Today is opening day of the 2024 MLB season and you cannot scrub the smile from my face. Baseball!!! As I watched the MLB Central show (my favorite morning show) I thought about the changes since my dad was alive. An Army Air Force veteran from WWII, he helped vanquish the reviled forces of evil in 1941 to 1944, Germany and Japan. Today one of the most celebrated baseball players of all time – right up there with The Babe and Lou Gehrig is Shohei Ohtani – a young Japanese man. I cannot even imagine what my father would have thought if that had been told to him in 1944. In fact, the top three players today on the celebrated Dodgers are Mookie Betts, Shohei, and Freddie Freeman, a total fusion of ethnicity on one team. In 1945 when I was born, Jackie Robinson was still two years away from breaking the “color barrier” in major league baseball. Back then there were only a handful of Latino players and no Asians. The Dodgers were the dreaded team still in Brooklyn, across town from my dad’s favorite Yankees. As a farm boy from Kansas who loved baseball, he would have been very surprised, I dare say unbelieving if told about the future of baseball.
Baseball is a merit-based business. No one gets on the field without talent and an overwhelming desire to play the sport. Size, shape, color, and birthplace don’t matter. Some, like my husband, are recruited from high school and join minor league teams sponsored by professional teams to train recruits for their major league team. A kid as young as 19 can end up on a major league team if he has the right stuff. Some young men go to college and are prepared for professional play on college teams.
Scouts are out all year round searching for talent in every nook and cranny of the country and now across the world. No one gets to the professional level without a lot of talent regardless of their background – talent and drive win out. That is why a Mookie Betts at 5’9” 180 lbs. is as effective on the field as Aaron Judge at 6’7” 282 lbs. Size doesn’t matter. Talent, heart, and intelligence matter. I’ll put Jose Altuve’s passion (5’6”, 166) against any physical barrier. He literally sparks when he is on the field. His happiness, his delight to be playing, glows through his smile.
If a man has talent, it will reveal itself and the fans will show up to watch two teams compete using their players’ skills and strategies. There is no baseball business without fans whether they watch on TV or go to the games.
Baseball as a sport will endure because it is fun to watch, easy to understand, and fun to play at whatever level. A sphere is thrown at top human speed at the round-edged bat – what could go wrong? The players are not only part of a team, but their individual skills are on display. I have likened baseball to a cross between bullfighting and ballet.
When a pitcher faces a batter, mano a mano, it is a bull fight. The pitcher hurls a missile directly at the batter at 90 to 100 miles an hour – the bull. The batter, matador, protected by a helmet, holds a stick less than 3 inches in diameter and not more than 42 inches long to fend off the approaching sphere. If the bat contacts the round missile and sends it out to the field the ballet begins.
Players tall and small will dive, spin, and leap performing ballet-like movements such as –
Fouletté – whipping the body around from one direction to another;
Pirouette – a player steps up on toes of one foot while extending the other leg in a turn as they catch the ball;
Temps lié – connected movement that prepares the body to maintain balance and control while shifting weight from one position to another as they reach for the batted sphere;
Grand jeté – high jump with extended legs to snag a soaring ball;
Penché – a player leans far forward with the forward arm and head low and leg raised in the air;
Renversé – bend the body during a turn, from the waist, sideways and backward, maintaining equilibrium – a real talent;
Sissonne – jump from two feet to one.
After completing these athletic moves, the fielder must then throw the ball with deadly accuracy hundreds of feet across the field aimed at a mitt 10” by 10”, to try to stop the runner on his circuitous route from home back to home. Sometimes this throw is accomplished while the player with balletic grace is still airborne. When that happens ahhhs and oooos erupt from the crowd. Replay is guaranteed on TV.
I stopped rooting for teams, as such, since they became so fluid. Money talks and talent walks. A man, even if he signs a multiyear contract, may be traded or elect to go to another team if the price is right. I can’t blame a guy for getting the most pay that he can. Athletic careers are notoriously short due to injury and burnout. Players spend hours away from the field on conditioning to keep their bodies as fit and flexible as possible. Baseball is an EVERYday sport. There are very few days off and position players show up to play every day. Only pitchers whose bodies are put to exhausting tests in a game are given 4 to 5 days between games. Now I root for the players themselves and whichever team has the most of my favorite players is the team I choose for that matchup. For instance, it is very hard for me when Gerrit Cole, pitcher for the Yankees faces at bat Bo Bichette, shortstop for the Blue Jays. I love them both and find it painful to split my loyalty.
Ahhh, but the season has begun and I’m in heaven no matter who is playing. I’m sure I’ll discover new favorites this season. Right now, the Dodgers just beat the Cardinals, 7-1. Yeah Dodgers, but I feel sad for two of my favorites, Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt who played their hearts out for the Cards.
wonkagranny 