Baseball-Pondering the Possibilities
I was just thinking about baseball last week. I love baseball movies. I have mixed feelings about watching a baseball game. The culprit is the emotional toll the game takes on me. The anxiety of a 3/2 count or bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth amounts to non-participatory anxiety for me.
Yet, I watch again….and again. After reflecting on my long history with baseball, I believe that I return again and again because of the game itself; the thought process, the strategy, and the possibilities. In baseball, anything is possible. I’m sure that I’m not the first to say that. The Rookie is a movie based on pitcher, Jim Morris. The book, Dream Makers is his story. In an interview with Jonathan Drennan for The Guardian Sports Network Morris sums up his short, but inspiring career by saying “I was old (35), fat and had no muscle left in my arm”. He left his job as a science teacher to pitch 94mph fastballs for two years in major league baseball with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays His inspiration and hope in possibilities is best expressed in his own words, “…..anything is possible in this life and that things will get better. I’m living proof of that.”
Baseball is an education in possibility thinking wrapped up in (usually) nine innings of play. It is American in nature. In baseball we have history and mathematics. We have underdogs and hot shots. We mingle strategy seasoned with hope.
In A League Their Own ( a fictional account of the All-American Girls Baseball league) the manager, played by Tom Hanks, delivers a rough lesson on strategic thinking. One of his players (Evelyn) makes a throwing error in a crucial game. Leaping from the bench he gets right in her face …… “I couldn’t figure out why you would throw home when we’ve got a two-run lead. You let the tying run get on second and we lost the lead because of you. Now you start using your head. That’s the lump that’s three feet above your ass”. Shortly after that he delivers the now famous line “There’s no crying! There’s no crying in baseball”. But, that’s another story for another time.
There’s a lesson in logical thinking (if not logical, then wishful) delivered by Harrison Ford, playing the role of Branch Rickey in 42. Referring to hiring Jackie Robinson, he responds “He’s a Methodist, I’m a Methodist, God’s a Methodist. We can’t go wrong.”
In still another baseball movie; Field of Dreams, the character played by James Earl Jones sums it up saying “the one constant through the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has 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.”
Above all else, baseball causes us to think, to ponder, to evaluate. Each game is a new game. Each game requires a new strategy. Each game reminds us that (as a reporter once said) ….”baseball doesn’t care how big you are, or what religion you follow, it does not know how you voted, or the color of your skin, it simply states what kind of ballplayer you were on any particular day.”
Baseball---a lesson in possibilities.