Push it Fair

The mlb network recently revealed the top spot on their melodramatic list of the top 20 Greatest Games played in the last 50 years...

1975 World Series, Game 6 - Fenway Park
Big Red Machine vs. Boston Red Sox
Reds up 3 games to 2

Last year, after the Giants won a thrilling World Series, several of us experienced that immediate, gut-wrenching sensation of off-season withdraw and thus threw in an old videotape of this all-time classic.

Copenhagen, November 2010-

We can hear the ancient green ballpark groan at season’s end, worn and weathered under the dirtywhite nightlights beaming dimly on the weathered grass and infield dirt. The faded, grainy VHS image could be of any old baseball field on any one of those damp and frigid nights in late autumn. But it’s not. It’s Fenway in October. Those dizzy dimensions and that palpable anxiety are dead giveaways. We marvel drearily at the many nuances of mid- 70’s Americana: post-Nam exhaustion mingling with stubborn Irish hope; tweed jackets with elbow patches on flailing professor arms; clumsy on-screen text graphics generated by the world’s first computer; and most impressive of all, the personal style of the ballplayers…

Louis Tiant gesticulating with Satchel-like spasms and an array of flamboyant windups refuses to let the Big Red Machine find a groove in front of his Papi – "the Carl Hubbel of Cuba" beaming with joy under his dark brown fedora, shrouded in cigar smoke and untold tales of triumph. Pete Rose all coiled up in clenched stillness, waiting to strike from the left side; steps toward the ball, but holds up, his hands hang back on a slow curve…a hard twist of the hips and he rips a single to right-center. Fred Lynn: ROY, MVP, WS 3-run homer, and then busts his tailbone slamming into the centerfield wall. Joe Morgan’s back elbow flapping up and down in the batters box, his loose and sure fielding sure has style. And all the big hits by low profile players: Cesar Geronimo, a heroic name at a heroic moment, probably gave birth to a son named Sitting Bull Machiavelli, homers to put the Reds up 6-3. Then Bernie Carbo, looking overmatched at the dish, suddenly smacks a game-tying homer while drunk and stoned.

 

Cormac McCarthy could’ve said this old park hums with age and mystery. Yet from another angle, Fenway seems virgin – classic and pure – patiently waiting for a miracle to break that dreadful Curse. Foul ground and outfield walls not yet polluted by slogans and logos. Every blade of grass and craggy corner acquiescing to the grandeur of the green monster.

-Check it out, man…no fucking ads on the field or the backstop. It’s beautiful.
-There’s Sparky in the dugout, Wes…
-Mmm-hmm
-Toorn dees sheet auf, mahn. Beisbol boring!
-Shut the fuck up, Eduardo. And show some respect for Sparky; he just died.
-What da fuck is Sparky? Who cares?
-Here, take the doobie, CW
-Ooo….nice
-No goddamn ads or flags or flyovers…just baseball. It’s fucking beautiful.

Bottom of the 9th, runners at first and third with no outs, left-fielder George Frasier makes a concentrated catch right at the stands in shallow left and heaves it hard past the noses of nervous on-lookers leaning in to see if Doyle can tag and score. Shouldn't he have tried to slide instead of dive? Probably. The double play kills the inning and quiets the crowd. Everyone here is asleep, scattered on the floor, in the hammock, on the couch and I’m too tired to go into extras. Fisk will have to wait till tomorrow to hit it…

Late morning.

A couple dudes still sleeping on the floor, one in the hammock. The VCR clicks into motion and Joe Morgan strokes a fastball for an opposite field hit. Fast forward. Morgan again, snapping a throw on the run right into the first baseman’s glove with perfect nonchalance. Nothing too flashy, no big stats for this game, but making his presence strongly felt. A complete player with both bat and glove, he won the most prestigious individual awards and team championships before entering the Hall and working the mic on Sunday night baseball telecasts with Jon Miller. 


Fast forward to the top of the 11th. Ken Griffey Sr. on first. Morgan pulls one to deep right field, Evans sprinting toward the tiny wall, Griffey sprinting around the bases -- confident it'll go over the short fence or drop for extra bases -- and Evans makes a spectacular if awkward catch with fans hands all around him. He turns and immediately chucks the ball toward first base, off-line but in plenty of time with that strong arm to double-off Griffey.

“The best game I ever played in” – said by a guy who loved winning more than anybody. Pete Rose, a notorious competitor (who even gambled 10,000 bucks per game on his team finishing 162-0), yelled out after Carbo's homer, "This is fun!" Dude should be in the Hall.

And, of course, 12th inning…Fisk waves it fair.  The media thus found a way, serendipitously, to sensationalize the game, pre-fabricating narratives and placing cameras everywhere to plan for shots like Fisk hopping up the baseline. This time, though, it was accidental and for that very reason, magical. And the mytho-poetics of this great sport continue to express themselves in popular culture; in mediocre film (Good Will Hunting), high-brow literature (DeLillo’s Underworld), and on the internet (Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No). That majestic homer off the foul pole means the Red Sox live to see another day.

And finally she yawns – a silent roar – creaking under the weight of rowdy fans flooding onto Yawky Way with that stubborn hope still in the air, ‘cuz maybe some damn miracle might release us from this Curse -- tomorrow night in Beantown in the seventh and final game versus the Big Red Machine, with The Spaceman on the mound.

But the Game had become and continues to be “more Machine now than Man….twisted and evil,” reflected not so much in Vader-like villains of yesteryear, (the recently deceased Steinbrenner comes to mind), but the robotic, joyless, business-like metamorphosis of ballplayer into corporate cog. The blind consumer that is the Fan. More subtle then, strikingly obvious now. And as the Machine prevailed in the past, it does so today with an even greater autonomy free from human intervention. And the Spaceman loses.

The Machine is also dominating the way we humans perceive, interpret and appreciate baseball today. Rather than raging in anger at the removal of our favorite players from our favorite teams, we placidly accept the supremacy of a mechanical kind of logic positing greed as the strongest motivator in a multi-billion dollar industry crawling with blood-sucking agents and empty-headed athletes. Ticket prices continue to rise as our teams turn into souless corporations and continue to be disfigured beyond recognition. Fans are arrested at ballgames for not sitting through the Bush-era war chant of “God bless America”. The 7th inning stretch not only stretches our patience with all of the hokey patriotism and jingoist arrogance, but is in itself a stretch in its pathological attempt to link the game of baseball with military might and flag-waving herds of passive consumers. It stretches the thruth like so many other lies of the Bush era, refusing to acknowledge that beisbol is an international game with international citizens who happen to play in the US and Toronto and some of whom are deeply offended and saddened by such contrived nationalism (high-five, Carlos Delgado).

On yet another militant level, the violent mechanism of the Police and their intimidating presence – shooting taser guns at foolhardy fans for nothing more than running on the field – adds to the paranoia and dehumanization of our culture at large, and baseball in particular. In the past, it was we Fans who determined when we would run on the field together (see one of "Baseball's Best Moments": KC vs. NYY 1977, Chambers HR), in a triumph of joy over security.

And, again, the Machine now consumes a new discourse, dictating the way in which we value life, players, and how we value the Game – this time all according to strictly quantifiable sets of subjective criteria.

We can ask ourselves, without a trace of nostalgia, where are the Charlie Hustles of today? A guy who could coach and play (balls-out) simultaneously, all while using that passion and cockiness and wealth to gamble on his team to win every fucking game they played in.

Not even bothering to interview Rose along with teammates Morgan and Bench, the demeaning mlb network removes the wild card from the deck, playing it safe, tossing the same pre-written softballs to the dumb jocks and watching their woozy and bloated heads blather on about the same story they’ve told a thousand times in the same way. But these dumb jocks were great players and played hard and smart baseball to beat the Beantowners in that conveniently forgotten seventh and final game. The Big Red Machine were World Series champs.

Now, in 2010, Brian "The Machine" Wilson and that magical mess of misfits shut down the over-pumped Texas sluggers to win the World Series. Reluctantly embraced by the Machine proper, even the misfits had to be commodified. Fake coal-black beards, Kung-Fu Panda outfits, and even Torture Ball as a brand are all assimilated into the Machine as part of the corporate takeover of baseball culture. And we, the fans, are a bunch of suckers.

Welcome to the Machine.

BroadCasting

The cleanup man whips around and yells something at the pitcher, his furrowed brow and flexed neck muscles ready to explode. Hesitating, the ump decides not to issue a warning. The slugger finally makes his way down to first base. Two guys on, two runs in, only one out...

Listening to the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball goons regurgitate the nerd lingo dictated into their earpieces, I can’t help but feel a sad longing for the days of Joe Morgan. But remember, he was fired from the network. Probably for the best. Well, actually, not really. The best voice in the game, Jon Miller, was also canned. But still, there was something soothing about Morgan's voice and the fact that my grandpa always thought he was the world's greatest player - and by extension - announcer.

Vin Scully is now the last dinosaur of baseball broadcasting and it wouldn't surprise me if Dodgers brass hovers around the old man after every game, asking him about his health while offering him some deep fried garbage. Baseball television broadcasts are in a disturbingly clone-like era where Fox seems to have replicated the Buck/McCarver two-headed monster in each city. At least Morgan and Miller were silly and different. Will Fox dare to give Scully the hook at some point if he shows a similar unwillingness or inability to become a corporate stooge? Morgan was not willing or able. In fact, I'd like to think the conversation between Morgan and ESPN went something like this:

ESPN: Mr. Morgan, we’d like for you to repeat the statistical information given to you in your earpiece, word-for-word.


Joe Morgan: What the fuck are you talking about?


ESPN: Listen, Joe… The game is changing; how we look at the game is changing. There are a lot of hard-working people coming up with new and better statistical categories for evaluating productivity. And you need to cooperate here. We’ll have our statisticians tell you what to say and all you have to do is repeat it; just throw it out there for the audience to latch onto.


JM: I don’t need to be told what to say, like some goddamn puppet. I’ve been around this game my whole life. Don’t you think I know how to evaluate a player based on my intimite knowledge and experience of the game? I can sense when a player is pressing; you can feel it in your belly when the runner on first is gonna steal; my instincts tell me more about how a pitcher should approach a batter in a given scenario, far more than new-age stats will ever do.


ESPN: We’re not asking you to do this Joe; we’re telling you this is part of your new job responsibilities as a color commentator. You’d be wise to read up on the new stats and get familiar with the terminology.


JM: I’m not gonna sit around repeating a bunch of numbers babbled in my earpiece all game, throwing me off and preventing me from sittin’ back and observing all the little things between the lines. I know what I’m talking about here.


ESPN: Joe, this is the direction in which the network is already going full-speed ahead on, and you’re just holding us back at this point. Perhaps it’s best if you reconsider your position with us.


JM: I’ve been doing Baseball Tonight for over 20 years, helping to make it the most popular weekly baseball event on tv, and this is how you show your appreciation and loyalty?


ESPN: We’re giving you a chance to keep your job by adapting to our new vision on how to announce baseball games based on Sabermetric research.


JM: No. You’re telling me how I should perceive the game and forcing me to communicate my observations in quantifiable statistical categories instead of letting me continue to describe the qualitative aspects of movement, process, situation, and sensibility.


ESPN: For the last time, Joe, we’re not asking you to get on board with us. We’re telling you where the ship is sailing and expecting you to do your part or find another job.


JM: Then sail your fucking ship as far away from me as fast as you can. I’m done.

...alas, the conversation was probably nothing like this at all.


Listening to Bobby Valentine talk about the great left-field play of diminuitive Brett Gardener last night, he stumbles over some strange sentences whispered into his earpiece,

“Gardener is second in the league to…Parra…uhh…among left-fielders …with…uh…thirteen…runs…uh…prevented. Yes, thirteen runs saved.”

Obediantly repeating the words like a good corporate stooge, but sounding like a tool in doing so. “He’ll learn,” the ESPN producers cry, “at least it’s better than Morgan not broadcasting anything we tell him to say.”

Orel Hershiser talks exclusively about pitchers and their challenges and accomplishments. He’s not been heard from for an inning or two, as he’s probably been told to recite and record a prepared interlude constructed between innings on pitch sequences to specific batters and how to approach a hitter the second and third time around. Suddenly, we hear his voice, after a prolonged absence, chime in with haste and overconfidence to tell us about how and why Sabathia attacks Soriano, pitch-by-pitch.

Don't get me wrong; the dutiful dictation done by these three elderly, wealthy, white men in stiff suits, starched shirts and in their square booth is more informative and analytical than an old Jon Miller/Joe Morgan broadcast, without a doubt. But in their attempts to analyze and criticize every nuance of the game and to quantify as many variables as technologically possible, they fail to let the game reveal anything surprising or unexpected to them or to us; they don’t allow themselves enough time to enjoy the game being played right in front of them. And we sure as shit don't feel like part of a conversation.

The aesthetics of the game are wiped away; style no longer has any substance. Personality is only interesting in so far as it can be absorbed into the Monoform. Nick Swisher with a shit-eating grin on his face sure looks good in those Norelco shaver commercials, eh guys? And he’ll make a great tv personality one day, so watch out – he might be here in the booth sooner than you think!

Grooming and manipulating and engineering forces, like the Emperor, to succomb to the dark side (negative, reactionary forces). Or striving to constrain or destroy positive forces (affirmative, active forces) by breaking them up – like the Jon Miller/Joe Morgan tandum – out of a deep-seated resentment toward human interference; nothing more than rusty cogs in the corporate machinery.

So baseball fans are relieved of an old stick-in-the-mud announcer, too damn stubborn to bend toward this new nerdball movement. Yet, we're left with a trio of petty, stiff and sanctimonious dweebs doing what they’re told, keeping an air-tight broadcast free of any unanticipated variables that might fuck with their pre-fabricated storylines; constraining and controlling the interpretation of the game to a single monolithic narrative, replete with a televisual grammar and logic that works the audience over, pounding us in the gut again and again with the same silly sequence of shots – strike three, zoom-in on pitcher who struts around the mound in confidence, cut to batter walking back to dugout with head down, then looking toward the field as if staring at the pitcher (“I’ll get you next time”), but is actually just passively watching the replay on the jumbotron; cut to establishing shot of stadium for an enthusiastic endorsement of some corporate product; cut back to centerfield camera for the next at-bat; repeat.


Why don’t we ever get to see how the infielders throw the ball around-the-horn after a strikeout? How they might be getting into the game, and if they look tense or playful when doing so. We need to hear the silence of between-inning breaks; the hum of the stadium organ, the murmur of the crowd as they do “the wave”, the indecipherable words of the p.a. announcer low and soft in the background; and the sight of the grounds crew working the infield over, players running out to their outfield positions to toss lazy fly balls to each other, the pitcher’s warm-up throws, the batter studying the pitches from the on-deck circle, “coming down!”…

And I continue to wonder why me and my buddies can’t have a crack at announcing games. Spontaneous, but well-informed. Teaching about the new statistical categories as one of many ways to appreciate the game. Full of humor and wit and exuberance. Aware of mistakes made, but highlighting the achievements and positive contributions done on the field. And with a lot more audience-involvement.

For starters, challenging baseball fans to discuss forming a Fans Union together so we can, among other things, claim the right to overthrow bad television and radio announcers that make listening to our hometeam a painful obligation instead of the stirring and thought-provoking experience it can potentially become.

The catcher has been out to talk with our hurler. He says little. Each man knows what is needed. First pitch fastball on the outside corner for strike one. Second pitch fastball away. Third pitch fastball inside, fouled off. Fourth pitch slider low and away. 2-2 pitch, changeup, low...

It's a grounder to short...6...4...3...double play. Mercifully ends the inning.