More About Baseball
And a shout out to Kyle Hendricks and a lesson for today.
I am tempted to go after those who think baseball is boring. I want to declare them deficient in some way. The “better angels of my nature” (or some surviving thread of good will) comes to my rescue, and I only go so far as feel sorry for those who are missing the excitement and drama of the game. And be thankful, too, that we have entertainments that are not ”blood sports.”
My case in point is the past series between the Rays (leading team in baseball) and the Cubs (let’s just say not among the leaders). The first two games were high drama, without the fireworks that so many of us have come to expect in our entertainments. Just suspense and edge of the seat moments. With a great back story.
Sometimes, in the sport, one person “paints” a masterpiece. Stroman’s one-hit shutout was just that. It is still a team win, but the game allows for individual excellence, especially for a pitcher over the entire nine innings.
It is the shape of the game that makes this possible. A single pitch is a contained piece, a stand-alone work of art. And the whole: rarely a masterwork, but always the possibility, and usually a quality achievement.
There is something more about these two games that should be considered, and is wisdom of a sort, a helpful message for our time.
One of baseball’s most thoughtful students of the Game, Chicago pitcher Kyle Hendricks, who pitched 5 innings of one-run ball in the second game, explained his success by emphasizing the value of “keeping it simple.” Each pitch a separate, well thought through, moment. One pitch at a time. Isolate a part of the whole and take it piece by piece, and you restore balance and avoid destabilizing panic.
This is not to say that the moment itself is not complex. Considerable planning and thinking may go into it, involving knowledge of the batter, game situation, sequence of pitches. But it is a single act. In its execution you block out all that is extraneous to the act.
Baseball is one pitch at a time. The same for the batter as the pitcher.
A painting is one brush stroke at a time, a musical composition one phrase, a poem one word. A life, perhaps, one action after another. In the background there is the larger game, and the strategy and the sequencing, and thus the buildup of suspense, and for the spectator the moment of resolution, of exaltation. It is the same for the player, who is always both participant and spectator.
When you can reduce your action to a single moment, you keep it simple, not easy, but a total commitment to one move in a larger whole. Not “out of place.” Not in panic. Controlled and definite.
We talk a lot these days about “simplicity,” and we seem to misunderstand it. It is not about avoiding the complex. It is about finding the coherence in a single action that brings order and comprehension to the moment. This is what I think Hendricks meant by “simple.” One pitch can be a flawless perfection, a focus, a construction from all that is relevant. “Keeping it simple” placing one action in context and executing the moment.
An enjoyable and insightful read!