Learning Baseball

I am a baseball novice. In India, the game is almost looked down upon, as though it is an unintelligent modification of cricket. In truth, the aversion is essentially a product of a lack of knowledge of the rules and history of baseball, as opposed to anything more nuanced. Even a basic understanding of baseball’s rules, though, is sufficient to appreciate that, although it’s a simple sport, it’s capable of producing not only riveting entertainment, but also debate at various theoretical and tactical levels.

I must admit that I have not served as any exception, until recently, to this general Indian aversion to baseball. The only times I saw the game were on highlights reels on ESPN’s Sportscenter. The home runs made for good viewing, but I wondered what the big deal was. Now I know or at least I think I do.

I moved to New York City, late July, to study journalism. One of my first tasks was to choose a neighborhood to cover for my class website from a plethora of uptown areas. In spite of my nonchalance – and at some levels, maybe even a dislike – towards baseball, I veered towards Highbridge, a small portion in The Bronx – the poorest of the city’s five boroughs – located on a sloping bend around Yankee Stadium, the historic home of the New York Yankees. Highbridge is, apparently, the most deprived congressional district in the whole of the United States and yet it is home to the world’s most valuable sports franchise. There is an anomaly to this that is disturbing at so many levels, making it a very good neighborhood for a journalist to cover. I would be lying, however, if I said that this incongruity was the reasoning behind my choice, for it was a decision, almost solely, based on the location of Yankee Stadium – if nothing else, I thought, I’d get to hang around one of the world’s most iconic stadia for a few months.

But why? I am no baseball fan. The Yankees don’t mean anything to me. Until very recently, I couldn’t give a diddlysquat about them. Yet, there is this unparalleled vibe that you get as a sports fan, from just being around a great arena – this feeling is by no means to be underestimated. It makes you feel part of a community, a community where sport is the one unifying factor. I’d taken only a glimpse of Yankee Stadium from a tinted window of a bus and that was enough to make my decision.

In the weeks that have followed, I’ve made many visits to the area, several times on game-days when hordes of supporters wearing Jeter and Sabathia jerseys congregate on the 161^st street subway stop. It is an occasion to behold – just sitting outside the station, watching fans fervently march toward the stadium gates. Each, expectant, excited and hopeful. There is a buzz to the place. The street vendors come alive, the local bars surrounding the stadium steam with people – it is almost like a ritual carnival experience.

When you see the sheer number of fanatics, it makes you think: “there has to surely be something about this sport?” And indeed, I can proclaim with an equal dose of embarrassment and revelation, there is. At many levels, this process – a continuing one – of watching and understanding a new sport has been weird. Over the years, I’ve grown to enjoy a variety of sports, but I can’t remember the last time I sought to pick up a new game, virtually from scratch. It is usually a process that has no clear, decisive beginning. At any rate, it has been many years since I endeavored to watch and understand an altogether new sport. As a child or as a teenager, it is easier to see a sport for what it is – in other words subtle nuances don’t often come into the process. Implicitly, maybe, an understanding of other sports impacts the process of learning a new one. But at 25, the experience is vastly different. Almost 20 years of watching a number of sports contributes directly to the process of learning about a new one.

I am not suggesting that I’ve compared each play in baseball that I’ve seen to other sports, but in grasping the several gradations of the game, my understanding of other sports has played a critical role. To better explain myself, in game 3 of the ongoing New York Yankees versus Detroit Tigers post-season American League Division Series, CC Sabathia, the lead Yankees pitcher, intentionally walked Miguel Cabrera in the bottom fifth inning. In other words, he allowed Cabrera to walk to first base by pitching the ball several feet away from home plate giving the Tigers a man on the first two bases with two out. This was a tactical ploy that I might not have immediately grasped had it not been for my general understanding of sport. Sabathia was tiring and the last thing he wanted was Cabrera swinging with a man on first base, especially considering that the Yankees were trailing by a run. It is, no doubt, a common strategy, but one that would have been harder, I presume, to understand for a sports novice, as opposed to a baseball novice. The play in itself may not be directly comparable to other sports, but it involves a thought process that is common across the sports world. It is these little characteristics that I’ve started to enjoy about baseball. On the face of it, it looks a prosaic, slow sport, but it has not merely a physical facet, but also a highly nuanced tactical one.

Numbers, play a more important role in the baseball than in perhaps any other sport. I am still not in a position to comment on the efficacy of the models deployed, but I am presently reading Alan Schwarz’s “The Numbers Game” to understand “baseball’s lifelong fascination with statistics.” I also watched Moneyball, the movie starring Brad Pitt and based on Michael Lewis’s 2003 book on the Oakland Athletics, its general manager, Billy Beane and the sabermetricapproach to assembling a baseball team. The movie, by itself, was scarcely enjoyable and has done little in adding to my appreciation of the sport.

Over and above the fascination offered by the strategic and numerical aspects of the game, though, is its pure beauty. David Schoenfield, writing for ESPN.com on Justin Verlander, the Tigers’ lead pitcher, reminisces about Roger Angell’s description of a Nolan Ryan fastball as a “liquid streak of white.” He said, “That has to be how opposing hitters have felt about Justin Verlander this season. Even if they do go to bed early the night before facing him, they must be thinking about liquid streaks of white or curveballs dropping from heaven or unhittable changeups or sliders that make you flail like a snowflake in a windstorm.” In game 3 on Monday, Verlander was nearly irrepressible. He pitched with variety and precision; his fastball, in particular, was a thing of beauty. He ramped it up at 100 mph even well into the game. His action and his release had a raw, grace to it that makes you want to keep watching him pitch. This was the Eureka moment for me – it isn’t as easy to be a batter, as it can sometimes seem to be.

I am learning more and more about the sport with each passing game, but what I’ve already come to recognize is its pure beauty. It has a subliminal elegance to it that can go unnoticed in the eyes of its most ardent followers and can be unfathomable for the nonbelievers. Thankfully, for me, I’m still somewhere in the limbo.

(First posted in http://www.criticaltwenties.in/sport/learning-baseball)

Lack of Quality

It was a case of ‘Bravo Bravo Fantastico’ for the second race running as Fernando Alonso stormed to his twenty first formula one victory at the Fuji Speedway earlier today. Alonso’s victory at the Japanese Grand Prix was as close to a perfect race as one can expect from a driver in a season which has thus far been characterized by the ineptness of the title challengers in sealing the driver’s championship. In spite of the fact that the title is far from decided going into the final two races of the season, this season in my opinion ranks as one of the worst ever of the recent past. Yes, we have had the spectacle of the night grand prix at Singapore and some swashbuckling action on the track, but the fact that neither Felipe Massa nor Lewis Hamilton has been able to close out the championship by taking advantage of the other’s mistakes has for me taken much of the glow out of this season. At times it has seemed like neither of them really wants to win the driver’s title with both electing to make ruinous decisions on the track as was evidenced with Hamilton’s move in the opening lap and Massa’s idiocy on the next at the Japanese Grand Prix today.

In my belief, if it had been either Schumacher or Alonso in Hamilton’s place, the title race would have been done and dusted by now. Would Schumacher have tried a daring move on a driver who was not competing with him for the title on the opening lap of the race? I think not. Sir Jackie Stewart once said that a driver cannot afford to make more than one blunder in a season if he harbours hopes of winning the championship. Hamilton and Massa though in spite of their numerous slip-ups this season are the main title challengers with two races to go and this is down to the simple fact that neither of them possesses the capabilities to close a championship out in the manner in which a true great can.

Hamilton for all his racing abilities rarely comes close to flawlessness on the track over the course of an entire race and often seems to crumble under pressure as he did today. He must be warned that he runs the risk of turning into a Jacques Villeneuve unless he can learn to make the right choices under pressure and curb his instinct to race when not necessary. Massa has never ever been considered at par with the likes of Raikkonen and Alonso and his performance at Japan clearly showed why. The manner of the performances from Hamilton and Massa over the last couple of races suggests to me that Robert Kubica who is only twelve points behind Hamilton may well be in with a chance going into the final two races of the season. At least Kubica has displayed the ability to perform under pressure and even if he fails to pull of an unlikely driver’s title, it would only be fair to describe him as the best driver of what has been an appalling season of formula one racing. 

Phelps the Greatest?

Eight gold medals in a single Olympics is quite simply phenomenal, but whether that makes Michael Phelps, the greatest ever Olympian is a different matter altogether. The debate of who is the greatest of all time is ubiquitous in arguments on any sport. A year back, people were saying that Federer is the greatest tennis player of all time, but he seems mortal at the moment losing to the likes of Gilles Simon and James Blake and who not. Even if he goes on to win a few more Grand Slams overtaking Pistol Pete in the process, comparing different eras is hardly viable and it would certainly be unfair on Bjorn Borg, Rod Laver or even Sampras for that matter to describe Federer as the greatest ever tennis player, just as it would be on Pele, Maradona, or Best to label Zidane as the greatest ever footballer.

Calling Phelps’ the single greatest Olympic athlete of all time as Mark Spitz has, not only means that Phelps would have to be greater than Usain Bolt, who was remarkable to say the very least in the 100 metres race, or Yelena Isinbayeva who is going from strength to strength in the pole vault, but would also mean that Phelps is greater than a Jesse Owens, a Nadia Comaneci or a Michael Johnson who were all outstanding athletes in their own right. Comparing different eras is bad enough, but comparing different sports is simply unworkable. Comparing the 100m butterfly to the triple jump or to the 110m hurdles is like comparing the paintings of Michelangelo to the compositions of Beethoven or to the writings of Shakespeare. Usain Bolt’s act was equally impressive and for my money was superior to Phelps’ performances in terms of the sheer viewing pleasure that it created. Isinbayeva took women’s pole vault to a whole new level yesterday and in her own words, ‘she no longer considers the record as a world record, but rather as merely a personal best’. Therefore, even terming Phelps’ achievement as the best at the Beijing Olympics will be unfair to the likes of Bolt and Isinbayeva who have performed remarkably in their respective events. It is difficult enough to call Phelps the greatest swimmer of all time, calling him the greatest Olympian of all time is in my opinion excessive and unjust.

No doubt Phelps’ success is one of gargantuan proportions. Winning eight gold medals in a single Olympics is no joke and he practically made it look like a walk in the park. Matt Slater of the BBC says that whilst Phelps, Schumacher, Woods and many more besides could all still be the greatest, it is a difficult argument to make stick for most people, which is why the majority inevitably come back to more accessible sports. I am not however too sure if even in a sport such as football, it is quite so uncomplicated to call someone as the greatest of all time. I for one would certainly decline any opportunity to christen anyone as the greatest Olympian of all time, but if I was asked about my favourite athlete at the Beijing Olympics, I would without hesitation point to Yelena Isinbayeva whose grace and elegance with the pole and her ability to churn out world records for fun is beyond belief. Michael Phelps, eat your heart out.

Tour de Dope

As I was reading the news on Cadel Evans claiming the yellow jersey after the 10th stage of the Tour de France, I was wondering when the first allegation of drug abuse by Evans would surface, if it already hasn’t. The thought is no doubt quite pathetic, as Evans has probably performed admirably to win the honour of donning the yellow jersey, yet it is something that cannot but surface considering the present state of cycling as a sport. In my opinion, which I am sure most people would agree with, cycling has lost all its credibility; in particular after last year’s Tour de France which was ridden with doping scandals. Although Lance Armstrong, a seven time winner of the Tour de France has never been found guilty of consuming performance enhancing drugs, he has still had a host of doping allegations levied against him. There must surely be something wrong about a sport whose greatest champion has a multitude of cheating charges against him.

I am certain the Tour de France is a cracking contest and makes for enthralling viewing, not least for cycling enthusiasts. But a competition which is almost always subject to controversies that go to the very root of the performance of a participant, somehow fails to appeal to my interests. There are of course several arguments against my viewpoint, one of which is that cheating is prevalent in almost all sports. The question of how I can watch cricket, football or even tennis these days, with all the match fixing scandals is certainly valid. But somehow whilst cheating is perhaps prevalent in these sports, the overall impact that it has had on the sport doesn’t compare with what doping has done to cycling.

Even if Azharuddin is indeed guilty of match fixing, the beauty of his batting will never wear away in the minds of the viewers. But if a cyclist is found guilty of doping, however brilliant his performance was, the greatness of his very skills are put in doubt by the fact that he cheated. I am not too sure if my propositions are logically perfect, considering that I am more than a little confused about my whole standpoint. For instance, it might be argued that if cricket matches are in fact fixed, Azhar was able to bat so beautifully only because the bowlers bowled poorly on purpose. But I do believe that if cheating does exist in immense proportions in tennis, football and cricket, the data to corroborate the same is certainly inadequate. Whereas in a sport such as cycling, allegations of cheating are often in the forefront and this in my opinion is causing the erosion of the whole sport.

Doping and cycling somehow seem to go hand in hand and this leads to discrediting of the excellent performances of many clean cyclists in the eyes of cynics such as me. There is an urgent need for reforms within the sport if it wants to continue generating the kind of keen interest which it deserves. I am not entirely sure about the solutions to the crisis, as the problem as is evident to us is only the tip of the iceberg. There is apparently enough data to suggest that only a small percentage of cheats are being caught by the authorities. There is also however another interesting line of argument which suggests that ‘if you test, you find’ and that since cycling is the sport where the maximum amount of dope testing is carried forward, it contains the most number of offenders. Even if this is true, it doesn’t take away from the fact that a large number of cyclists are found guilty of doping every year, which does no good to the reputation of the sport. Authorities need to act fast to save the sport from declining further into the abyss of disgrace.