“Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can’t get you off.”—Bill Veeck, former owner of the Indians, Browns, and White Sox"

As we look back on the 1990s, it is apparent that we have undergone a rapid revolution in terms of our society’s pace of life. Children have become so familiar with the Internet that the Dewey Decimal System is about as foreign a concept as the political system of Madagascar and the biggest nerd in this country has a greater influence on American’s lives than the President. Furthermore, we have become accustomed to two-second sound bites from our politicians on today’s complex and pressing issues.

In the sports world, talk about the 21st Century’s new and improved Michael Jordan reflects America’s need for the flashy athlete. (Do you really think there will be another Michael Jordan?) In their quest for the quick and easy solution to the void left by Jordan’s retirement, people seem to overlook that in addition to being the greatest showman of all time, he also possessed a complete mastery of the fundamentals of basketball. As much as sports reflects our society’s current trends, we have noticed a growing perception that baseball is simply too slow and boring for this new fast-paced society.

However, it is our contention that this lack of patience reflects Americans’ needs for instant gratification without any effort and not that baseball is simply a slow game. George F. Will, a leading political scientist and baseball fanatic, says that baseball is in reality a game of blazing speeds and fractions of seconds. An average fastball travels 90 mph and reaches the plate in .4167 second while the average breaking ball or change-up travels at 80 mph and reaches the plate in .4688 second. Consequently, after having decided to hit the pitch, the batter has about .2 of second to decide what pitch is coming and to make his body swing. Thus, simply making contact with a Major League pitch requires incredible reflexes and skill.

Besides being a game with fast paced action and complex decisions being made in fractions of seconds, baseball possesses one quality no other sport has. Baseball is a thinking man’s game, filled with complex strategies that pertain to different situations, to different positions, and to different capability levels. As Tony LaRussa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, so eloquently said, “there’s a lot of stuff goes on.”

What makes these little intricacies all the more important is how much one small play can affect the game. In a recent Yankee’s game, Tino Martinez made a small error in the first inning that allowed the hitter, who should have had a single, to advance to second. The next batter successfully completed a sacrifice bunt, advancing the runner to third. On a subsequent sacrifice fly the runner scored. Ordinarily this would seem like a very small fact. If the batter had been on first, though, the play would have required a hit at some point in the inning in order to score the runner. However, that day David Cone pitched against Pedro Martinez and Boston ended up winning by a score of 1 to 0. That seemingly insignificant error changed the entire course of the game.

It is not our belief that the complexity of every play in a baseball game can compete with the fast-paced nature of an NBA game. Instead, we feel that by observing the details of the game, baseball suddenly becomes a far more fascinating game.

Baseball’s powers are not limited to the specifics of the game though. In 1998, for example, two men were able to captivate nearly all Americans—even the ones who thought that baseball is a slow-moving and dull sport—and allow them to dream of the possibilities of what could be. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa transcended the prevailing perception of baseball and reached a new fan base. Their incredible feats proved the awesome power of America’s rediscovered national pastime as a vehicle for unifying an extremely diverse population. Sosa hits one of his 66 home runs in the magical summer of '98.

Drew Bush is the Layout Editor of The Political Affairs Reader and is majoring in English. Andrew Seidler ’02 is the Assistant Copy Editor and is majoring in History.

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