The Most Beautiful Sport
March 11, 2002
7:30 a.m.
If you were a fly on the wall at our house this weekend, you would almost certainly seen me either having fun with the family, planning a vacation, or messing around with baseball statistics. What, you say? Two of those go together, but what's this baseball thing? First, the good stuff. My brother and his fiancée (aunt To-Be, as Brigid calls her) flew into Louisville from LA, so my parents poured them into a car and drove them up to Columbus this past Saturday. That was nice. Brigid played piano. Jeff played guitar. We talked. Dad paid for dinner. Whoever said there's no such thing as a free lunch has never met my father. [grin] We planned the vacation thing for out in LA this summer. Seemed prudent, seeing that Jeff and Karen ... er To-Be ... are getting married there. Then, there's the baseball thing. Ah, yes. You see, several years ago I played in a Fantasy baseball league--one of those weird things where you "draft" real players, and keep track of their statistics and compile them into team totals that then compete against other team totals. It was a lot of fun because the guys I played against were all pretty close--all at work, and so forth. The money wasn't enough to choke you if you lost, but was enough to allow proper gloating when you won. Early this year (or late last year), I got an e-mail from a guy that used to play in that league. He deviously planted a seed, and suggested that a team was available. Baseball, you see, is a beautiful sport. It is actually the most poetic of all--this big microcosm of everything. Basketball is the most exciting sport without doubt. And for all its brutishness, football is the most tactical and strategic. But baseball ... baseball is the most perfect combination of everything--athletic skills, hand-eye coordination, endurance, weird rules, open playing environments, the smells of hot dogs and peanuts, stress that builds slowly, the 90 feet between bases that is so precisely perfect. And then there's the hot stove league in the off-season and spring training. There is no other game like baseball. I know. I know. The players are big ol' rich whiners and the owners are big ol' rich idiots, but sometimes you have to overlook the cesspools to revel in the wildflowers. Anyway, as you can tell, I took a team. So I spent a lot of this weekend figuring out who is who in the National League. But it paid off. It's got to be worth something to know there's a guy named Stubby Clapp out there somewhere, doesn't it?   Have a great day.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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