The Series could well be a “freeway series” this year — or, as we on the east coast would prefer to say, “interstate series.” If it is freeway-east, (technically, toll-road-east, but don’t let’s explain that to the rubes that might not yet know — let them find out for themselves), then the teams will be two hours’ drive apart: Philadelphia and New York. If it is freeway-west, similarly, it will be two-hours drive apart: Los Angeles and Anaheim.

Quick note to google-map surfers. It might look like Anaheim is much closer than two hours’ drive from Los Angeles, but that is pure illusion. Trust me, I lived there for eight years: if you have a meeting in Los Angeles and you must not be late, you must needs allow at least two hours if setting out from Anaheim. You have to be there to understand.

Either freeway-series would be interesting. Or, Dodgers-Yankees would be interesting — both of those teams having such great traditions.

The fourth possibility, Anaheim versus Philly, is too painful to contemplate. Let’s hope that does not happen. Anaheim is a team without tradition, without real fans, without anything — except money. The only thing that could justify their existence in the Series would be, being at the other end of a freeway to a real team.

And I say that as one that has seen more live MLB games in Anaheim than anywhere else!

Some of those games were interesting. I saw Phil Niekro (or was it Joe?) pitch a knuckle ball. Watching the warm-up before the first inning from the third-base line, it looked like a girl throwing: all elbow, like shot-putting a whiffle-ball. I was cocky-confident for our guys — until I saw them flailing at the air.

Another time, I saw a full-scale rumble at mid-field, emptying both dugouts and bull-pens, and Reggie Jackson (!) vainly trying to serve as peace-maker.

So much for the Anaheim Angels. The only thing about that team that could resonate with me, despite having seen them “live” more than any other team, is the syllable “heim.”

Baseball today is a commodity millionaires’ club. Millionaire, meaning the players are compensated all out of proportion to reality, and commodity, meaning that they are traded or freely move, as the case may be, based on ability weighed in the scale of gold shekels: nothing more or less. There is no loyalty, no sense of the home-boy.

I have written before about how this situation is almost unbearable.

When our Führer emerges, he will have his work cut out in every area, and baseball is very far down the list — but not utterly unimportant. Here are some thoughts to stimulate his imagination.

The salaries are out of line, but that is only a symptom. The real problem is that the teams are composed of players that have no relation to the alleged city the team is associated with.

The AL pennant is between the Angels and Yankees; the NL pennant is between Dodgers and Phillies. Now, suppose it were such that the Angels and Dodgers had exclusively players from So. Cal. (for the moment, forget that the Dodgers should be a NY team), the Yankees from the NY metro area, and the Phillies from Philadelphia. This would be interesting. This would be multi-culturalism in an honest sense of the word. Everything would be different.

The respective fans would be rooting for their home boys — in the true sense of the word.

When the east coast teams played in California, they would be struck by the mellowness of the players and fans there. They would be overwhelmed by niceness. The swaying palm trees would reflect something about the personalities of their antagonists. “Hey man, let’s go down to the beach afterward and do some surfing,” would be the watch-word.

When the Californians came east, they would be horrified at first by the gruff belligerence of the eastern fans.  The gritty brick factories would be an emblem. It would be a little frightening at first — until one of the shouting, painted fans passed a bottle and offered a friendly swig of whiskey.

After each game, the players would gather at mid-field to shake hands — not, fulsomely, with their own teammates, as is done now, but… with the other team. What a novel thought!

After the series was over, the winning team could treat the other team to a regional specialty — a night on the town in Manhattan or Philly, or a bonfire on the beach — as the case might be.

The fans would gloat over the prowess of their home boys — or, as the case may be, think about how “we” — yes, we — will come back next year.

Even baseball is a barometer of how far we have sunk; and of how great things could be. How easily it could be so. How easily!

Somehow, there needs to be some true loss when these millionaires lose their concentration — perhaps while thinking about changing travel agents or some such — and botch easy plays.  It does seem like a good argument for some notion of just wage.

When our Führer arises, he will have his work cut out, even in sports.

2. That Bam-bam got the Nobel Prize says nothing about him. There is nothing to say about him in respect to “peace.” Standing around like Alfred E. Neuman with a shrug and a “what, me worry?” in respect to our ongoing, endless wars for Israel is hardly world-class peace prize material.

It does say something about the Committee, and their outlook. Perhaps the prize is supposed to memorialize the end of White America. Or, perhaps rushing to give Yomama the prize not even one year into his reign suggests they worry it might be too late to do so next year.

A man should die while engaged in his calling. That is good.

Not in a hospital room. Not, while twiddling his thumbs in “retirement.”

It made national news.

Kalas was a member of the fraternity of a half-dozen or so great announcers, headed by Vin Scully of Los Angeles.

These men are as well-known as the same-sized set of great ball-players themselves.

This fact is itself a tribute to something great about the American spirit.

The game is more than this or that great player. It is a pastime in the truest sense of the word; a community, a gathering, a ritual. Sports are about winning, but sportsmanship is about much more. We still have at least a dim memory of it from a by-gone era.

The outrage does not seem to be focused on any long-term harm to his own body that might accrue when a player uses a PED; so I will ignore that issue as well. The outrage seems to cluster around the theme of fairness: the use of PEDs by some, but not all players (1) makes the games unfair, and (2) skews the statistics compared to a day when this was (presumably) not done, making the setting of new records unfair and therefore of no particular interest.

The main PEDs are anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids increase the body’s ability to use protein to make muscle. The natural hormone testosterone is an anabolic steroid, and its greater presence in the human male accounts for men having incomparably stronger bodies, in terms of brute strength, than women. Negroes have even higher natural testosterone levels, which may partially account for their much greater propensity to violence, but also their musculature and prowess in sports.

Within the class of males – whether Negro or not – there is of course a genetically natural range of testosterone level. Although there is not going to be an exact correspondence to sporting achievement, there is undoubtedly some correlation. An analogy would be to performance at boxing and body weight. Boxers of greatly differing weight are not put into the ring together.

Now this observation already challenges the fairness objection to the use of PEDs. Given the unstated premise, is it not already “unfair” that men of differing testosterone levels should have to compete against each other? Already, separate records are kept for women and men in the same sporting event; and already, boxing categorizes by weight. By the same logic, shouldn’t men’s records be kept in categories of testosterone levels? “In the 3-5 PPM testosterone category, Charlie hit the record number of home runs, while in the 5-8 PPM testosterone category, Biff has it.” (Or whatever the appropriate units of measure are.)

Consider a runner A that complains that it is unfair for him to compete against another runner B that has boosted his testosterone level by the use of steroids. But what if the “boost” just equalizes the testosterone level that each, through no fault of his own, inherited from birth? Couldn’t the argument be turned around, to say that B’s use of the steroid is eminently fair, equalizing his birth-deficiency as it were?

I believe batters are allowed to wear an elbow brace. This strengthens the extension of the arm while swinging the bat. Is this not an “unfair advantage” over a batter not wearing one? And again: if someone has a congenitally weak elbow, would not the use of such a brace “level the playing field,” and thus restore nature’s unfair balance?

At the end of the day, it seems like the definition of “fair play” is basically a Germanic and Anglo-Saxon convention, undoubtedly influenced by Christianity. We instinctively want the less-endowed athlete to compete with his natural superiors by sheer force of will. But the record books do not distinguish between the naturals and the by-force-of-wills. As a Germanic Anglo-Saxon, I ratify and advocate the continuance of our tradition.

But it doesn’t really stand up logically against assault from alien traditions. The case for having separate Aryan and Negro leagues and record books (to give just one example) makes just as much sense as the prohibition of PEDs.

If the two teams are equally matched — that is, if there is a 50% chance of one team beating the other –, then there is also an equal chance of either team winning a series, regardless of the length of the series. Likewise, if one team had total domination over the other, such that one could say there is a 100% chance of victory in any game, then the probability of the better team winning is also 100% for any length series. So, the rationale for having a series at all, let alone a long series, must have to do with cases in between those two extreme cases.

In order to apply probability theory in a straightforward way, we must assume not only that (i) it is sensible to claim that there is a definite probability p that team A will beat team B, but also (ii) that the games are independent. Both of these assumptions are problematical. Assumption (i) suppresses the fact that each team changes its configuration (minimally: its pitcher) and thus also its game plan each game, so that one might think the probabilities shift around from game to game in reality; (ii) pretends that there is no such thing as “momentum,” that psychological spurt of triumphalism or defeatism than can affect the probable outcome of a subsequent game based on memory of the past.

Despite these objections, let us simply take these assumptions as hypothesis: and once given, it is straightforward to calculate the probabilities of winning a series. One must add up the probabilities for every possible sequence of games leading to winning M as defined for the series. M is now 3 for the Divisional series, and 4 for the Pennant and World Series. Adopting the perspective of the eventual winner for simplicity, the final game in each potential sequence is always a win (W). This reduces the length to one less than the actual number of games for calculating permutations, which helps a bit. A number of probabilities are multiplied together equal to the length of the sequence, of which M are always p; the probability of each loss is (1-p). Thus, for the best-of-5 category, for example, one possible sequence is:
LWWW
and this would be assigned probability (1-p) p³. Each possible sequence is mutually exclusive, and thus the total probability is equal to the sum of the probability of each sequence.

The results are shown in the graph. As predicted, the series probabilities all match for the case of 50% and 100% probability. For probabilities in between, the longer the series, the better chance the better team will win, as expected.

So, for example (see also table), if Team A has a 60% chance of beating Team B – which would be pretty good against another championship-quality team – the chance of winning the series rises from 60% for a single game to 65% for best-of-three, 68% for a best of five, and to 71% for best-of-seven.

P(win)	1 game	2 of 3	3 of 5	4 of 7
50%	50.0%	50.0%	50.0%	50.0%
55%	55.0%	57.5%	59.3%	60.8%
60%	60.0%	64.8%	68.3%	71.0%
70%	70.0%	78.4%	83.7%	87.4%
80%	80.0%	89.6%	94.2%	96.7%
80%	80.0%	89.6%	94.2%	96.7%
90%	90.0%	97.2%	99.1%	99.7%

This is rather astonishing. For p=0.6 in a thousand series, the expectation is that in only 27 more of them would the “right team” win by virtue of using a four-out-of-seven rule rather than three-out-of-five. What is noteworthy is that in 290 of those series, the “wrong team” is expected to win anyhow. Roughly a third of the time, the weaker team will take the series. And the reduction of the chance is rather inconsiderable going from a five to a seven-game series.

I conclude that there is a law of diminishing returns that is already reached by the time a series is stretched to best-of-five. The length of the series should be governed not by math, but solely by the fans’ appetite: how many games we want to watch.

(At least for the Pennant series, I vote to go back to the five-game sequence. It is enough.)

I have a sneaking suspicion that a vote taken by an impartial jury of aficionados as to which team is better would be as accurate as the outcome of the series. Except for one small problem of course: being the better team should, by definition, mean winning.

However, listening to the away-game on the radio, I heard something that froze me in my tracks. Thinking about it caused me to learn yet again something about pasture management. Let me give a little background.

A month or two ago, I noticed that the radio announcers for the Phils all of a sudden started talking about how Jimmy Rollins, the Phils’ shortstop, should certainly be the National League MVP (most valuable player). After that, in every game they worked in at least a comment or two with that same thesis.

Then, a few games later, the crowd at the stadium started to chant “MVP… MVP” when Rollins came up to bat.

I thought, what a coincidence. Only someone very knowledgeable about all the nuances of the game could render a credible opinion on the best candidate for most valuable player from this team — let alone the best in the whole League — especially given that there are several outstanding players, and also none that hasn’t made his share of mistakes as well. The vast majority of fans do not even come close to this level of understanding. So, how did all these fans come to the exact same conclusion about MVP as the announcers?

Well, of course, to ask it is to answer it. They didn’t. They are sheep. They heard the announcers talk about it. All of a sudden, at bars and water coolers, some of them, no doubt with an air of knowing sophistication, passed on the opinion as if their own. Finally, everyone in that subculture is “talking about it.” And when critical mass is reached, they all start chanting it at the games.

What I heard when the game was being played at Colorado was their fans chanting “MVP… MVP” when their player Holliday stood up to bat.

Outrageous! How dare they think one of their guys is MVP?!

Clearly, the fan-commitment to player X for MVP is based solely on two factors: (1) authority, coupled with (2) home-team loyalty. It has next to nothing to do with an intelligent assessment of the really most valuable player.

A third factor may be the noisome effect of flattery. The fans like to flatter one of the players, to make him feel good I suppose; but also to flatter themselves that they have such insight.

There would be a lot more honesty, and probably more intelligence, if they were asked to name the MDP — most disappointing player.

At the end of the day, how do we “cash out” the concept of MVP?

I submit, quite literally: with cash.

The winner will undoubtedly be able to negotiate a higher salary than he would without the title.

Instead of “MVP… MVP,” the fans might as well be chanting, “give him more… give him more.”

Of course, directly and indirectly, the fans are the ones that pay those salaries. So really, if they had a bit of self-reflective awareness, they should change the chant to: “we’ll pay more… we’ll pay more.”

The secret to pasture management is so to primp the environs that the cattle, with a glad spring in their step, willingly scamper through the door of the slaughterhouse.

As I pointed out last year, the players and coaches involved in professional baseball have become commodity items. There is little loyalty or continuity. The final step to completely dispel the illusion of the “home team” would be to auction off each collection of players known as a “team” to that city willing to outbid the competitor cities that year. In anticipation of that logical eventuality, I call the Phils “team #9 playing in city #5.”

Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard are back from last year. There might be a half-dozen others as well, if you count bench-warmers. Maybe. I’ll have to check.

It is not just city-swapping going on. It is also nation-swapping. There are more and more Latin Americans in the MLB rosters. I have nothing against Latin Americans per se. That is not the point. But push the logic: suppose the entire team were made up of imported Latin Americans. Would we still feel like they were the “home team”? Or would the absurdity of commodity sports finally be evident to everyone in a palpable way?

It is partly a national question, but it is also partly racial. Few will admit it openly, but it is there nonetheless. For example, the 2002 NBA Western Conference playoff featured LA versus Sacramento. The starting lineup for Sacramento was — mirabile dictu — mostly White. At the company I was working for in SE Pennsylvania, where there was no geographical stake for either contender, my informal poll revealed, without exception, that the Negroes were all rooting for LA, and the Whites all for Sacramento. There is a principle of tribal solidarity in fanship that is primal, and one does not have to scratch very deep to find it, even after twenty years of political correctness.

The fakiness is more than the national and racial confusion. Even tradition is becoming something manufactured by the PR firm. For example, management has been handing out “rally towels” to the Philadelphia fans the last few games, so they can swing them around, creating a shimmering effect that the announcers can claim is “rooting for a rally.”

But isn’t there something sick about that? Suppose there was a real tradition in Philly: suppose people rounded up old tee-shirts, handkerchiefs, napkins, or whatever else was at hand to wave and rally their team. That would be authentic. Management passing out towels smacks more of romper room. “Okay children, when I raise my hand, everyone wave and say ‘yippee’. Isn’t this fun?”

It’s a love-hate relationship. I have been a faithful fan the whole year, enduring the jeers of the cynics in the lab, and I’ll be cheering the Phils on in the upcoming playoffs (at the bar, not the stadium, however). But I also recognize that the whole fan-of-the-home-team is more pretend than real. It is a metaphor for a big aspect of what is wrong with the wider society.

Nevertheless, life is good. It kinda reminds me of the gag Woody Allen tells in Annie Hall. A guy goes to the headshrinker and says, “doc, I have a problem; my brother thinks he’s a chicken.” The shrink asks, “then why don’t you turn him in?” The man without guile answers: “I would… but I need the eggs.”

Go Phillies!

It was a good series to watch. Only the first game came close to being a blow-out. In the others, a come-back by the eventual loser was eminently possible all the way through the ninth inning. That’s good baseball.

It was marred, on the other hand, by some ridiculous errors on both sides, which were inexcusable for world-championship contenders. Let me not even mention them in detail: a man’s shame should be covered.

In game 5, I was almost hoping for a Detroit comeback, if only to prolong the season just a little bit longer.

On the other hand, it seems better in a way if the winner wins decisively. It seems to me that when a series comes down to game 7 (thus: each contender has won three), it means they are equal, and mere statistical chance is basically going to decide it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Fan excitement increases a great deal if, when the end of the season is in sight, the home team has a shot at “making the playoffs.” Stadiums sell out that otherwise would have lots of empty seats. The last couple weeks, while the Phils were contending, the fan base picked up considerably. People were driving down to away games. Listening to one of the late games against Washington on the radio, it sounded like there were more Phillie fans than Nationals fans.

Exploiting this phenomenon is the whole reason the MLB added the odious “wild card” category.

But is this fan behavior rational, and proper?

To a certain extent, yes. That is because there is an economic aspect to being a fan. I might love baseball and opera. On a given day that I would normally prefer opera, the closeness of taking the division might sway the ranking of preferences over to baseball, in addition to all the other days that I chose it anyway. So, statistically, one should expect greater turnout if making the playoffs is in the offing.

On the other hand, there is a fan base that has no interest once the home team is eliminated. No interest at the beginning of the season if there was not a realistic prospect of going all the way. This attitude I find evil.

Not that I am suggesting that “it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s just having the fun of the game.” Not at all. I completely agree with (I believe it was) C. S. Lewis, who said “if you don’t play to win you aren’t playing but playing at playing.”

On the other hand, each game should have some integrity of its own, as if it weren’t even part of a “season” that is tallied up with just one champion.

If your team is in the basement, it should be particularly delightful to defeat the division leader, even if they have already eliminated your guys.

There should be pleasure in every victory.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Moreover, I think one should translate one’s loyalty to rooting for the representative of the division, then the League to which your team belongs as the playoffs progress.

There is a selfish reason for taking this stance: if the team that beat my team loses, it is even more humiliating. But this is not what I am talking about.

In an earlier post, my reflections on what it means to root for the home team pointed to a primal tribal instinct. And there is nothing wrong with that.

What I add to this is an additional reflection coming from the playoffs: Just as the clan moves out in continuity to the tribe, then the nation, then nation-group; so the home-team loyalty should merge outward to the League.

There are exceptions to this rule of course. Maybe you have good reasons for a secondary loyalty to the team that makes it to play against your “league.”

That too is part of the richness of life.

None of us had hardly even heard of Ryan Howard at the beginning of the season. By the end, he was the leading home run slugger in the League. Go figure.

At mid-season, several guys were traded away. The Yankees picked up Bobby Abreu and he started for them right away. Not even sure whom the Phillies got in the trade. Some future pitching prospects, I heard. Yet after unloading Abreu and the others, the Phils started to win. Go figure.

It got me to thinking: why are the Phillies my team? and who are these guys that play for the “home team,” that one regards as his guys to root for?

The Home Team

There are still fans that carry their team loyalty with them as they move about. This is especially true of fans of the “great tradition” teams, like the Yankees and Red Sox. The LA Dodgers seem to have built up that kind of loyalty. LA, of all places! — the city of freeways; the city, as someone astutely observed, whose only secular communion is… merging lanes.

I feel they are the exception, however. Most people that I know are not living in the town they grew up in. Just like me. And most people, if they follow a sport, sooner or later root for the team that is near by. Just like me.

But what is this “home team” we somehow become attached to? Today, players move from team to team more easily than young boys used to trade one baseball card for another. Many don’t even live near the city they play for.

Here’s a typical story on the Phil’s home page. Think carefully about each sentence.

As one of nine potential free agents for the Phillies this offseason, outfielder David Dellucci doesn’t know much about where he’ll be next season.

He knows this much: the Phils would like it to be with them.

“We’ve had conversations,” Dellucci said. “I won’t pack all my stuff out of here yet.”

That doesn’t mean he won’t do so at some point. The veteran hasn’t been thrilled with his playing time this season after receiving 435 at-bats last year with Texas.

The byline was Miami.

Miami?! What’s going on here?

The same vanishing act applies to the coaches. The Phillie’s coach has another year on his contract, but the owners are playing coy as to whether he’ll actually be back next year.

If everyone– whether player, coach, or fan — has become a commodity item, like a chip in a huge poker game, why maintain the illusion of the home team?

What would be different if they simply gave each team a random number — Team #1, Team #2, … Team #30, and let them all bid on a stadium to play in each year. “This year, team #7 is going to play in Philadelphia.”

What would be different, really? Finally, isn’t that what we have anyhow?

Try another thought-experiment. Suppose it turned out the the Nepalese had an ethnic knack for the skills needed to play baseball, so much so that men from Nepal could literally outplay all other players enough to bump them all off the roster. Suppose further, given the commodity nature of the sport, that next year all the players on every MLB team were Nepalese.

Wouldn’t everyone feel that something was missing?

Would it not be exceedingly odd to imagine fans all across America showing up to cheer on their set of Nepalese playing against the other team’s set of Nepalese?

At the margin, there are in fact players from all kinds of foreign countries playing on every major league ball club. We don’t think a thing of it typically– because it is at the margin.

But taken to its logical conclusion, it is ridiculous.

To my eye, the French soccer team in the World Cup looked like an All-African team. Maybe they played fine soccer (I don’t know enough about it to say). But can a proud descendent of the Frankish tribe really look at that team and say, “this team represents us”?

Would a proud Ghanaian look at a team of imported Frenchman and say, “this team represents us?”

So my reflection leads me to this hypothesis: The home team concept is a vestige of tribalism. Everyone has a vestige of a primal desire to belong to a tribe. This is why he roots for the home team.

It strikes me that baseball has become libertarianism run amuck. It is just a sea of rootless individuals gathered together around the highest bidders.

In an odd sort of way, libertarianism does the same thing to a man that collectivism does. I think it was Koestler who said that in collectivism, a man becomes defined like this: a million men, divided by a million.

But in libertarianism, a man is one atom in a gas filling a balloon, bouncing around against a million other atoms.

My reflections on the Phillies have led me to these preliminary conclusions.

1. Rooting for the home team is an aspect of tribalism.
2. Tribalism meets a deeply felt and real need.
3. Modern sports maintain only the thinnest remnant of tribalism.
4. Therefore, modern sports are a microcosm of a malaise that currently infects our whole civil society: we no longer feel part of a tribe.

In college I gradually drifted away from following baseball except in 1988 when the Dodgers were in the Series once again. They beat the A’s in five. But the Series really ended after the first game. That was when Kirk Gibson “the gimp” (he had pulled both hamstrings, hurt both knees and could barely walk) hit a two-run shot off of ace reliever Dennis Eckersley in the bottom of the 9th with two outs and a full count. That was a great moment.

After the ‛88 season, my interest in baseball flagged. Studies and other interests account for much of this, but not all. I may have been changing, but so was baseball. It was fast becoming a game quite different from the one I grew up with.

Some of the changes were relatively minor. The league has more teams than it did when I was a kid. This has been a mixed bag. The new franchises allow more people to have their own home team. The down side is that talent has been diluted, especially in pitching, and the traditional rivalries are not what they used to be.

In my day baseball was already being watered down by the designated hitter, a smaller strike zone, artificial turf, indoor stadiums (all changes were to the advantage of the hitter, of course). But now there is inter-league play and realignment. This further takes away from traditional rivalries and diminishes the mystique of the World Series. The National and American Leagues teams never faced each other before the very last series of the season. Now there is a good chance that the teams in the championship have game have already played in the regular season. To add insult to injury, there are six divisions instead of the traditional four and “wild card” spots are open to teams that have not won their races. Because of this, the season has lost much of its significance.

Even going to the ballpark is not the same. The game on the field now vies with the constant din and imagery of giant video screens. Add to this monitors at the concession stands, waterfalls in centerfield, raucous inter-inning entertainment, fireworks after the home team hits a home run and the game itself becomes just a part of the scenery and not the central attraction.

Female sportscasters and commentators are another problem. The Apostle Paul did not allow women to speak in the church; Commissioner Bud Selig should not allow women to speak in the broadcast booth. As Dr. Johnson said, “It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

I expect that many baseball fans share at least some of these criticisms. But the problems go deeper.

It is normal and necessary for a society to observe class distinctions. But baseball games, like church, should not cater to the upperclass. Fans at the stadium represent a true democracy. But now the rich are hermetically sealed off from the riffraff in their “VIP” boxes with plexiglass-glass windows, air-conditioning, padded seats and a wet bar. The ballpark for them has become an extension of their office where they conduct business and wine and dine their clients. If the rich do not take enough pleasure in the game itself (which includes the wholesome experience of sitting next to plumbers and auto mechanics) they should watch the game at home on their “entertainment centers.” Fans are equal in the sight of the baseball gods, at least when at the ballpark.

While segregation has harmed baseball from one direction, the yuppie factor has damaged it from another. Hot dogs, peanuts, frozen malts, beer and coke was the typical fare when I was a boy. Now there are specialty stands that serve chicken sandwiches with Dijon mustard in “low carb” lettuce wraps. This has no place at the ballpark. Neither do Starbucks Coffee and green tea. Yuppies already have enough fast food and cookie-cutter franchise restaurants to serve their trendy palates. Baseball fans should demand baseball food.

But baseball has been damaged from below as well as from upper and middle classes. The yahoo factor has taken as much away from the experience of the game as the sequestering of the monied nobility and the banality of bourgeoisie taste. Fans have become ostentatious, rude and disorderly. They put on face paint, toss beach balls, and make deafening noise with horns and whistles. Many are vulgar and crude. Some look and act like thugs. Sitting near such people is unbearable.

The three social classes have given us segregation, insipidity and crassness. But worse things have happened to baseball. Witness the cult of celebrity. Few things are more absurd than grown men making idols out of multi-millionaire athletes who have trouble stringing together two sentences of English.

Then there is the reign of statistical terror. It has been said that baseball is a game of numbers. There may be some truth to this, but the number crunching has gotten out of hand. A few statistics enhance the game of baseball. Batting average, RBI’s, home runs, stolen bases help the fan understand the line-up. Jones leads off because he can steal, Smith bats clean up because he can hit the ball over the fence. For pitchers, wins and losses and ERA’s give some help in predicting whether he has good chance of leading the team to a “w.” More importantly, these numbers build expectations that often are not realized on the field. The mighty Casey with 45 homers should be able to pull the ball against the no-name long reliever, but when he strikes out, there is either elation or stunned silence – depending on whether the game is played at Mudville.

What is going on today goes far beyond this. Analysts have statistics for everything. How somebody could spent their life crunching baseball numbers is beyond me. What a complete waste of time. I don’t give a fig about a hitter’s slugging percentage against left-handed screw-ball pitchers with runners in scoring position during late innings where the game is on the line. How is this relevant to the present at-bat and how does this increase my pleasure in viewing the game?

Statistic-mongering and the celebrity fetish are only symptoms of the disease. On a deeper level, baseball, like all sports, is taken too seriously. Patton once said, “I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed.” In the heat of the game, this is true. It would be an impertenence for a pitcher to laugh as the opposing hitter was doing a lap around the bases after the game-winning home run. But time heals some wounds. In a few days or weeks or perhaps years, the same pitcher should be able to look back and have a good laugh at himself. At that point, pace Patton, I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and kept crying about it.

Baseball should be taken seriously, but only when the teams are on the field. Winning is everything during the game. Afterwards, its value greatly diminishes. Met’s center fielder Kevin McReynolds said in an interview during the pennant: “If we win we get to go to the World Series. If we lose, I get to go fishing.” He hits just the right note.

While the modern free agent is usually free of this vice (and some are possesses of the opposite vice, indifference), many fans are not. Fans take the game seriously not only during the game, but before and after it as well. This vice is understandable in young boys and may even be a good thing. They become overly elated when their team wins and overly upset when it loses. They will have learned a good lesson in life when they move beyond this. But when the grown-up fails to do away with childish things, it becomes a profanation of adulthood.

The seriousness of the modern fan is evidenced by the proliferation of sports programming on the television and sports talk on the radio. There is non-stop talk about tomorrow’s game and yesterday’s loss and so and so’s contract negotiations. There is the talk during the game, talk about the game when it is over, and then talk about the talk. (“We have Sammy Jones on the line who is going to comment on the recent controversial statements made by his teammate, Bobby Smith.”) The levels of iteration is sometimes incredible.

But so what if baseball has become an obsession to many people, how does the affect the game? It affects the game a good deal since baseball is a community sport, a communal activity. If many or most of the community are obsessive about it, then to a certain degree the ball game ceases to be a sporting event. It has become more like a religious festival. And for those who place their religious commitments elsewhere, the whole business become too obnoxious to bear.

Even this does not capture what is the fundamental issue is. At bottom, baseball’s trouble is that it is trying to be something it is not. Due to short attention spans and competition from other sports such as football and basketball, it has tried to become more flashy and exciting. To accomplish this, time has to be made an element of the game. The game must move faster in order to maintain the interest of easily distracted fans. And when there is a lull on in the field, some other form of entertainment is quickly substituted.

Football and basketball are like this already. Both are non-stop action. The clock keeps things moving. And when it stops, the cheerleaders and band come out. There is never a quiet moment. They both reflect the fast-paced pulse of the modern world.

Baseball is different. It has no time constraints. The flow of the game is determined by the pitcher, the hitter, and umpire and not by the imposition of an artificial time metric. It is a game of rhythm, of human rhythm. A single at-bat can take ten seconds or ten minutes. And the rhythm of the at-bat reflects the rhythm of the game, which in turn reflects the rhythm of the entire baseball season. Each are slow and lazy at times, but then are suddenly punctuated with moments of high intensity and drama. As such baseball is much like life. Or much like what life should be. Life that is unhurried. Life that values the human over the artificial.

Now that baseball is being refashioned after the image of other sports, it is losing the very thing that makes it what it is. Yes, tempora mutantur. But while most will say, nos et mutamur in illis, I will not. Baseball has left me. When it returns I will be waiting for it.