Baseball On My Brain

I’m not sure how it is at your local baseball park…but here’s how it is at mine: a foul balls goes in front of the seats, and assuming a fan doesn’t get it, the ballgirl comes over, picks it up and gives it to a kid.

OK – no big deal, right?

Well what happens if the ball is hit pretty hard and a grown up makes a pretty good play on it but can’t find the handle? Does that person get the ball? Nope. Goes to a kid.

Look – I get the whole family-friendly deal…everyone goes home with a souvenir, children are our future mindset of my local club. But do we have to do it at the expense of the older folks? Flip the guy the ball that he made a play on and prevented from killing the kid in the row behind him if he had ducked. Don’t run it to the kid that came flying down the steps from row 30 and has cotton candy all over his trap.

And by the way…parents: clean your kid’s mouth when they’ve been gnawing on the blue cotton candy. Or better yet, teach them to do it, and teach them that they need to do it so they don’t look like a gluttonous fool. Thanks.

And grown-ups: don’t be the jerk who jumps up to intercept a ball being thrown to a kid in the stands. Look – we’re not as cute as we used to be, at least most of us aren’t…deal with it and let the kid catch the ball. I’m sick of jerkies like you getting booed and shamed into giving the ball to the kid it was intended for, all to a sudden round of applause. That’s a flop in my book…and fans: don’t cheer the yutz. You’re just making the problem worse.

I think that’s it for now. Check back soon because I’m sure they’ll be more.

…that I hate umpires with slow strike calls?

I’m watching Brian Runge call the Mariners-Orioles game right now, and I’m not going to get into his ball/strike calling ability, but he is painfully slow to make the call. When I play and when I watch, I just wish they’d call the strike quickly. Rip the bandage off, make the call, and let’s get on with it. Don’t give me any of this pregnant pause garbage.

That’s all for now.

I just finished reading the Savvy Girls’ new book, It Takes More Than Balls (find my review here) and as my brain started doing its thing, I wondered if there isn’t a backlash from the “hardcore” baseball fans coming.

When you stop and think about it – are we that much better off because of Stitch & Pitch night, Girls’ Night Out, the never ending stream of bobbleheads, blankets, and other such schwag?

I would say we’re not.

Now look – I get it. More people in the stands = more money coming into the ballpark = more revenue for the team, which hopefully = more competitive teams but definitely = more profits for the owners. I’m no dummy — I see how it works.

There’s also the argument that if you can give the spouse, family members and friends of the avid fan to come to the game, you’ll give the avid fan more reasons to come as well. Point well taken.

But what about the serious fan — the “heavy user” as the fast food industry refers to their best customers. Is baseball running the risk of driving away the fan who goes to dozens of games a year, has season tickets, buys a good amount of merchandise every season, reads the newspapers/magazines/websites/blogs, watches on TV and listens on the radio and now has an internet and/or satellite/cable subscription? When do those folks just say enough is enough, get the sign holders and singles nights out of the ballpark and let us watch our baseball in peace?

Since I can only speak for myself – I will.

I’ve been to ballgames with crowds of 30, 300, 3,000 and 30,000. I don’t care about the size of the crowd — that matters less to me than who’s there and why they showed up.

I’ve been to sellouts with only 10,000 people in a 45,000 seat stadium, all because a team was giving away a Beanie Baby. I still hate those things by the way, even though I have a few. But they’ll go down in toy history, for better or worse.

I went to a game last year where the guy sitting in front of me spent at least $20 to make a sign asking one of the broadcasters for “rally fries” which cost about $4.50 at the concession stand, but came with 20 seconds of local TV time. He’d proceed to hold his signs up like clockwork every half inning, hoping to get himself and his kids on TV. Needless to say when I asked the guy to put his sign down so I could see the field, he got all pissy as if I was ruining his night. God forbid you don’t get your fries and all that hard work with the markers and poster board goes all for not.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to bring back smoking at games or have a whole bunch of drunk and angry guys screaming at the players. That’s not the kind of of environment I want to see baseball become. But I’ll be honest, I could sure live without some of the peripheral junk that has become part of the baseball landscape, all in the name of bringing some extra folks to the park. For those of you who really appreciate baseball — the intricacies of the game, watching and understanding why a team won or lost, seeing the story of the season unfold — wouldn’t it be a blast to do it without dancing groundskeepers or hot dog tosses?

I won’t lie and say that the watching middle-aged lawn mowers and dirt sweepers get down to YMCA isn’t mildly entertaining. But would I stop going if they stopped dancing? Nope.

Would I stop going if I never got another bobblehead? Or if they didn’t play music when the batter came to the plate? Nope – I’d still be there, scorecard in hand and eyes and ears wide open.

I’m not there to get a massage, ride the carousel, or figure out what hat the ball is under. I’m there to watch baseball being played at it’s highest level, and God forbid anything get in the way of that.

Am I alone on this one? In your baseball heart of hearts – would you want to see the non-baseball stuff stripped down so that we could get back to the roots of the game? And if so – what do you think we need to do to make it happen? I certainly don’t want to stop going to games – so how do we make our opinions felt? Maybe I’m old-school, maybe I’m crazy — but I know I’m not alone.

Are you with me? Post your thoughts!

I came across this post as I was logging in the other day, and it just spurred me to respond.

My first was response was going to be an angry one, but I realized that wouldn’t be the most productive.

So I went back and re-read the post.

Then my response was going to be more along the line of psycho-analysis, which I don’t know much about, so scratch that.

Back to re-reading it.

Not sure exactly what to make of it – other than that it’s a vent session, and I’m a little less wound up about it than I was when I first read it. Which turns out to be a good life lesson. Instead of just blowing up about something when you first see/hear/read/think it, if you sit on it for a bit, you become a bit more level-headed and more apt to respond in a productive manner.

That being said – I love the fact that baseball doesn’t have a clock, It reminds us that life isn’t lived on the clock – it’s lived by the quality of your work. If you can work good and fast, all the better. If you can’t, then so be it. It’s not punishment if a game goes long or if it’s delayed by rain – although some could see it that way. But more importantly, it reminds us that none of us operates on our own schedule when you really get down to it.

Most of live by schedules of one sort or another – and when one part of that schedule, say a ballgame – doesn’t fit into our neatly Outlooked day, we get out-of-sorts about it. Sad, isn’t it?

I understand having to get up early — believe me, I understand it. But I also understand the lessons that baseball has to offer. And if anything – let it teach all of us that if we don’t like being held to someone else’s schedule, we should go out and make our own. When you think about it – none of those players, managers, umpires, or owners has any more control over the game as anyone else. If the rain falls and there’s no roof overhead, we’re all equally screwed. If I’m a pitcher and working fast but the other pitcher is taking his time of my teammates are stepping out of the box between every pitch and adjusting their batting gloves, well guess what? I’m screwed.

We live an interdependent life, and as much as we want to convince ourselves otherwise, we can’t escape it. Move to an island, be a hermit, and it’ll still rain on you every once in a while.

In the craziness of Opening Day/Week/Month, I neglected to encourage you to pick up a copy of the Grand Salami on your next visit to Safeco Field.

“Why should I pick up a copy of the Grand Salami?” Great question.

Because inside you’ll find the debut of my Baseball On My Brain column, one you’ll only find in the magazine. At least for the time being.

So pick one up – it’s $3 well spent.

That’s what this was saved as when I started it a while back. I meant to put it out there before Opening Day, but I missed it. Oh well – enjoy it now.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of working with a woman who is getting married and brings her planning to the office, you should relate to this story.

If you haven’t – you are a lucky person – and keep reading because you might relate to this as well.

I’ve become disgusted at what the wedding industry has become — a multi-billion dollar business focused on one day in a person’s life as opposed to the long-haul business of a marriage.

I got taken to see the movie “27 Dresses” while it was in theaters, and even though I didn’t like it, there was a good line in there about people who want weddings, not marriages. Seems there are people who want Opening Days and World Series, but not the regular season.

As someone who likes the long-term nature of a baseball season – Opening Day has become kind of trite. The fireworks, the pageantry, the casual fans bringing themselves to the game like people who show up at church just on Easter or Christmas – it all cheapens the event for me.

For the first time in several years I didn’t go to Spring Training this year – and while I thought I’d miss it, I really didn’t. I’ve become attached to other venues and leagues where the hype is a little less – and which I’m not broadcasting for fear they’ll get over run as well.

Games 2 and 3 of the season were very enjoyable despite cold weather – simply because it was folks who more or less wanted to be at a ballgame and there was no fireworks or excess hoopla.

I get that Opening Day is an event to be celebrated — don’t get me wrong. But maybe I’m an in the trenches kind of guy when you get down to my core. Maybe I enjoy the day-to-day more than the big events. All I know is that when the pageantry of Opening Day was over, I knew the season was really here.

Maybe I’ve OD’d on O.D.

You would think that with the first week of the 2008 baseball season upon us, my brain would be full of baseball topics, and it is. But it’s also been full of work topics – which have really run me down and made me want to do almost anything except sit in front of a computer even more than I already do.

However – I’m going to put a couple things out there that have been on my brain lately. I think I’ve been weighed down by the burden of trying to put these really great posts together as opposd to just what’s on my mind. Stay tuned for shorter posts, hopefully more frequently.

This question came up around the office the other day — would you pay to keep commercials off the radio? I read an article a while back about alumni groups who are giving large sums of money to their universities just so that buildings won’t get named. For instance – keep the School of Business called the School of Business; not the Jones School of Business, or even worse as some fear – the Jones Corporation School of Business. I’ll have to find the article – but I seem to recall it made the case that often times you can generate more money to keep something from happening as you could to make something happen. It’s an interesting proposition.

I think we all agree that sports on the radio and TV would be better without the commercial intrusions. Sponsored this and that, it all wears on you – but it’s the price for not having to pay to watch or listen to your local baseball team, short of if you have cable and/or the price of a TV set or radio. Overall, it’s not a bad deal.

But what if you could go to your local radio station with a plan to buy back some of the advertising time? Would it work? I was trying to do the math on it and how much it would cost to take a noticeable amount of commercial time out of a typical radio broadcast. It didn’t seem quite right, so I’m still playing with the numbers. However – I figured that to take 30 seconds out of each break in play by play – a total reduction of 9 minutes of commercial time, would cost in the area of $9000 or so in a medium to large size market. It would cost more in New York and less in Kansas City or Tampa.

That doesn’t seem to be feasible for most folks – but would 90 people be willing to donate $100 each? Maybe — although I’m not sure how the ask would be made and not make it sound like a pledge drive. It would seem to me that this would have to come from baseball fans organizing and planning how to make it work.  But ask your friends if they think it’s worth it. There’s always someone complaining about the amount of commercials on TV and radio — so would you be willing to put your money up to rein some of it in?

On another note, Bill James was featured on the Freakonomics blog on the New York Times website. Worth a read. If you missd his appearance on 60 Minutes on Sunday, 3/31/08, you can find it here.

Be sure to check out my review of Bill James’ new book The Bill James Goldmine 2008 at BaseballBookReview.com.

Other than that, the Mariners are 2-1, which is good. We’re without a closer, which isn’t good, but we had three good-to-great starts by our pitchers so far, which is good. Call it a wash, but I like it so far.

Enough of that – comment and I’ll be back soon.