Baseball and philosophy

While browsing the great big web, I've run across some discussion of a recently (?) discovered letter from the great American philosopher, John Rawls. Unbeknownst to me, Rawls was an avid fan of baseball and (correctly in my opinion) believed it to be the greatest game.

Now y'all know I love the game of baseball, but I do agree with the Boston Globe writer who says, "Aside from trout fishing, baseball suffers most from the tender mercies of intellectuals." I wish I had written that. Anyway, Rawls' letter recounts a long ago conversation he had with Harry Kalven (a U of Chicago legal scholar) about the perfection of baseball. According to Rawls' recall, Kalven came up with 6 reasons baseball is the greatest game. Briefly:

1. The rules are in equilibrium. Essentially he argues the dimensions of the field are "just right" in the sense of leading to wonderfully exciting plays that would not occur if the dimensions were tweaked. Red Smith said this much more simply when he opined something like, "90 feet between the bases is as close to perfection as man can get."
2. Any size or shape person can play baseball -- unlike, say, basketball.
3. Baseball uses all body parts [ed., something common to many other sports as well]. 4. The action is open to view, unlike, for example, the interior line of a football game.
5. Baseball is (almost) the only sport where scoring occurs without the ball. In other words, the defense controls the ball.
6. Finally, Rawls celebrates the lack of a set time period. Hence, the game may fly by or it may drag on nearly eternally. Either way, no baseball team ever lost a game (except maybe for weather-shortened contests) because it ran out of time. Outs yes, time no.

Now I'm not going to parse every one of these claims, but I do want to add a few words of my own. First, I find a lot of those claims to be patently ridiculous. #1 is just silly and though many people have celebrated point #5, why/how is that evidence of baseball's superiority? I've never understood that. That said, I most emphatically agree with the final point. The lack of a time clock is one of the two things that really does make baseball a beautiful game. Yes I know there are games where one team is "out of it" from the first inning, but I also remember a 2005 game when the Cards were trailing the Reds 9-3 in the 9th inning -- with 2 outs -- and they came back to win 10-9!

What I found most interesting about Rawls' list, though, was that he, and apparently Kalven as well, failed to mention the most beautiful aspect of baseball. It is the ultimate symmetric game. Each team has 9 players and each player has to play offense and defense. [Don't even bring up that abomination known as the DH. I'm talking about BASEBALL, not the bastardization known as the American League!] Hence, baseball forces tradeoffs. You've got some big lumbering ox of a power hitter who has to have a mirror to see his toes? Well you've got to find somewhere to hide him on defense where he won't kill your team. You've got some slick-fielding wizard with the leather who just happens to get the bat knocked out of his hands when he's at the plate? Tough, you've got to stick him somewhere in the batting order. Don't believe me about the pain this inflicts on a team? Ask any fan of the Boston Red Sox how painful it sometimes is to watch Manny Ramirez stumble around in left field.

Further, when you do make a substitution to minimize the risk one of your player's presents to the team, you cannot later undo that change. Do you "pinch run" for the lumbering ox late in the game? If so, you may end up REALLY regretting it if the game goes extra innings and your strongest hitter is out of the game. [I don't want to get into a "my sport is better than your sport" argument, but I should mention one thing about soccer. Soccer (or football if you prefer) has substitution restrictions as well, but from a casual observer point-of-view it seems to be much easier to keep a scorer on the field without being penalized for his poor defense (or a stellar defender who is no scoring threat) in soccer than baseball.]

As I said, I don't want to denigrate anyone else's favorite sport, but it is the time of year to celebrate baseball and I thought I'd take the opportunity to do just that. So if there's a minor league park near your house, go have a dog and a drink and watch a game. Even better, take someone who doesn't know the game that well. You might be amazed, once you start paying attention, at how many little things go into almost every play. It really is a great game!

P.S. If you're interested, here's a link to Rawls' letter. Play ball.