A La Recherche' Du Temps Perdu

Many great writers slip in some French to show how erudite and sophisticated they or their characters are. A lot of mediocre writers do too.  My snippet of French is the title of Marcel Proust's massive unreadable masterpiece, 'A La Recherche' Du Temps Perdu' or in English 'Remembrance of Things Past',  sometimes translated as 'In Search of Lost Time'.  It goes on for 7 volumes and roughly 4000 pages.  It is unfathomable by mere mortals. I have tried, unsuccessfully, several times, never getting past Vol 1.

Remembrance of things past is perhaps an apt description of what I've been trying to do here. So ... boldly go .. my volume #1 (short form) 'Ma Recherche' Du Temps Perdu’.

I love baseball - have since I was old enough to throw a ball. Whenever I would head out on a summer’s day, usually on my Schwinn, I'd have my ragged baseball glove over the handlebars, hoping for serendipity of 3 or more others wanting to play at baseball.  I played high school, Legion, Town Team ball until my always limited but waning abilities forced a switch to slo-pitch softball.

Six decades later I still love baseball.  I love the crack of the bat - but oh I hate the ping of an aluminum bat. I love the thump of the ball hitting the catcher's mitt. I love the grace of a speedy outfielder running down a long fly ball.  I love the diving third baseman picking off a bullet down the line. I love a triple. I love the flowing beauty of a well-turned double play. I love a runner scoring with a perfect slide to avoid the tag.  I love a perfect throw to home plate from 300' feet away in centerfield nailing a runner trying to score. I love the greenness of a ballpark on a bright sunny afternoon or under the glow of lights with the players in white white uniforms. I love savoring the game with a brat and a beer.  

I love that no matter how many games you attend, you can almost always expect to see something you have never seen before - a no-hitter; an inside-the-park home run; a triple play; a walkoff loss from back-to-back infield errors; a somersaulting runner advancing to third; 3 innings without a ball in play (18 straight K's); a home run that bounces off an outfielder’s head over the fence...

I love that baseball is played in a "park", not a stadium. Most sports venues are not beautiful. Almost all baseball parks are. (Tampa Bay & The Metrodome excepted). Every park has uniform infield dimensions - 90' between bases, 60' 6" from pitcher's rubber to home plate. Beyond that most anything goes. Every field has different dimensions and usually some quirk. Fenway's green monster; TCF Bank's limestone overhang; Wrigley's ivy; Oracle Park's McCovey cove; Oakland Coliseum's several acres of foul territory; Yankee Stadium's right field short porch built for the Babe; Oriole Park's warehouse behind right field; and the long lost Polo Grounds with it's 485' fence in centerfield or the LA Coliseum with its 250' left field and 440' right field. Lowry's right field sloped so steeply you could only see half the right fielder from home plate.

I love that baseball has no clock to run out - although there are times I wish there were. Detractors say the game drags. But really, there is not enough time between pitches for the manager to make all the decisions needed.  What's the next pitch? Where should the infield/outfield be positioned? Hit and run?  Steal?  Bunt?  Pinch hit?  Kick dirt on the umpire? ...

But ..  baseball has changed drastically in the past 20 years.

Baseball used to be a strategy game with 2 field generals matching wits with lots of options. It is still a game of strategy but it’s a pretty simplistic one. Basically, station-to-station baseball and wait for a 3 run homer. Home runs rule the game, so much so that hitters with their upper-cut swings, launch angles and exit velocity to maximize fly balls have also made the strikeout the most common out, more than 41,000 in 2019, the most in history, roughly 25% of all outs made. e.g to date, Twins Miguel Sano has 49 K’s in 112 at bats. Pitchers are dominating. Strikeouts eat up time and combined with endless pitching changes, the average length of a game is over 3 hours. And the baseball owners apparently see this as an opportunity to sell more beer rather than an existential crisis for the game. Strikeouts are boring. Home runs are a brief pleasure or pain. This combination is destroying a beautiful game. 

As much as it pains me to write this sentence, my game is becoming unwatchable, something baseball diss’ers have proclaimed to me back when games were actually exciting. Although I cannot abandon this passion, I will watch less and I’m inclined to allocate my baseball budget to the Miesville Mudhens or Benson Plowboys or Hastings Hawks or Nimrod Gnats or Traverse City Pit Spitters or Rochester Honkers. 

MLB needs to be fixed. Let’s move the pitching rubber back a foot. Let’s move fences back 10’. Let’s make the designated hitter universal (yes, I am a traditionalist and loathed the DH. But hitters can’t even bunt anymore and pitchers, who haven’t had to hit since high school, are so inept at the plate there might as well be a “raise 3 fingers” for an automatic strikeout like for intentional walks.  So you see, I can change my mind. But don’t get me going on infield shifts or a free runner on 2nd in extra innings.

I fear Marcel & I might have unreadability in common.

Copyright ©  2021  Dave Hoplin