Baseball: the love of the game

I have always had a fondness for the game of baseball. As a kid, I played minor league, but I also took my mitt and bat with me just about everywhere for a quick set-up game, whether it was before or after school, or during recess. Growing up in Connecticut, I followed the Yankees of the early 1960s and vividly remember when the Mets were introduced. As we moved across the country, I became a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Chicago Cubs, and eventually watched the rise of the Big Red Machine in Cincinnati. Frankly, I don’t think we’ll see another team as good as the 1976 Reds. They were very special.

I played coed softball leagues growing up. When I became a father, I coached boys’ baseball, girls’ softball, served on the local Little League board of directors, and was an umpire. My signature as a coach was to line up my kids at the infield foul line before a game and pledge allegiance to the flag. After all, it is America’s game. Interestingly, there were some coaches who were adamantly opposed to me doing this, but I see citizenship as an inherent part of the game.

I did not suffer under the illusion that my sons were going to be superstars and as such I focused on teaching the basics (hitting, fielding and pitching), teamwork and hopefully a love of the game. There is something magical about the game of baseball; the smell of the grass, the warmth of the sun on the back, the taste of the leather thread in the cowhide glove, the crack of the bat and the emotion of the play. You enjoy the camaraderie of your teammates, the accuracy of a perfect bunt, the tenacity of a runner stealing a base, and the grace of an infielder throwing out a runner or executing a double play flawlessly.

Baseball is a game of nuance and you can’t really appreciate it if you’ve never played it. As you approach home plate to bat, you see the fielders preparing to play with you, whether it’s deep, tight, or in a particular field. You take the cue from the third base coach, check the pitcher’s eyes, listen to the cheers of the parents, and throughout, your mind is constantly calculating all the variables involved. Your hands grip the bat as you step into the batter’s box. His body language tells the other team whether or not he can be intimidated. Finally, just before the pitcher makes the take on him, he spits. Translation, “Forward!”

There are also a lot of communications in a baseball game, both vocal and silent. The voice is quite obvious, silent communications are much more interesting. We’re all aware of the third-base coach doing weird hand turns to call the play, but there are also plenty of not-so-obvious subliminal cues, like a manager turning up his neck or crossing his legs. The communication between the pitcher and the catcher is also well known. The great Willie Mays stood out for his ability to study and steal the opposing team’s signals. It just takes a little focus and attention to detail.

When I was coaching Little League and my kids were hitting with one or more runners on base, I would suddenly yell from the dugout, “Red-22, Red-22.” It was really just a red herring as it meant absolutely nothing, but he made the other team nervous as they thought a tricky play was about to be made. My kids thought it was a riot.

As a Little League coach, he realizes he is having an impact on his young players when they begin to ask him more questions about the game, such as the meaning of the infield fly rule, how to keep a scorecard, how it is calculated the batting average. o ERA, the number of ways a runner can advance to first base (eight) or the number of ways to make an out (14), etc. It’s no wonder that baseball is a great game for trivia fans, as it has many facets. Casual viewers don’t really appreciate baseball as much as students of the game.

You know you have a love for the game when you collect baseball cards, not as a commodity, but just to have them; that you keep a precious baseball signed by your teammates many years ago; that you cannot bring yourself to throw away an old baseball bat or glove years after you have stopped using them, or; You completely understood what Pete Rose meant when he said, “I’d walk through hell in a gas suit to play baseball.”

It’s a great game.

Keep faith!