A whole new ball game: Play ball
It was during the recent Tampa Bay Rays vs Detroit Tigers game that it became obvious that baseball and I should have become acquainted earlier. I think it was the around the seventh inning, maybe part of the traditional seventh-inning stretch, and the ESPN commentators were discussing one of the group’s trousers. It was the same banal, space filling chatter found from cricket commentators. Earlier on, the trio were discussing whether Miguel Cabrera’s eye injury had been helped or exacerbated by his sunglasses. I felt at home.
At 11:10am BST on March 28th, the opening pitch of the 2012 season will be thrown at the Tokyo Dome as the Seattle Mariners take on ‘home team’ Oakland Athletics. The Mariners and The A’s will play a two game series in Japan to open the season and, more importantly, dedicated to the rebuilding efforts after last years earthquake and tsunami. With this marking the start of competitive baseball, I can’t wait to see a ballgame being played competitively rather than the tryout style of Spring Training. The Mariners have Japanese players, including Ichiro Suzuki, involved which will no doubt delight a partisan crowd.
Oakland’s General Manager is Billy Beane who is the focus of the recent film “Moneyball”. It’s a film about how Beane used statistics to maximize performance of his team rather than knowledge and conventional wisdom. Beane must be proud of his achievements, but they pales into insignificance when you are played by Brad Pitt in a film! It’s a film that I will watch sooner rather than later because of the numbers element as much as the baseball part.
Like some sort of mathematical leitmotif, the concept of numerical advantage in baseball cropped up again this week. In some weird and random way, I’ve had a Twitter conversation with the author of “The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First”. Jonah Keri is a Rays fan and his book’s been recommended to me as a great knowledge filler on the team. His first love, being a Canadian, were the Montreal Expos who I understand suffered the unimaginable of fate of having the franchise relocated. That is one of the things I couldn’t handle in sport. Imagine your team, who you’ve supported for years being relocated. Imagine if that happened to, say, Manchester United? Hang on, I haven’t thought this through….
Although I’m enjoying watching games, there is a knowledge gap on some of the language used my commentary teams. Whether it’s pitching (sliders? breakers?) or batting (Mendoza line?) or fielding (turning two?) I have a quizzical look on my face with enormous regularity at the moment. TV commentary in any sport always has assumed knowledge so I’ve just got to bear with it and keep Google close to hand. Sport on TV can be watched passively, washing over the viewer, or interactively where the viewer forms an opinion on the tone and content of the piece. I can form an opinion on sunglass wearing for fielding but strategies for stealing bases will have to wait….
