Durham Bulls. They are doing well again this year, and all Durhamites have hopes for another "World Series" victory. But as I was enjoying the atmosphere of classic baseball and watching these excellent players apply their skills, I couldn't but think about the tempo of the game and its accurate reflection of what all of us experience every day in our lives. The tempo of life.
You see, baseball has a unique tempo, that no other sport has, that reflects everyday living. I'm convinced that this is one reason that it is the National Pastime because we sense this familiar rhythm when we attend a game During a basketball game, we have to keep our eyes glued to the court, otherwise we might miss a critical moment of the action. Basketball is almost ALL action, but life isn't, and either is baseball.
Baseball is a slow, and sometimes routine, and one might even say boring for some. Pitch the ball, catch the ball, throw the ball back. Pitch the ball, catch the ball, throw the ball back. Pitch the ball, catch the ball, pitch the ball, hit the ball to the second baseman, and throw him out. Pitch the ball, etc. It goes on. Get up, go to work, come home, watch the news, and go to bed. Get up, go to work, come home, watch the news, and go to bed. Get up, need I belabor the point? I don't think so.
In life as in baseball, every once in a while something happens, and all hell breaks loose. Can I mention 911, Pearl Harbor, 1929 crash? I could go on. In baseball it's the line drive over the shortstop's head with a man on second. When this happens everyone on the field must react to the incident, and figure out how to get out of it. Baseball is a slow, relentless unfolding of events marked by "short" bursts of real "action." When I played high school baseball, I started out in left field, but was so bored, I moved to first base. Just the right amount of action.
You can sit with a friend at a baseball game, and, during the game, have a nice in-depth conversation about multiple topics, but you can't to that at a basketball game, or a soccer match, because there is too much "action." In this sense, compared to life, all this action is artificial. If life had this much action, we would end up in the hospital.
This tempo I am talking about is something that we should not tamper with. If we do, it will take away one of baseball's treasures: a familiar tempo we can all "dance to" as we sit and feel a baseball story develop during an afternoon's game.
One clearly developing threat to this tempo and this national game is the instant replay of questionable calls by the referee. It is going on in most sports now, and has begun to creep into baseball with the review of questionable home runs. That's enough, and let's not go any further with this in baseball. Imagine the first base calls, or the slides into home, or even the individual pitch that isn't certain, should we stop the game and review that "call"? What will "instant replay" do the rhythm of the game but ruin it.
Life isn't certain, and, the vast majority of the times, we don't get to review or change decisions we make in life either. Uncertainty is something we live with every day, and trying to eliminate it from baseball will surely cripple one of it's major appeals: that touch of uncertainty that adds the spice of surprise to the play.
This drive to "review" calls is another example of questioning of authority, isn't it? Unfortunately, with the exposed nature of many of our authority figures today, I guess we should question it. But with baseball, leaving that element of uncertainty there adds that dollop of the unknown that pervades all of our earthly travels: some good, some not so good. It just makes the experience of the game more real.
I guess there are some who want to know the "truth" of each encounter on the ball field. I think the enjoyment of the game is more important, and stopping the game to review a questionable call will remove one of baseball's appeal to all of us: a familiar tempo we can dance to. Finally, is it THAT important anyway? To most of us it really isn't, and if it is I suggest you "get a life."
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