It’s okay if you don’t like baseball. Truly, it is. I didn’t like baseball either, at one time in my life. Of course, at the same time in my life, I had a gigantic crush on Jack Wagner, so what you take from that is up to you, but you could argue — as I plan to, shortly — that you actually do like baseball.

Or at least you might, and you just don’t know it yet.

Now, before you lunge for the back button, hear me out. It’s possible, yes, that you genuinely think baseball is horribly boring and slow and you just don’t care and never will. But it’s also possible that nobody has taken the time to sell you properly on baseball — to give you a good reason to get interested in it beyond droning on about the national pastime and the symmetry and the poetry of “safe at home” and blah blah blah fishcakes.

I’ve got your good reason right here. I’ve got a whole list of good reasons for you to like baseball.

1. You like a good argument. Life purring along too peacefully these days? No problem — develop an interest in baseball, force your friends and loved ones to do so also, and start scrapping. Baseball offers hundreds — nay, thousands — of topics over which to scuffle and sound like a know-it-all: Pete Rose, the designated hitter, steroids, Derek Jeter’s defense, the value of average versus the value of power, the expanded playoff slate, where the Expos should go, whether Mays or Mantle is better, who’s going to hit his way out first if you put Rafael Santana and Dave Kingman in a wet paper bag*.

Best of all for the new fan, the subjects up for debate have varying degrees of difficulty, and if you don’t know a bunch of stats or much about the game’s history, you can still wade in and have a loud opinion. Who’s the ugliest active player in baseball? Who’s the all-time ugliest player in baseball? Endless games of Death Is Not An Option await you — Cecil Fielder or Mo Vaughn? Kevin McReynolds or John Kruk? Bud Selig or George Steinbrenner?**

2. The only thing you like better than a good argument is a petty and/or irrational hate-on. For most of the eighties, I hated Von Hayes. HATED him. I had absolutely no reason to hate him that I can recall, except that he always had a smug “who farted” look on his face, and for all I know, he had that look on his face for a reason — maybe the Phillies had a pooter at second base back then — but I mean to tell you, teenage Sarah + the sight of Von Hayes = RAGE. I especially hated the name “Von” and would demand to know of my father, the cats, and various empty rooms what kind of stupid goddamn fucking name is “Von,” anyway, and who does he think he is, Beethoven, and [inarticulate hate gurgle].

Derek Jeter is the unreasonable-hate object of choice for most fans, although it has become acceptable of late to rationalize said hate by fuming that he’s the worst defensive shortstop in the league and horribly overrated and how could they boot A-Rod over to third and eeeegaaaaahhhhhrrggle! So, you can go with Jeter, but you don’t need a reason. I’ve loathed Ken Griffey Jr. for years now; I can sort of get away with it now because he’s gotten hurt so many times, but at the time I started hating him, I really did not have a leg to stand on with it and I probably still don’t.

So, pick a player to hate. It doesn’t really matter which player, or why; feel free to hate, say, a pitcher because his mouth is too small for his face***. The point is that spluttering is fun.

3. You like fun names and nicknames. No sport is ever going to beat golf in the weird-name department. Fuzzy Zoeller…enough said. On the other hand…Albert Pujols. Albert Pujols is an excellent player, so it saddens me to report that his last name is pronounced “poo holes.”

Oh, wait. My mistake. It does not sadden me one bit, because…”poo holes.”

Baseball has oodles of nifty, chewy nicknames: Turkey, Preacher, Double Duty, Animal House, Dizzy, Dazzy, Sibby, Suitcase, I could go on but you get the idea. Baseball also has oodles of awesome real names, like Cookie Cuccurullo and Van Lingle Mungo (who actually had a song written about him).

And let us take a moment to remember Johnny “With Two You Get Eggroll” Dickshot, who got saddled not only with the surname “Dickshot” but also, by his teammates, with the nickname “Ugly.” Ugly Dickshot, people. Gives “poo holes” a run for its money.

4. You like peanuts. Or pretzels, or hot dogs, or ice cream, or domestic beer. Or foam fingers.

5. You like multi-tasking and/or napping. The charge leveled the most frequently against baseball by people who don’t like it is that it’s boring, which I can’t really argue with, for two reasons. First, if you don’t know much about the sport, it’s going to bore you. It’s not that baseball is inherently boring, necessarily, but it’s like overhearing a gossipy conversation in Russian — it could be the juiciest dish in the world, but if you don’t speak Russian, it’s meaningless to you.

But I also can’t argue with the boring accusation because, even when you do know what’s going on, baseball is dull at times. The game has a lot of downtime and fidgeting built into it, and it isn’t played to a clock, and just because a game has an innocuous score like 3-2 doesn’t mean nothing of note happened…but sometimes that same 3-2 game just drags. I fall asleep in front of Sunday games all the time, I won’t lie to you.

The issue is whether you think this is a bad thing. I don’t. Baseball has a certain soothing sound to it on TV, and I can think of worse ways to catch forty than on the couch in front of the game. More to the point, baseball doesn’t demand your attention every second, and when it gets slow, you can do something else — pay some bills, leaf through a magazine, talk on the phone, whatever. You can watch the first couple of innings, go out to dinner, and pick it up again when you get home. You can half-watch it in a bar. If you sit down in front of the TV with the intention of focusing fully on every second of play, it’s probably not going to live up to your expectations excitement-wise, but the good news is that the rhythm of the game doesn’t require you to do that.

The season is the same way, until the end there. You can miss a few games and not feel left out. You can leave it for a week and come back to it.

6. You like small talk. Knowing enough about baseball to shoot the shit about it with a relative stranger — or with family members to whom you otherwise have nothing much to say — will serve you well.

7. You like “God Bless America.” You’d better. You’d better like it a lot. Actually, scratch that one, because if anything is ever going to drive me away from baseball, it’s Ronan goddamn Tynan hollering that goddamn song at every goddamn Yankee game. I mean, really. I know the man’s got to make a living, but if God is going to bless America, He’ll do it in His own sweet time, so could we maybe stop bugging Him about it and find another song to flog? And you know what else is annoying about that? Every time Ronan Tynan is introduced, I put on my Mr. Moviefone voice and go, “Rrrrrrrr-ONIN, rrrrrrrated R!” And you know who thinks it’s funny? Nobody! Even I don’t think it’s funny anymore, but — I can’t stop doing it!

“Rrrrrrrr-ONIN, rrrrrrrated R!”

Didn’t even chuckle, did you? Sigh. Okay, moving on.

8. You like slapstick humor. To tell you the truth, I haven’t watched This Week In Baseball since Mel Allen died, so I don’t know if they still do this, but the show used to have a whole section of the highlight reel called “High-larious Outfield Collisions” or something like that, and it’s good stuff. They put this nutty kazoo version of “Spanish Flea” over it and let it roll with no voice-over — just five full minutes of guys crashing into the outfield wall, the umpires, the mascot, and each other. Bonk! Biff! Thwack!

I still remember a great one from probably fifteen years ago. The center fielder, the second baseman, and the shortstop, all running down a fly ball, all get to the same place at the same time. At the last minute, the second baseman hits the deck. The center fielder dives over him, catches the ball, and executes a flawless somersault, and the shortstop hurdles him mid-somersault. The center fielder comes up and waves his glove to show he’s got it.

Beat.

FWOMP! The center fielder gets flattened by the left fielder. Flattened. I guess the guy came charging in from left to back up the play and couldn’t slow down or something, I don’t know, but it’s one of the most brilliantly timed pieces of physical comedy I’ve ever seen and it happened entirely by mistake.

And if you live near a minor-league team, you can get a piece of that Cirque du Short Center action every night.

The only “problem” with major-league baseball as a consumer product is that, with the exception of the Detroit franchise, most of these guys actually know how to play the game, and now and then you want to see some Keystone Kops action in the field. Happily, the problem has a simple solution: get in the car and proceed to the nearest minor-league venue. It looks enough like baseball to count as going to a game, but it’s much cheaper than going to a big-league game (especially the parking), and a grown man is going to step on his own foot and fall down. No, listen to me — it is going to happen. You might have to wait until the bat races, but it is going to happen, and it is going to crack your shit up, and I can hear you now all, “It doesn’t sound all that funny to me, really, especially the part where you get your whole section to count down from three and scream, ‘YAAAAARD SAAAAALE,'” and it really doesn’t sound all that funny written down like that, but trust me, you’ll laugh.

No? Not funny? Well…okay.

9. You like actually getting my jokes. If I can talk you into giving baseball a try, and you get into it a little bit and then you come back and reread this essay, you’ll actually get something out of that Santana/Kingman crack up top****. All right, maybe not, but at least I can explain why it’s supposed to be funny and not have to interrupt myself to explain what “hitting the interstate” means.*****

*Kingman. Dude would swing at anything.
**In order: Randy Johnson; Willie McGee; Fielder; Kruk, God help us both; and I ain’t touching that last one. Oh, all right. Steinbrenner. But Death is gonna have to stand over that bed with the scythe in the air the whole time, because ew, dude.
***John Tudor. HATE!
****This note is for those of you who did get something out of it. I wound up using Kingman, but what’s funnier — Santana and Kingman, or Santana and Rob Deer? Or should I have thrown out Santana and put Kingman in the bag with Deer and Pete Incaviglia? Does anyone else even remember Inky, or am I a hundred years old?
*****It means he’s hitting under .200. For instance, if Santana’s hitting .189 (sadly, not a hypothetical), because that number kind of looks like I-89, you say he’s hitting the interstate. (See also: “batting a buck and change.”)

April 12, 2004

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