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How Can You Not Be Romantic About Baseball?
“How can you not be romantic about baseball?”
The character of Billy Beane asks his assistant, Pete Brand, this very question towards the end of the film Moneyball and it’s something that I’ve been able to relate to for most of my life.
Billy delivers this line after Pete shows him a video of a very large baseball player who was “scared to run to first base” falling on the ground after rounding first base, only to realize that he had just hit a homerun. The players on the field cheered him on as he rounded the bases, his teammates congratulated him at home plate, and Billy teared up watching the clip. Then he says the line.
“How can you not be romantic about baseball?”
Now, the word romantic is not always the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about how I feel about my favorite sport. They don’t even play baseball on Valentine’s Day! So I Googled the definition of the word. One of the definitions that Google gives is, “of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality” with a couple of synonyms being idyllic and picturesque.
When I thought of baseball in this sense, I realized that I 100% resonate with the quote from the movie. To me, there’s just something about baseball that no other sport and that no other thing that makes me feel the way baseball does.
Starting with just being at a game, whether it’s at Fenway Park watching the Red Sox or if it’s at a local little league game, baseball provides a feeling of relaxation and happiness. There is no rush for the next play to happen (at least for now) and players can take their time to get set and do what they need to do to get ready. It gives me, as a fan, the ability to sit back, take everything in, and enjoy where I am and what I’m doing, which is watching a baseball game.
In basketball, things are constantly moving, in football, when a play isn’t happening, the teams are scrambling to get ready, in soccer, the clock never stops, and in hockey, there is constant fast-moving playing for basically the whole game. In baseball, things get a chance to breathe. There is a break in the action between batters. Players can compose themselves for the next play. The manager is able to think about what exactly he wants to do next. The fans can catch up on what is going on. The pace is perfect. The lack of a clock is one of the things that makes baseball unique and so mystifying. Until the final out, the game is never over. There is always hope.
Hope strongly ties into the romance of baseball. Teams that come into the season or come into a certain series with people giving them little to no chance to succeed still have hope. The 2002 Oakland A’s, which Moneyball is based off, were given no chance going into the season. Yet they ended up breaking the record for most wins in a row. The 2004 Boston Red Sox were down 3-0 in the ALCS to the Yankees and came back to win and then win their first World Series in 86 years. The 2016 Chicago Cubs broke their 108 year World Series drought. But only after going 7 games in the series and almost giving up the lead and the series in the seventh game. As long as you play until the final out, you always have hope in baseball.
Teams also find things to come together around. They play for a cause, in a way. The 2013 Red Sox did this after the Boston Marathon bombings. Their season was “Boston Strong” as their World Series win helped heal the wounds in the city. The 2017 Astros did something similar when Hurricane Harvey did such damage on Houston.
Maybe this is all subjective. Maybe other people get similar feelings about other sports that I do about baseball. But maybe not. Maybe it’s the feeling when Spring Training finally starts and you begin to feel that winter may actually end after all. Or maybe it’s the feeling of sitting and watching a game on a warm summer evening. Maybe it’s a mix of both. I just know that I love it.
But seriously. How can you not be romantic about baseball?