The Dirty Little Secret Every Fan Knows

I was going to continue our baseball lessons by writing about arguing with the umpire. But this week, I’m compelled to tell you the truth. I haven’t been totally honest with you, Girlfriend. I’ve been telling you that baseball is a great, mystical, magical game that is fun to watch. But I’ve been withholding the dirty secret that every long time baseball fan knows. And now it is time for you to know, too.

Sooner or later, baseball will break your heart.

There is no getting around it. The team you love stumbles, falls unconscious, needs life support. Your team suffers the indignity of an inning where the other team scores 8 runs and the final score resemble the football scores of your MOFF (when you were More Of a Football Fan) days. Your team may, as my dear Mariners did recently, lose seven games in a row. Your team may have, as my dear Mariners currently have, the worst record of both leagues. Your team of promise may not only be in a slump, as my dear Mariners were earlier this week, but may in fact be rolling around facedown in the gutter with a bottle of ripple in their hand.

Why do I share this dreary news when I seek to help you like the game of baseball? Because if you watch baseball, you will some day find that your team, yes, your dear team that you have been developing a passion for, learning the batting order, and starting to recognize the players, will have streaks, slumps, bad mojo, debilitating injuries, and undefined malaises that seem to roll in and hang on like a fog over Seattle’s downtown. And it can be painful. When your team has a winning streak going, it’s like the momentum of a fast train. The planets line up, the hits are clockwork, and the game goes like velvet. It is easy to be a fan then. I witnessed a great streak of the Boston Red Sox when during one game, four batters hit home runs in a row and all the pitchers could do (a relief pitcher came in but he couldn’t stop the train) was stare in disbelief while BoSox fans screamed, jumped up and down, and just about collectively wet their pants. It was an unbelievable high.

But when your team’s rushing current of luck hits an eddy and starts working against you, you have to hold on and keep rooting for your team. That, my little bratwurst, is when they need you to believe the most.

Because there is another thing unique to baseball that will keep fans going. Baseball teams play a lot of games in their season -- 162 to be exact. In playing those 162 games, the team with the absolute best record in the country still loses about a third of its games and the team with the absolute worst record in the country (which would be my Mariners) still win a third of their games. So no matter if a team is the best playing the worst, the not-as-good team will probably beat the better team a couple of times in a season, often at least once in a three game series.

Except last weekend when the Mariners played the New York Yankees in their last games played in the current Yankee Stadium. The first two games were a blood bath and the last was a heartbreaker. Close, ahead for the majority of the game, but they couldn’t pull it out.

And when the Mariners went back to Safeco Field in Seattle to play the Boston Red Sox who won the World Series last year and I found myself sitting next to The Boyfriend and Red Sox Fan on the couch, I still had to find it in myself to root for my team. That great play by Ichiro, catching Jason Varitek’s slammer over his shoulder and throwing it back in time to hold the runner at first almost negated the heartache of losing the seventh game in a row on Monday. But not quite.

You have to have a bit of a thick skin and a slight dose of “devil-may-care” attitude when your team enters this black hole and can’t seem to find their way out. This especially comes in handy when your team is losing to the favorite team of someone you know. Like Joanie the Softball Diva and Terminal Yankees Fan. During the weekend rout, after cheerfully declaring, “my boys are spanking your boys,” she actually tried to be kind, saying she hoped my team started winning. “But not until Monday,” she clarified, because her team was in its own slump and they needed to “sweep” the series with the Mariners to improve their record. The Boyfriend was a little more competitive. His compassionate response of the Sox pounding the Mariners that first game was more like “Ha! Ha! Ha!”

But remember the odds. Even when your team has the worst record in baseball, they are still going to win about a third of the time. And on Tuesday, the Mariners broke that losing streak with a dramatic bottom of the ninth inning line drive that brought in the winning run, thus lifting the spirits of every fan at Safeco Field. (Our power went out in bottom of the eighth inning, so we ended up eating ice cream bars and listening to the rest of the game over our battery powered radio which I highly recommend everyone do at least once this season.)

Catcher Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings.” No one really knows which fat lady he was referring to, but it has come to mean, don’t lose hope. Remember, there are 162 games in all. And it is still only May.

Being In The Zone -- The Strike Zone that Is

The focal point of watching baseball is watching the pitcher pitch and watching what the batter does with it. So let’s talk about strikes and balls.

Even MOFFs (More Of a Football Fan) knows it’s three strikes and you’re out. That’s so ingrained in our culture that it’s the basis of the California Penal Code. Same thing for baseball. Three strikes and you are out.

If a batter swings at a pitch and misses, that’s a strike. That’s easy. If a batter does not swing at a pitch, the strike zone determines whether a pitch is a strike or a ball. And that’s not so easy.

First, visualize home plate. It’s a pentagon shaped thingy with the pointy piece aimed at the catcher. Imagine home plate like a search light shining straight up into the air. The width of the strike zone is the width of home plate, so the width is the same for every batter.

Now put a batter at that plate. The strike zone goes from his knees to about the chest (technically the midpoint between shoulders and waist.) Think of a line from the chest and a line from the knees extending straight out and dissecting that search light into a box that hovers over the plate. That box becomes the strike zone. And the person who determines if the ball goes through that zone is the umpire hanging over the back of the catcher and wearing the padded IZOD shirt. If a pitch goes through that zone without the batter swinging, the umpire straightens up, turn to his right, does some kind of unique signature hand jive, and yells, "Sttrreeeekkkke!"

If the pitch is outside of that hovering zone and the batter doesn't swing, it’s a ball. Four balls and the batter gets to walk to first base without stress or fear. Did you know that back in the 1800’s, before baseball was standardize, the game was played with four strikes and you’re out, and nine balls before you walked? Imagine how long the games were back then!

When you listen to the announcer, you’ll hear pitch described as high, low, outside, or inside. That’s a description of what kind of pitch it is and where it goes in relationship to the strike zone. High means the ball sailed above the strike zone, low means it bellyed up below the zone, and …. well, you get the idea.

Pretty cut and dried, don’t you think? But au contraire, my little bag of peanuts. Calling a strike is complex. The strike zone changes with each player because it depends on his height, his baseball stance, and to some extent, the umpire's own definition of the strike zone. (Think of it like being fit for a bra. You think that this should be a simple thing, easy to define with everyone using the same tape measure, but in reality, it ain’t necessarily so.)

For example, in 1951, a man named Eddie Gaedel who measured 3' 7" (okay, he was a performer who was also a dwarf) was signed to a one game contract and was put in the line-up to bat for the St. Louis Browns baseball team as a promotional stunt. The strike zone, as you know, was the width of home plate and the length of the space between Eddie’s chest and his knees (which on Eddie measured barely a foot.) The pitcher threw four balls and Eddie walked in his only at-bat. Compare Eddie Gaedel’s strike zone to that of First Baseman Seattle Mariners Richie Sexson who stands 6’ 8” and looks good in a suit and you can start to see the fluidity of the strike zone. Sexson’s strike zone is almost as tall as Eddie Gaedel himself.

I found that unless the pitch is way outside, or sails over the head of the catcher, or forces the batter to duck for safety, it’s sometimes hard to accurately call the ball when you are first learning baseball. Just because your favorite player is up at bat and the umpire calls a strike when he doesn’t swing, don’t think that the umpire is a blind idiot who was recruited from the janitorial crew when the real umpire didn't show up. It doesn’t matter if the batter swings at every good pitch. What matters is that he waits for a pitch that he can swing at it the way he wants to. If the pitch looks good to you and the batter doesn’t swing, you can always take a lesson from The Boyfriend and mutter under your breath, “What was wrong with THAT?” Me? I sometimes like to see if The Boyfriend is paying attention, so when a beautiful pitch rockets fast down the middle of the strike zone and catches the batter looking but not swinging, I like to gush, “That was pretty!” STINK EYE TIME!

Once you start to develop your eye and start recognizing the strike zone and the pitches, you’ll be in a good position to partake of the second all-American pastime -- arguing with the umpire. And that’s what we’ll talk about next.

The Guy Dressed in Glasses and a Number 51 Jersey

No one is more optimistic at the beginning of a baseball game than the guy sitting in the first row near third base who brought his own baseball glove, hopeful for a foul ball that veers into the crowd, and pops solidly into his leathered hand.

The pitcher hurtles the ball at somewhere between 70 and 100 miles an hour. The batter pounds that sucker with a swing force of Hurricane Katrina which means that if you are in the path of the ball, it is traveling at the speed of “break your fingers off.” And some guy from Yakima, Washington, who is wearing glasses and an Ichiro Number 51 Seattle Mariners jersey holds out his Little League glove in pure belief.

That, my friend, is the American Spirit at its purest.

Now, to know about foul balls, you’ve got to know something about the baseball field. When someone refers to the baseball diamond, that’s the square diamond closest to the crowd . Home plate is at the bottom (think six o’clock on a clock, and each of the points of the diamond is a base – 3 o’clock is First, Noon in Second and 9 o’clock is third base. Inside the diamond and the running path is the infield, and everything outside of that to the wall is the outfield. If you take the lines from the diamond from home plate and extend them straight out, you have the foul line. That foul line extends out until it hits the wall and is marked in the stands by a tall pole next to the wall. If a ball lands outside the foul line or to the outside of the foul pole, it is a foul. If it is inside the foul pole, it’s fair and you should stand up and start cheering because that means its a homerun.

A foul ball is counted as a strike unless there are two strikes already and then a foul doesn’t count against the batter unless it is caught by the opposing team before it hits the ground. (Baseball, you see, is a game of many chances.) So a batter can keep fouling off balls and stay at bat for a long time if he has a good eye. (Ahhh. That makes me miss Edgar!)

If the opposing team is not able to catch the foul balls, who is catching them? Yup. The Crowd. That goofy guy in the Manny Ramirez Boston Red Sox jersey. The guy who bring his glove to the game.

When a ball goes into the crowd, it’s like watching a car wreck. You can’t help but watch and see if anyone gets hurt. People scramble for the ball, pushing over small children and old people alike, then the victor emerge from the waters, holding it up as a trophy, basking in the applause of the crowd, a crowing testament to his fanhood.

Me, I am a chicken. The Boyfriend got really good seats to a Seattle Mariners game one year, and they were definitely in foul territory. I told The Boyfriend that if a foul ball came directly at me, I was ducking to the ground and he needed to lean over and catch it for me. Now I know that some people, like Joanie the Softball Diva and Terminal New York Yankees Fan would not only catch her own ball, but would leap over the front three rows of people if the ball happened to be coming at another girlfriend who was too much of a noodle to catch it. But not me.

Me? I think they should issue a cafeteria tray to everyone in the high risk seats. Not today’s wimpy fast food trays, but the older hot lunch fiberglass trays of our elementary school days. It’s the perfect solution. If the ball is coming your way, put up your tray in a defensive motion and bounce it off. Then at the end of the game, pick up the leftover wrappers, cups, and nacho boats on the floor around your seat and deposit the tray near the garbage can near the exit. No one gets hurt and everyone picks up after themselves. It would be a great promotional night -- Complimentary Cafeteria Tray Night with your home team's logo on the front.

So, girlfriend, if you are going to a live game, follow your instincts. If you have a glove, and you have a competitive spirit, bring it on and join the teaming masses yearning to be shag flies from the comfort of their risk-taking seats. Or you are always welcomed to join me. I’ll be the one under the stadium seat next to you.

The Boyfriend and The Baseball Buddy Weigh In On The Designated Hitter

Okay, what about this designated hitter thing? It’s not as big and divisive an issue as it used to be, but I find people still have an opinion.

Just a refresher for folks who are learning the game. The Designated Hitter or DH, is a player who bats in place of the pitcher. The DH does not have to play on the field during the defensive part of the game. He just bats and the pitcher is relieved of any batting duties. So he usually is a power hitter who can really slam the ball. The DH is used in the American League, but not the National League and therefore lies the controversy.

Some people think the American League teams have more exciting baseball because there are more homeruns and Runners Batted In because of the Designated Hitter. But other fans claim that the National League without the DH has more interesting strategy of switching out players and strategically changing the batting dynamics in the process. Some claim this makes for better overall baseball.

In the movie Bull Durham, Crash Davis (played by Kevin Costner) says in his famous "I Believe" speech that "there should be a constitutional amendment outlawing astroturf and the Designated Hitter". (Yikes! Astro turf and the DH regarded as being on the same level. It doesn't get more harsh than that. ) The American League started using the Designated Hitter in 1973 (yep, it was the Yankees who did it first, gosh darn it) but the National League still makes the pitcher a regular part of the lineup. The Nippon Professional Baseball's Central League also doesn’t use it, but baseball in Japan is a whole ‘nother entry.

So I went back to my mentors as I often do and gave them a chance to give me their thoughts on the designated hitter.

The Baseball Buddy who knows a lot about baseball and loves to talk about these kind of things writes:

"My feelings on the designated hitter are mixed.

"The good news is: the DH rule has extended the careers of some great players. Because of the DH we were able to watch Dave Winfield swat a few extra homers at a time in his life when he would have otherwise been swatting golf balls.

"The bad news is: It compromises the game's strategy. Baseball is probably the world's most complex game next to chess and cricket (a game incomprehensible to anyone who has not carried an umbrella when the sun was out or spread yeast-paste on his morning toast.) I think that anything that robs strategic options from the game lessens it. Players are better athletes these days--pitchers hit better and hitters hit longer into their careers. I'd like to see the DH go."

The Boyfriend has an opinion, too. He counters:

"I like the designated hitter. I think that overweight, overage, lousy fielders should have an opportunity to play big league baseball too. Sarcasm aside, it really changes the dynamics of the game. There is less strategy, more booming bats. Less stealing and manufactured runs and more macho big bang ‘em up home runs where the overweight, overage, lousy fielders trot around the bases like a dog strolling down the street on a hot summer day. No double switches, here another player is taken out of the game so the pitcher doesn’t have to come up to bat soon after he has been brought in for relief…

"But…Then there was Edgar... One of the best hitters I have ever seen. I’m not sure if he ever held a glove in his hand…but…would I enjoy baseball as much if it wasn’t for Edgar?"

Sigh. Got to love a man who loves Edgar Martinez as much as I do. One of the reasons I stuck with The Boyfriend all these years.

Please, After You.

Okay, enough about strategies for learning to like the game of baseball. Let’s work on understanding the game better. If you understand it , you’ll learn to like it. Learn a few things at a time and look for them in the game.

On one level, baseball is very basic. Pitchers throw the ball. Batters hit the ball and run toward the nearest base. Infielders and outfielders chase the ball and throw it toward the base the runner is heading for. Umpires make sure everyone plays by the rules. And the crowd eats hot dogs, drinks beer, and stands up every once in awhile when the wave passes through the stands.

On another level, The Baseball Buddy insists that baseball is one of the most complicated games there are next to chess and cricket (which he claims can be only understood by the British). But let’s not make anything more complicated than we have to right now.

The purpose of baseball is to get more runs than your opponent so you win the game. You might think that you would want guys that can hit home runs all the time. But au contraire, my little popcorn ball. You want some runners on those bases when your big guy slams a ball over that left wall. It’s like selecting the “Play Three” button on a Vegas slot machine. Instead of one run, you might get two or three or even four. You get ahead faster. So let’s talk batting order.

In football, an offensive team goes out when your team has the ball and another defensive team (usually bigger, meaner ) goes out when the other team has the ball. Players specialize in either offense or defense. But baseball has the same guys playing offense (hitting the ball) and playing defense (catching the ball and guarding the bases.) Some are stronger batters, some are stronger fielders or throwers. Some can do both really well. The batting order is a strategy that tries to work these different abilities in hitting in your team’s favor.

There are nine guys on the team and at the beginning of the game, the Manager (also known as Main Honcho Father Figure Guy) has to submit a team roster listing out what order the team will bat. The team has to follow that order unless they take someone out of the game and substitute another player. Once you are out, you can’t come back in. So the Major Honcho Father Figure Guy plans the order carefully.

The little fast guys who have a pretty good chance of connecting with the ball and getting on base usually are in the first (called the lead off batter) and second positions. They usually aren’t thinking about hitting home runs. They are trying to reach base so when the big guys come in and hit a ball against the back wall, they can hightail to as many bases as they can.

Then the big guys who are strong hitters are usually in third, fourth, and fifth positions. The hope is that they will hit it farther into the outfield or even out of the park and bring everybody on base home. At the bottom of the order (which means the seventh, eight, and ninth positions) is everybody else. If the pitcher is hitting, he is often in the ninth position. Pitchers are usually your weakest hitters because, well, they got a lot on their plate already.

The American League teams use a Designated Hitter or DH, usually about the third or fourth position. This is usually a really heavy hitter guy who hits in place of the pitcher. The DH does not have to play on the field. He just bats. So he is picked for his ability to slam the ball. This allows the pitcher to sit on the bench with his arm covered by his jacket to keep his muscles warm and chew sunflower seeds and spit them on the ground while being shown on national television. Some people think American League teams have more exciting baseball because there are more homeruns. Now the National League teams don’t use the DH. The pitcher has to bat like the rest of the guys and eat his sunflower seeds on the run. But this isn’t all bad, because there is more strategy of switching out players and strategically changing the batting dynamics in the process. Some claim this makes for better overall baseball.

This is the one difference between the two baseball leagues as far as I can tell. The DH is one of those ongoing debates in baseball so try asking you boyfriend what he thinks. Make him defend his position. Or you tell him what you think. Usually people who watch National League teams don’t like the DH and people who watch American League teams defend the DH. In my next entry, you’ll get to hear straight from The Boyfriend and The Baseball Buddy themselves in the next entry as they weigh in on this topic. Trust me, they both will have an opinion.

Pretty in Pink

Well, whether you understand or even like baseball or not, you've got to smile at seeing David "Big Papi" Ortiz, the power hitter for the Boston Red Sox swing with a pink bat. Yes, pink! I want one bad! Today is Mother's Day and I watched a great game between Boston and the Minnesota Twins. To honor Mother's Day and bring awareness to the battle against breast cancer, some of the batters used specially made pink bats, many player wore pink armbands and others wore pink chokers around their necks. Whatever your feelings on the commercialism of the color pink, you got to love it that the baseball boys honored their mothers and the women in their lives. The Boyfriend says the guys are doing it just to impress the women. I say, it worked.

Baseball Is Like Dating

When you first start to watch baseball, the games seem too long. So watch strategically. The first couple innings of a game and the last three innings tend to be the most exciting to watch. The first innings are fun because the players haven’t figured each other out yet, especially early in the season. It’s a lot like a date. When you first go out, you don’t know his sense of humor or his sleaze factor or his ability to communicate. So you check him out, you test him, you make small talk. After the second or third date, you begin to be able to predict him, so you respond accordingly and are less likely to make stupid comments or mistakes.

Baseball is like lot like that kind of date. In the beginning of the season and at the beginning of the game, the teams are still figuring each other out. There’s new guys, players have been working out and changing their batting stances, and pitchers may have working on some new pitches. No matter how much footage you’ve seen, (much like a video entry on an internet dating service), it is not until you are throwing and swinging and reacting that you know how the match is going to work.

Watching these beginning relationships is like being in a restaurant and eavesdropping on the conversation of a couple sitting at a nearby table who is obviously on their first date. When pitchers and batters first meet in the batting order, there is more likely to be mistakes and opportunities, thus higher scores and more exciting to watch. Once or twice through the batting order, things settle down because the team has seen what the other has to offer and they adjust accordingly. You often see really solid ball playing, but you might often find the fourth, fifth and sixth innings to be the most snoozy if you aren’t into the technical stuff. This is a good time to make some phone calls or fold the laundry. If you get sleepy during a game, put your head in the lap of The Boyfriend and take a little nap. Or better yet, put your feet in his lap in case he jumps up in response to a very exciting play in the fifth inning and totally blows my theory to hell.

In the last third of the game, not always, but often enough to plan for it, players get tired. Pitchers start wearing out and make mistakes which the batters take advantage of and hit out of the park. Relief pitchers come in and sometimes make things worse. Catchers start to drop catches and runners steal bases. That’s when it gets fun again. Like bumps in a long term relationship, mistakes are made, balls are dropped and connections aren’t made, new relationships start, and things happen fast. So plan your viewing accordingly. Lots of good baseball can happen during the 4th, 5th, and 6th inning, but if you aren’t going to watch the whole game, watch the first innings and the last innings.

Find Your Passion

Here are three ways to help you learn to like baseball and maybe even develop a passion for it.

First: Find a copy of the movie Bull Durham starring Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and Kevin Costner and watch it. That one act will do more to help you understand the lure of baseball than a month of reading my guide.

Second: Find a team you like and get to know them. This might be the team your boyfriend watches. Or look in your back yard. I live in Alaska, and many people gravitate toward the West Coast Teams or follow the teams they grew up with. I’ve adopted the Seattle Mariners as my home team since I can watch their games often. But I probably know the Red Sox the best since I’ve watched many a game with The Boyfriend who is a Massachusetts native and I now have a sister who lives in Boston and is a hopeless fan.

It helps if you are a watching a winning team (always more fun to cheer than to mope) but not necessary. Underdog teams are romantic. Witness the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians whose claim to fame is not winning the pennant in most of their fans’ lifetimes. Yet they have the most loyal fans in the nation.

I like the teams who have teams with quirky personalities and colorful characters. Good baseball is great to watch, but fun baseball keeps you coming back.

For example, when I started watching baseball a long time ago, I had no cable but could get the TBS Super Station out of Atlanta. I watched many a game while talking long distance on the phone to my boyfriend. In October post-season, the major TV stations carried the games and I started watching the Philadelphia Phillies with Lenny Dystra and John Kruk. Lenny was a great ball player who had also played for the New York Mets, but John Kruk was the Pig Pen of the Phillies, with a filthy batting helmet and bits of grilled cheese sandwiches hanging off his teeth. I loved him, He was a good ball player but he wasn’t boring and he was always doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. We Girlfriends sometimes gravitate toward bad boys, you know.

Manny Ramirez of the Boston Red Sox is my current favorite, because his pants don’t fit, his corn rows fly out from under his batting helmet, he never cleans his batting helmet because it is bad luck, and he reminds me of Krusty the Clown on the Simpsons. But he is a demon hitter that strikes terror into the heart of pitchers. The Red Sox in 2003 were fun because they hadn’t yet beat the Curse of not winning the Series in 80 years. They all grew their hair and beards grow long and after Red Sox player Kevin Millar said to the press "I want to see somebody cowboy up and stand behind this team,” the phrase "Cowboy Up!" was often was repeated as a rallying cry by fans and players alike. The Red Sox didn’t win the Series that year, but heck, they were fun to root for.

What you are trying to do is build a passion. If you already love the technical game of baseball, you are probably not reading this blog anyway. But if the technical part doesn’t zing you, you have to find a reason to sit through some slow stretches. During the early 2000s, Edgar Martinez of the Mariners would often hit off foul after foul which would extend his plate appearances an extra five to six times past a full count. It made the game go on forever. I loved this extended play not because it was exciting, but because it was Edgar. I adored Edgar (much to the dismay of The Boyfriend.) Because of my passion for Edgar, baseball, even at its slow pace, was terrific fun.

Third: Watch baseball with people who love the game. And listen to them. Ask questions, but not too many. Nothing more annoying than people talking to you while you are trying to pay attention to what happens after a pitch is thrown. But I’ve learned the most listening to the banter between The Boyfriend and Baseball Buddy. Baseball Buddy has been watching baseball for a long, long time and is a forever Cleveland Indians Fan. He has tremendous passion for the game. I know that when the veins start popping on Baseball Buddy's neck, something important just happened. If you listen, you can learn.

Baseball is a game of personalities. In football, faces and expression are hidden under a helmet and shoulder pads. In televised baseball, high resolution lenses brings you up front and personal-- the sweat rolling off faces, the tics tensing in cheeks, the look in the eyes of the batter that says "bring it on." You are watching people and faces and drama and conflict. And that, to me, is way more interesting than a page of statistics.