Baseball reminded us last night of why America’s past time will still and may always be better than football in America. In the waning moments of epic collapses provided by the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves we were shown what makes baseball great. In a world of full of instant replays, 1 day playoffs, and 3 day negotiations of gazillion dollars contracts baseball stands out for getting it right.
Uncle Ben’s Minute Rice surprisingly takes 10 minutes to make(read the box). Ramon Noodles takes 5 minutes to “cook”. Elway’s “Drive” took less than 10 minutes. Montana to Clark took a few seconds. While many of the greatest moments in football take several seconds to a couple of minutes to occur they pale in comparison to the length of baseball’s. The American public didn’t have to wait several seconds for Hanks Aaron’s 715th home-run to fly over the wall at Atlanta’s Fulton-County Stadium. Sports fans had to wait the 20 years and 6 days of Aaron’s career before that fateful day to see it happen. In another instance it took Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson 12 years and 23 days to break Lou Brock’s all time stolen bases record in 1991. Not exactly Montana to Clark.
The revenue and ratings keep going up for the NFL. Baseball may have some catching up to do but, only in those categories. While the NFL celebrated their birth in 1920, Major League Baseball was already 45 years old. The legend and lore which surrounds America’s past time dwarfs the NFL’s. The NFL is a modern day Roman Coliseum for America with all the violence and trimmings without WWE’s daytime soap drama to go along with it. Major League Baseball has been and will remain America’s continually Shakespearean nod to sport. While the gladiator image is placed upon the modern day football player who is looking to reach new conquests and touch the limit of our psyche with bone jarring hits, the baseball player stands in stark contrast. Long past is the days where one could look West and see the lean, hardened, weathered cowboy striking out to new frontiers. One can imagine a man looking towards a sun baked land hoping to see redemption and a new start in a unfamiliar place. That idealistic image of the quintessential frontiersman hardened by the battles of life has now been replaced in many aspects by the silhouette of a pitcher. He is already aged beyond his years by the baseball diamond which engulfs him. He stand in the loneliness of mound and a monumental task that stands before him 60 feet away. It’s a hearkening call back to days of dueling pistols and chivalry that went to the way side with the advent of steam engines. Beneath the visible current of fans, media, and the many distractions there is more than a pitcher or batter that stands before us. What undercurrent that runs beneath the visible is an aged old one. A man who stands before all the world to see fighting his demons, his past, his age, and his time seeking redemption or looking to prove his own worth. The reason we remember names like Kirk Gibson, Hank Aaron, Aaron Boone, and Bobby Thomson is the same reason why baseball will always be a giant in the American psyche.
While the St. Louis Cardinals and Tampa Bay Devil Rays celebrated their improbably redemption we were reminded about what makes this game so great. Somewhere in one of the losing dugouts is a man who’s personal loss and battle is yet to be finished. That player’s eventual triumph and resurrection would be what William Shakespeare would write about. Luckily for us, we will be able to see it played out on one of America’s holiest places, the baseball diamond. When that fateful day comes, it will be something that will fall into legend and lore, that no other sport will be able to come close to.
