It’s that time of year when I write the second of my semi-annual baseball pieces: one for Opening Day, one for the World Series. This year’s entrants will be determined in the coming days. I was born and spent my first nine years in Philadelphia, and I lived 16 years in and around San Diego, so it’s a safe bet I’ll be rooting for the National League team.
But I probably won’t watch much of it. I’ve followed the World Series since at least 1965, but in the past few years I’ve drifted away from baseball. The last time the Red Sox won, in 2018, I was in Bulgaria, and had to content myself with following it on the Internet. I watched the Nationals-Astros Series in 2019, when the visiting team won every game. It was a great Series. But I haven’t watched a minute of a Series since.
Covid-19 was part of the reason. We lost two-thirds of a season. And we freed our household from cable television, of which sports are an expensive and exasperating part. Baseball’s better on the radio, anyway. If I really want to watch a game, I can walk to a bar.
In the United States we blow sports all out of proportion, of course. A quarterback’s divorce gets more attention than the meltdown of a British prime minister. Former athletes run for, and frequently win, political office, with no more qualification than their trophies. Television revenue, owner profits, player salaries and ticket prices are all astronomical. The sports industry, like the automobile industry, is a colossus.
They’re both subsidized, too. Cities are built for cars, and city officials spend tax money to build venues for their teams so they won’t move to another city. I have some qualms about using public money to boost hugely profitable businesses. Nonetheless, in 1998 I voted Yes, along with 59.5% of my fellow San Diegans, on the referendum that created Petco Park.
The ballpark is something of a miracle. Formerly, the Padres played their home games in a soulless football stadium amid an asphalt jungle of freeways and parking lots. But at the turn of the millennium, in car-crazed Southern California, we built a ballpark for pedestrians and public transportation. Petco Park is downtown, served by the trolley and buses, in a walking neighborhood next to the bay. It opened in 2004, the year of the Red Sox redemption. By that time I had moved Back East. I’ve never attended a game there, but I’m still proud of my vote.
Sadly, though, I can’t muster the enthusiasm for baseball that I once had. Four Red Sox championships have taken the angst out of the equation, but I continued to watch for entertainment. Then managers started removing pitchers from shutouts in the sixth inning, and every mediocre hitter started swinging for the fences.
I didn’t see the marathon game between Houston and Seattle, won finally by the Astros, 1-0 in 18 innings. I read some of the comments afterward. The Mariners were the home team, which meant that if they scored, they won. Inning after inning, players took turns trying to hit the heroic, game-ending, walk-off homer – when all they needed was a Maury Wills run: a bunt single, a stolen base, a productive out to the first-base side, and a sacrifice fly.
But I’m getting into the weeds here. It’s sad that big league baseball has degenerated into a slugging contest. A game critics have always derided as boring has become, in fact, boring.
Worse, it has become unessential.
In 2004, the Red Sox surged into the World Series, and George W. Bush went up for re-election against John Kerry. Like many of my friends, I wanted the Red Sox to win and Bush to lose. What if only one of those things could happen? This was an earnest debate, and not a few of us picked the Red Sox. They hadn’t won in 86 years. Bush would be gone in four.
That sentiment, though widely shared, was a luxury we don’t have today. Another election is coming up, and it’s way more important than who wins the World Series.
