Baseball could teach us a thing or two about life.
For me, the magic of the game doesn’t live within the staples: the crack of the bat, the whip of an unhittable pitch, or the roar of the crowd after a long ball leaves the park. It’s the other stuff. The quieter things.
The way a breeze moves through the field. The sound the red-clay dirt makes beneath footfalls. The smell of hot dogs, roasted peanuts, nachos, and fake cheese.
It’s the space between the action where the true magic of baseball lives.
Some people might say that’s the boring stuff.
But it’s not boring. Not when you realize what it truly is.
A space to breathe.
Think about it. Sure, we all love a good double play or a home run that’s never coming back. But in those other moments — the moments where we watch a kid three rows down marvel at the foul ball he caught in the bottom of the third inning — something else happens.
There’s the shared camaraderie we hold with complete strangers just because we cheer for the same logo.
There’s a simplicity to the otherwise intricate game of baseball, and it lives squarely in the moments between the plays. We talk to people, and we don’t know who they voted for in the last election. We cheer collectively. We groan in unison at the missed play.
We exist within the moment.
Together.
That’s the lesson: something as simple as a game where one person throws a ball and the other tries to obliterate it can erase all of the world’s complexities for nine perfect innings.
Baseball teaches us patience. Both as fans and as players.
And in life, we are both at different times.
So why is it that we seem to have such a hard time slowing things down from time to time? Why are we seemingly so averse to cheering each other on, or acknowledging a nice play from an unlikely source?
I think it might be because we have been programmed to value the things that truly hold no value.
Money?
What is money?
It’s paper assigned a value based on how much of it is put into circulation. And who puts it into circulation?
We do.
Markets pretend to be this organic thing only a few understand, but really, they are just constructs of greed, panic, and nearsightedness. Yet somehow, they still dictate how we play the game.
And that’s why I love baseball.
It doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is: a stick and a ball, a pitcher and a batter, a hot summer day where the sun hangs high with no intention of ever falling to the west.
The dog days, we call ’em.
You don’t have to be rich or skilled to find a patch of grass and play a game of baseball. Even if it’s with nothing more than a crooked stick and a rock you toss to yourself, you can still smash a home run and round the bases like the hero you know yourself to be.
That’s baseball.
A time out.
A pause.
A fuck you to the bustle and expectations of society.
Slow down. Enjoy the time between plays. There are only so many of them.
And when you get the chance, hit that ball as far and as hard as you can.
Because you deserve to.
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