From 2019: But as relevant today, only some of the names have changed:
Sports fans look at games and seasons as purely binary. For them it’s a zero sum affair. And that makes a bit of sense, after all, there has to be one winner and there must, of course, be one loser. Binary. Yin to the yang. Black and white. The entire fandom industry is built on it. From the actual games where the investment either pays off (“We’re number one!”) or doesn’t (Oh my god, we suck! Fire everybody!!) to the reporters who thrive on clicks or, in the past, sales and those, especially, are also driven by the same zero sum mentality.
We see it all the time as Mets fans. To the point where, when the team was doing poorly (Pre-All Star Break) Mets Twitter wanted the entire team sold off. Wheeler? He should go. Thor? The Press agreed and led the “sell him now while he’s good” charge. And, then, when they didn’t and the fans wanted to hoist Brodie Van Wagenen by his agent-turned-General Manager petard, the team turned it around. In a magical, almost, dare I say, “Miracle” fashion, the Mets are now in contention for a Wild Card position, something hitherto unlikely as recently as early July.
But then The Mets lost a 14 inning duel by a score of 2–1 and, of course, the Zero Sum Brigade was out for blood. Only that time it’s the trade of Hechavarria (who went 1 for 6 in that game) that has the press howling. And the dearth of offense from a mostly novice, young ball club behind the brilliant pitching of Jacob deGrom and virtually the entire rotation has them all tied up in shoulda-coulda-woulda knots.
Lost in this is that the Braves, a team that last year was made up of young-uns, is the NL east leader and they were held to 1 run for 13 innings. That doesn’t matter. Because the Mets lost. And baseball is binary.
Zero Sum.
Except that it’s not. Not by a long shot.
Because baseball is different. And the fact that fans and statisticians and pundits and reporters all want to pretend that it’s like every other sport doesn’t change the fact that it is not. It is a singularly unique game. And that’s not just because it’s the only sport where the defense has the ball. (Although, for me, dayenu, that would be enough to separate it)
Baseball isn’t basketball. It isn’t football. It isn’t any other sport no matter how fans want to try to equate them or force the baseball diamond into every other sports’s rectangle.
Baseball is theater.
And that’s where the beauty lies.
When you go to the theater are you 100% aware of the exact end time of the show? No. Because that’s impossible to know. It’s a human endeavor with pauses, mistakes, different takes, altered performances, applause breaks, laugh lines. It might end around two and a half hours in, but it might go longer. You don’t know.
Cuz there is no clock. Like Baseball. A sport with no clock.
There is an act structure to theater. Usually it’s two acts but in film, it’s three and for the purposes of this metaphor we will go with the three act structure.
When the curtain opens we meet the players. They set up their relationships which will definitely be affected by the other players and actions those players take.
The hitters see the pitcher for the first time. Maybe they get who he is right away and they are off to the races. Often, though, they are just sizing each other up. One time through the batting order. If perfect, it’s three innings. One third of the show. The first act.
It’s the second act where the characters begin to have to deal with the stresses put on the relationships. In the movies we say that in the first act you get your hero stuck up a tree. In the second you throw rocks at him. The man on the mound has been seen. Maybe he’s better understood. He’s going to have to change things up to keep his edge. Those who see him for what and who he is, his mettle, will get to him. Knock him around. Throw that rock right back at him. Act Two. Innings 4–6.
The third act is the climax. Perhaps it’s a blow out and that happens. Maybe this is a big musical with spectacle instead of surprises and twists and turns. Often, though, it’s in those last innings that underdogs come from behind and hit that massively dramatic walk-off homer or double that knocks in the winning run. Maybe it’s that closer who is lights out and shuts the door and he’s the hero that saves the day. Or he gets lit up and he’s the villain.
That’s the other thing. In a play you *think* you know who the hero is and who the villain is and that’s often true. But it’s also just as often that you don’t know who he is because events that happen in this drama can quickly change a hero into a goat and goat into a champion. A lowly .213 hitter can come up in the bottom of the 9th with two on, down by one and lace a career defining triple into the gap, scoring the winning run.
Or, take the implosion against the Nationals. In their entire history the Mets record, being up by 6 runs going into the bottom of the 9th, was something like 806–0. (Thank goodness for stats, right?) And the Nats were the inverse of this. Something like 0–700+ when down by 6 in the bottom of the 9th.
The Mets and Nats did something heretofore unheard of and the Zero Sum Brigade would have us all believe that the Mets are terrible and they are “Metsing” but amazing things happen in baseball all the time. Epic things.
Theatrical things.
Another instance…Edwin Diaz implodes on May 29th to upend the Mets 8–5 lead an LOSE 9–8 after giving up back to back home runs, load the bases and hand the Dodgers a sac fly win. Then he gives up that home run in the Nats game to Kurt Suzuki. And THEN he does it again against the Phillies when JT Realmuto homers for 2 only to see the Mets scratch back and…in epic theatrical fashion, they LOAD THE BASES in the bottom of the 9th and Pete Alonso, ROOKIE PETE ALONSO, he of the epic first season, the slugger, the freaking Polar Bear, crushes one into left, a towering shot so massive that the ball actually leaves the stadium and lands in the spot where home base used to be at Shea.
Wait…hang on…let me check my notes.
No…no…no…got it wrong.
He walked.
He walked in the winning run. He didn’t try to Mighty Casey it and hack himself into a strikeout. He did the most heroic thing he could do and walked.
Come on!
Other sports don’t do this. I mean, sure, they have their dramas and there are heroes and villains, of course, but baseball is built on being dramatic. Theater has dramatic pauses. What does baseball have? Time…
in between
…pitches…
There are those who decry the game’s methodical nature and want to speed it up. But it’s the measured pace, the space between the moments of drama that build TO the drama. They don’t mean as much if you take the pauses away. The soliloquy of Hamlet is tantamount to Jacob deGrom on the mound, bases loaded (cuz he walked a guy, dammit and then a single and that hit batsman…) and one out.
We watch as the number three hitter comes up, his bat looms like it’s made from an oak tree, no, it looks as big AS an oak tree. It’s Freddie Freeman and we NEED him to make an out and this guy doesn’t make outs. The pressure builds in the stadium in between each pitch as people young and old clasp their fingers in prayer, the announcers filling the 20+ seconds with anecdotes about how Jake thrives in moments like this, tidbits about how he bears down when faced with these situations and then…in that longest of seconds, your heart racing, he lets fly a slider that looks like a fastball and just falls away and the batter swings and he’s way over it and Freddy strikes out!
That moment doesn’t have the same heart stopping effect with a pitch clock. It’s not something you feel in the scrum of chaos when Payton Manning would take the snap.
It’s high drama.
It’s theater.
That’s what baseball is.
The moments in between.
Baseball is the art of hitting the ball where someone isn’t.
Heroes who fall from grace.
Champions who live up to the pedestal we erect for them.
That seemingly insignificant character in the background who pulls out his slingshot and slays the giant.
When we try to look at baseball as something other than the greatest sports show on earth and, instead, reduce it to stats like BABIP and FIP and WHIP and STRIP and BLIP we are trying to turn it into a sport that it is not. And this is coming from a first generation Bill James acolyte. I love sabermetrics and I think the game is better for them. But not the SHOW. Sabermetrics have turned all of fandom into armchair GMs more than just your grandfather shouting at the tv when the manager takes out an effective pitcher early. It’s become a cottage industry that has so many fans forgetting about The Show.
The New York Mets have been giving us all a show this year.
The second act of the season (Yes, seasons have act breaks as well. The All Star Game is Intermission) is building to its climax. Will they be part of Act Three, the Post-Season where a victor is crowned? To this theater/baseball fan that doesn’t matter. They’ve already give me more than my money’s worth.
Pete Alonso is the underdog story we all hoped for. He had to win that full time position and now everyone knows his name.
Jeff McNeil is the Cinderella story. Triple A a year ago, in the running for a batting title this year.
Edwin Diaz is that guy we know has it but will he find it in time who gives up the tying runs in the 9th but ends up the…winner!?!?
Robinson Cano is the wise and wizened veteran who, beat up, stayed on the bench to give sage advice to the warriors who are still on the field.
JD Davis is the cast off who found a way to make himself a huge part of the narrative.
The 2019 Mets have a dozen of these stories and I’m so grateful to them for allowing us to watch the drama unfold.
I won’t prognosticate nor will I fully resist the urge to calculate the possibility of their post season chances. I will watch each game the way I have watched baseball for 40 years.
As a member of the audience.
Thanks for the Show, guys.
