Friends,
Here’s a confession only an American could make: I’m really happy the football season is over and Spring training has begun. In theory I like football. It is a game of strategy that combines great athleticism and skill. It is a team sport in which every player is needed and essential, but I don’t like what football has become, especially in the NFL. I don’t like how every team uniform in the NFL is identical, down to the knit hats the players wear on the sidelines. I don’t like the swagger and bravado players exhibit when they make a good play or score a touchdown. Most of all, I don’t like the aesthetic of violence that has permeated football. The game is necessarily rough and physical (which I like), but somehow it feels to me as if the sport has become a gladiator event designed to sate our bloodlust rather than a contest between athletes.
The arrival of baseball brings with it a slower-paced, more contemplative vibe. It’s a bit more modest too. If a football player makes a tackle, he’s likely to do a mocking dance to celebrate his having accomplished something that happens just about every play; in baseball, a slugger might hit a game-winning grand slam, in a pennant race, on his late grandmother’s birthday, and tip his cap only reluctantly.
Baseball is slow enough that listening to the game on the radio still is a pleasure. Baseball has a song everyone can sing (Take Me Out to the Ball Game); and whereas I happen to know the Pittsburg Steelers have a polka (I’ve seen Steelers fans dancing at a wedding reception and it’s wonderful), the NFL’s best effort at singing is “Are You Ready For Some Football?”, which just isn’t all that.
Anyway, bring on the Spring, and for the sake of all that is holy, PLAY BALL!
Wishing you a low ERA and a high batting average,
Ben