All right. So Abbot and Costello isn't exactly what might be considered poetry on the average (though their cadence on that piece is absolutely gorgeous - it almost makes me wish I'd had internet access when I was in high school so I could find the text of Who's On First and do it in forensics). And I still want to know who's in right field. (No! Who's playing first!) But that's beside the point. (For all I know, it might well be Beside The Point in right, come to think of it. Unless Naturally's in right, and Beside the Point's on the bench.) (And I want to know if Yesterday pitches relief.)
But I digress.
There is a poetic elegance to baseball that I have not seen matched in any other sport. From "Casey at the Bat" and Charlie Brown's "Dear Pen Pal" rendition of his heartbreaking loss, to "Who's On First" and "Center Field," baseball has inspired an incredible range of creative output. There is an elegance to the game that lends itself well to the lyric romanticism of music and poetry, in a way I don't see matched in any other sport.
I read somewhere once that baseball is the only sport whose fundamental rules of play cannot be explained in a thirty-second commentary. It amuses me that this is actually the case, when I sit back and think of it, because I've always understood baseball, more or less, so far as I can remember. Most of the sequence of gameplay seems to have seeped into my mind when I was young and impressionable (though the arcana of the statistics are requiring conscious study from me now).
I don't understand the people who say that baseball is a slow game. The pacing is, yes, different from other games, but it is not, so far as I'm capable of judging, slow. (Commercial breaks are slow. Not the game.) I know there are people who don't follow sports (and for the most part, I'm one of them), I know there are people who don't like baseball in specific, but slow? I don't understand. It's beautiful.
There's a sort of aura of high drama to a good baseball game, and even a bad one can achieve moments of grand comedy. Each moment the game continues is a part of these acts, from the battle of skills between pitcher and batter, to the intricate meshwork of the defense, to the glory of a well-hit ball. Home runs aren't why I love baseball, even if there is that arching mathematical purity to their arc, the simple elegance of that short-circuiting of the possibility of defense.
In fact, I'm not as obsessive about offensive numbers and offensive plays as I might be. There's something really wonderful about seeing the hits rack up, that's to be certain - the brainrattling thunder of the bats in Game 3 was really pretty to see, and, of course, you can't win a game without offense. But offensive numbers don't mean that much to me, not in a visceral sense, at least. (Then again, no numbers really do, stat-wise; they miss so much of the game.) I do think that there's too much emphasis put on offensive numbers in fandom, but since they're easy to quantify, I understand why it's the case.
The at-bat is a duel of wits between pitcher and batter. Now, I know I'm not capable of really appreciating a pitcher, because I can't quite conceptualize the skill involved in getting the ball across the plate with that much accuracy. I've more of an understanding of being a batter, though it's quite certain I've never faced anything like a major league pitcher. But it comes down to focus and the duel of skills - the pitcher trying to disturb the batter's rhythm and expectations, the batter doing the same to the pitcher, and everything coming down to the ability of the batter to make contact with the pitcher's ball. And beyond that contact, being able to place it somewhere, to get it somewhere where the defense won't field it, to get onto the base. And then the next duel happens, and the next, until someone gets home, eventually. But the hitting itself, except on the home run, is only the first step, and so much depends on who hits next. And after that. And after that... if the inning goes so long.
A well-placed ball is beautiful, when it's hit, when it's actually a successful play for the offense. Part of the beauty of it comes from the rarity - it's difficult, after all, to get past first the pitcher and then the complicated mesh of the defense. Skill is vital, not only one's own, but that of one's teammates - a baseball team has to lean on each player individually for the offense, in his turn, and sometimes it comes down to that last, vital moment, when there's someone either known for their ability, or not known because of the lack of that offensive power, on whose shoulders the game rests. Bucky Dent.
It's the defense, though, that I love to see. There's so much there to see, and the aesthetic is so varied and complicated. Outfielders who seem to always be magically under the high fly balls as they sail deep and away, outfielders making diving catches. Quick plays in the infield, leaps, hops, and then again those little snapped balls that go right back to the pitcher, who can take his time doing an easy lob to first. Then there are the missed catches, the missed throws, the moments of tension, the close plays, the inevitable arguments with the umpires about the close plays.
While I say that Pedro Martinez stands at the right hand of the baseball gods, I mean it - especially in the sense that he's operating on a level that I can't quite manage to grasp. There's a sort of rarefied incomprehension of capability that I suffer from when dealing with the concept of pitching. I can't see it or understand it, sort of like quantum physics; I can only see the measurable effects. K. K. K.
Fielding I can see and understand. And it can be truly beautiful. Even an average, routine, normal play is a form of art; the art comes in the smoothness, the interactions of players, the arc of the ball. And the exceptional plays are gorgeous, where the effort seems almost supernatural. I've cited the plays I remember enough other places that I don't need to reiterate them again. Some players only occasionally manage to pull those beautiful plays out, only when they're needed.
And then there are those players who turn every play into an act of a master, whose beauty in action is something that goes beyond what is merely expected. That is why there is baseball.