inning scores so much as one run more than the other team in the bottom of the ninth, the game ends there.

 3.        Fouls as strikes.  Here’s what really annoys me.  Fouls count as strikes, but not as the THIRD strike.  This means the batter can literally hit as many foul balls as he likes.   I’d rather speed the game up by allowing a foul ball to cause a strikeout.

4.         Scoring on defense.  Basketball, hockey and soccer don’t really have offense and defense; whichever team happens to have possession is on offense.  In football, a fumble or interception, especially when the team on offense is way back on its own side of the field, can be run in for a touchdown.  With baseball, there’s no way for the team on the field to score.  Its best case scenario is strikeouts or fly balls.  But we still have to wait for all those damn foul balls.

 As an adult, I haven’t played any baseball.  As a kid, we played in the youth leagues in Gaithersburg, which uses a pitching machine which put the ball straight across the plate.  Not sure I recall any batters being hit or walked.   More fun, though, was the Intellivision baseball game.