A Return to Innocence July 28, 2010

Lacking understanding is dangerous. I don’t want the first thing I say on here to be how I never liked Cubs fans, but I never liked Cubs fans. At the same time I lacked understanding. I didn’t understand that the same Cubs fans that invade out of town parks are the same as the Penguin fans that don’t know what Fort Duquesne is, why someone would want fries on a sandwich, or can’t name even one of the three rivers. Maybe next time the Cubs come to town to play I will ask one of them if they know what in the hell a sports pepper is.

One more thing about me before I get to what I want to talk about, I am not a lifelong baseball fan. I simply never got the opportunity. I am from an area that didn’t have baseball for most of my life, and the closest two cities with baseball are crime ridden cesspools. I also have no connection to those cities. I would make a bad bandwagon fan. I am just too disloyal to areas that aren’t my home. However that fact that I am a more recent convert to the church of baseball makes me no less devoted. My father may have never gotten the chance to hold me in his arms and try to explain the rules of a game to a person whose understanding of language was to point and cry. I never got the chance to beg for balls from anyone in a uniform that walked by. There are certain things a child can get away with that an adult can’t. I will never get those moments back.

Upon entering Wrigley Field I saw again with the innocent eyes of a child. It was like my first time seeing a baseball diamond: the beautiful green of the freshly mowed grass, the bright and lively ivy climbing the outfield wall, and the contrast of the red brick walls surrounding the field. I walked out behind home plate just to get a closer look. The usher didn’t ask for a ticket or try and tell me I couldn’t be there to watch them water the field. She instead talked about how beautiful the place is and how I could get a first time visitors certificate. The only other stadiums where I have been this close to the field have all been minor league parks. I know it is a cliché, but Wrigley Field just felt cozy. It felt like when the action started I was going to be part of something.

The true appeal of Wrigley Field isn’t that it is cozy or that fans are all on top of the players, but that if you close your eyes you can see the stands filled with men in three piece suits, ladies in sun dresses, and popcorn venders with trays and funny red striped shirts. Wrigley field takes you back to innocence. It gives back what was lost. Part of my childhood that was stolen from me was returned when I saw Wrigley Field. My dislike of Cubs fans is now reserved for those whose grandmother’s second cousin’s best friend once changed trains in Chicago.

Wrigley is a shrine to the game of baseball. Seeing it is the same as seeing the Parthenon or Notre Dame Cathedral. For those in this world and in this country that claim America has no culture I would suggest they check out Wrigley Field. It is a place that exists out of time, but in lockstep with time. The Parthenon is a ruin whose function is debated, a person can see a sparsely attended church service at Notre Dame, but Wrigley Field is bustling and full of life. The game of Baseball is timeless in itself. Seeing it played in a living monument can only make it more special. A visit to Wrigley Field is not just a trip to see a monument of the game, but for any baseball fan it is a journey of self discovery and greater understanding.

A Blind Defense of Inception July 16, 2010

http://www.observer.com/2010/culture/can-someone-please-explain-inception-me

This won’t be about baseball. I do sometimes have other interests and one of my interests that has waned since getting married is going to the movies. Inception is a movie that I want to see. I think it might be worth the $20 or so I have to pay to see it with my wife. My nephew sent me the above link this morning and after what I wrote about why I enjoy baseball one line in particular stood out to me.

“But he’s clueless about how to deal with reality, honest emotions or relevant issues.” If I wanted those things I wouldn’t need to go to the movies. I could hire someone to walk around and film me for a day and just watch it whenever I wanted to see reality. I am not really even sure what the term honest emotions means. I can understand the idea of someone faking happiness or sadness, but that is what actors do. They are paid to fake emotions. So, again if we want honest emotions the only thing to do is live our own lives and wait. Actors on the screen will never give you honest emotion. I am pretty sure at the end of “Titanic” when Leonardo is sinking into the ocean I highly doubt that Kate Winslet is really sad. There can be no honest emotion in that situation because in reality no one is dying. They are probably about to share a cup of coffee with each other and discuss how they felt the scene went. It is a movie full of actors faking emotions. No matter how real the emotion on the screen looks it is faked.

Of course the last bit of that quote is the most bizarre. I don’t really want to see a movie that deals with relevant issues. If I wanted that I could just turn on the news and I can listen to Dan Rather tell me about relevant issues. I am also not sure how one would define relevant issues. It changes the world over. The main goal of any form of art is to be timeless. For some reason earlier this week I was thinking about “The Wizard of Oz” it amazes me that the movie was made in 1939 and is a fond memory of every generation of children born after that date. It is simply amazing to think that one day my children will hide behind me when the wicked witch of the west first appears on screen, and that this movie came out before some people’s grandparents were born.

I expect the art and entertainment I enjoy to be a reflection of reality, but like all reflections it is distorted. The truth held within art is not going to be apparent to all. It is these nuggets of truth that remain behind in the reflection that makes art interesting to me. I know all there is to know about reality. I live it every day. The truths I wish to discover through art are truths that extend to some plane of being beyond reality. Of course I haven’t yet seen “Inception” and have no idea if it is good, but I have heard good things about it. It sounds like the type of movie I enjoy. A thinking man’s movie. Kind of like baseball is a thinking man’s sport. I guess I am nothing if not predictable.

Clinical Obsession July 12, 2010

This past Saturday I took my mother to watch the Nationals lose to the San Francisco Giants 10-5. On the way home she asked me a question I could not answer, a question that I simply found puzzling. She, like I guess all mothers do, asked this question in the form of a statement. She said, “I hope you haven’t become obsessed?” The motherly concern is slightly touching, but I think my confusion comes from the very nature of the sport of baseball. I am die-hard baseball fan. I don’t think a day passes that I don’t read an article on fangraphs or look up a players stats on baseball-reference.com, and no night passes that I don’t watch a baseball game in some form or another. I am even going to drink a beer and watch the homerun derby tonight. I will get annoyed at Chris Berman, but it is the only baseball I will get tonight, and when winter rolls around I will watch the Caribbean Series when it is on MLB network. Simply said being a baseball fan is being obsessed.

Even if you aren’t a slightly insane person like myself, but still watch baseball then in a way you are obsessed. Baseball is on during the perfect time of year to lead to obsession. Unless a person is really interested in summer shows like “Rookie Blue” or reruns of “Glee” then baseball is the only thing to watch.  

The lowest common denominator of sports information is sports radio, and this is the time of year they hate the most. Baseball is hard to talk about. It is a sport that has to be understood in order for intelligent discourse to take place. The caller can complain about a guy not hitting enough homers or having enough RBI, but if the radio host adds no insight then they have failed. So, in order to not fail they mostly ignore its existence and complain about the lack of football. Football is a completely different sport. Someone can watch every football game and understand more about it than other people, but the only time they lose is a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon. Baseball takes away three hours every night.

Most people simply don’t have the time to invest in really following a team. It is even more of an investment to get down to all the smaller parts of what makes up a team. Knowing the minor leaguers and the prospects is an investment of time. Keeping up and understanding the latest stats and trends in the game is another investment of time. Trying to argue your views vs. another fans view on a message board is yet another investment of time. And between all this life has to be lived. Money needs earning, wives and girlfriends need attention, family needs visiting, and god forbid someone die or get married.

(Once a college friend of mine got married during baseball season and I lied and said I had prior commitments so I could go and watch a meaningless game between the Nationals and Cubs. My favorite Uncle also happened to die during baseball season and my father and myself rushed home from the funeral Sunday morning to watch the Nationals take on the Marlins. When planning a family the birth month of my child will revolve around the baseball season so as not to disturb anything. And I myself had a January wedding just so it would avoid any aspects of baseball.) 

The nature of baseball is obsession. Even if someone wanted to it would be very hard to follow any other sport as closely as all of us die-hard baseball fans follow baseball. All the information we need to know nearly everything there is to know about baseball is right there at our finger tips. The internet has made being a baseball fan even more time consuming and wonderful. If I wanted to know what Adam Dunn is hitting on Tuesdays after an off-day in which it rained I am sure the information is out there. Baseball lends itself to so many things. People could spend hours arguing the strategy of bunting or discussing the joys of watching Pujols bat.

This season alone I am on a record pace of attending sixty games. I have been to 33 games so far this season. All but three of them have been Nationals games. Two of them were Orioles games when the Nationals were out of town, and one was a Harrisburg Senators game when Strasburg was pitching. Baseball has become a part of my being. I can’t say the moment this happened or why it happened. It is just something that does happen. I don’t know if I would call it an obsession though. Obsession implies danger. It implies that I would stalk Strasburg just for a chance to steal his dirty underwear and sell it on e-bay.

When I was in Cleveland a random Nationals fan ran up to me and he seemed very excited about something. He seemed to really have something important to tell me and was bouncing like a six year old that needs to pee. Without me even opening my mouth he proceeded to tell me how the Cleveland police told him that the Nationals were staying at the Ritz or Hyatt or some other fancy hotel. I really didn’t care. I don’t really want to meet the Nationals players away from the field. My pleasure comes from watching them play the game of baseball. There is a poetry and beauty in watching people that are this good do what they are great at. Seeing them in street clothes drinking beer in a hotel bar is not really the way I want to see my ball players. I don’t want to know what they do when they aren’t playing baseball. That is their free time when they are human and I want my ball players to be mythic beings, and they are only that when they are playing baseball.

After the crazy stalker told me this news of where the Nationals were staying he ran off in the opposite direction I presume to tell more people that he was insane and going to stalk the Nationals. That might be obsession. I am not there. I do spend countless hours reading about baseball in books and on the internet, and I spend even more countless hours watching the game of baseball. I plan my travels and vacations around baseball (next weekend I am heading up to Chicago for Cubs vs. Cardinals, Brewers vs. Nationals, and White Sox vs. Mariners).  Whenever someone asks if I have plans I always check the baseball schedule before I can answer. Baseball may consume large quantities of my time, but I am no more obsessed than other normal baseball fans.

I don’t care what hotel the players stay at. I don’t wait by the player parking lot for the chance to see them drive away. I simply watch and enjoy the game of baseball. For me it is a passion not on obsession.

The Adam Dunn Question July 8, 2010

There is a pleasure derived from watching Adam Dunn swing a bat. He is a big lumbering mountain of humanity. He is someone that has stepped out of the pages of folk tales, a mythic hero like Paul Bunyan or Hercules. He is strong, fierce, determined to give it his all in every plate appearance. There is no beauty or poetry in the way Adam Dunn plays the game of baseball just like there is no beauty in watching a lumberjack fell a tree. It is pure force and power. His mighty swings can crush the soul of the pitcher and his epic strikeouts leave his own fans wondering what might have been. It is just a known that if his bat made contact that ball wouldn’t be coming back.

The question now surrounding Adam Dunn and the Washington Nationals is what to do. Adam Dunn is a force at the plate and in the clubhouse. He is a big goofy likeable guy to the players on his team, and he is a feared leviathan to opposing pitchers. The problem is one that baseball teams face often, and whatever the answer I for one hope it involves Mike Rizzo being smarter than me.

Last night watching Adam Dunn crush homer after home and break the heart of San Diego pitching brought a tear to my eye. I like watching Adam Dunn play the game of baseball. He has his issues. He isn’t very sharp when it comes to situational hitting. He approaches every situation with one goal: smash the baseball into the farthest reaches of the heavens. His goal seems to be to knock Artemis from the sky no matter what the game situation is. This leads to strikeouts with a runner on third and less than two outs where a long fly ball or just a ball in play would score a run. Adam Dunn isn’t that type of player though. His approach is to kill baseballs.

Adam Dunn isn’t a complete hitter, but he is a consistent hitter.  He has had six straight seasons with forty are near forty homers (he fell short of the mark last season with 38 homers). This season he ranks 7^th among first baseman with a .939 OPS ahead of such names as Ryan Howard and Prince Fielder. The only two NL first baseman he is behind are Joey Votto and Albert Pujols. Adam Dunn for his career has put up a slash line of .251/.382/.523. Those are pretty decent numbers for an offensive player. People can bring up defense, but first base is an offensive position and on the scale of defensive importance it might rank dead last.

It simply cannot be argued that Adam Dunn is not a productive major leaguer. The issue is what can Adam Dunn be signed for, and what can he be traded for. I would bet that if you asked a GM to tell you what kind of deadline partners they dream of the answer would be a team in the White Sox position. After an altercation between GM Kenny Williams and manager Ozzie Gullien it was presumed that Williams might be on the hot seat. Then the White Sox got hot and found themselves right back in a division race. The problem is the Twins might add Cliff Lee, and the Tigers have the AL frontrunner for MVP in Miguel Cabrera. The fact is the White Sox are catching neither team. However the White Sox think they can catch both teams. All they need is a little power, and they are looking for Adam Dunn to provide it.

The information we know so far is that the Nationals have supposedly asked for either Gordon Beckham or Carlos Quentin. I think it is more likely that the source mistook his conjunctions and the Nationals asked for Quentin and Beckham. Beckham after having an excellent rookie season is in what is either a sophomore slump or gigantic downturn from which he will never return. Carlos Quentin is a decent right fielder that is just starting to find his power stroke. Getting both these players would fill two needs for the Nationals. Another option would be to enquire into the availability of recently called up prospect Viciedo to be paired with either Quentin or Beckham. This would allow the Nationals to fill the hole left by trading Adam Dunn with a cheaper and younger alternative to Adam Dunn allowing them to save money for a possible run at Cliff Lee in the offseason.

The other alternative is to keep Adam Dunn and resign him. Dunn’s value is now in question after the Phillies signed Ryan Howard to a ridiculous contract. Reports on Twitter last week from Buster Olney were that four years and $48 million should be enough to get Adam Dunn signed. If these numbers are to be believed then a deal is most likely eminent.

There is no one sure path to contention. The Nationals could resign Adam Dunn only to watch him blow out a knee and never play again. Dunn could be traded and help the White Sox make the playoffs resign with them and be the second coming of Frank Thomas. The only sure thing about the future is that it is unsure. Neither option that the Nationals now face is the correct option. Both options could be a path to contention, and whatever happens hopefully turns out to be the best decision for the future of the ball club.

Understanding the Beauty of Ryan Zimmerman July 6, 2010

There is a quiet beauty in the way Ryan Zimmerman plays the game of baseball. The effortless dives towards the foul lines, the barehanded scoops on slow rollers, and the quiet stance with his arms raised and eyes lowered, it all just seems so easy.  If the statement were made that Ryan Zimmerman is a great player many people, including Nationals fans, would argue. How can someone that makes everything look so effortless be great?

It is this stoic nature that makes Zimmerman great. I myself doubted his greatness before the season began when I read in column after column about how Zimmerman was one of the fifteen to ten best players in baseball. I cast aside the first few writers with mild suspension, but then Posnanski said it. He is the great vindicator of any baseball opinion. I read his opinion that Zimmerman was not just a good player, but a great player and suddenly I could ignore it no longer.

I thought back to a moment watching Wes Helms and Garret Atkins playing third base in the playoffs. Everything to the left side of the infield seemed to be a hit. On slow rollers I thought, “That’s an out.” Then as if by magic no third baseman appeared to snatch up the ball and throw onto first. The pitcher and the catcher were too late. I wondered where the third baseman could be. I half thought that maybe the shift was on for that hitter or some other defensive oddity. It just didn’t make sense that the third baseman wasn’t there to field the ball. Then a hard grounder was smashed to the left side just out of the short stops reach, and I wondered how it even got to the short stop.

It was then that I realized that Zimmerman had spoiled me. Watching Zimmerman play defense every day would be like only watching Hitchcock. Having no point of reference and seeing something great everyday makes the greatness fade to the expected. I was expecting Wes Helms and Garret Atkins to make plays that they don’t make, plays that only seem ordinary when a defender of Zimmerman’s ability is on the field. I had lost my point of reference. To me Zimmerman was the ordinary.

It is Zimmerman’s nature that makes you accept this. He doesn’t celebrate wildly after every off balance throw. He is quiet and plays as if he expects to make the great plays. It is ordinary for him to do something extraordinary. It is nothing special to witness diving stabs, dives over tarps, barehanded pick-ups, and walk-off homeruns. Of course that last item is an offensive item. It wasn’t until last season that Zimmerman really grew into himself offensively. He had always had his moments, but last year was the start of something special.

Zimmerman’s offense is ignored even more than his defense. His stance at the plate is nearly flawless in its silence. His hands sit raised out over the plate above the letters. His front foot back ready to step forward as his hands lower. His eyes locked in awaiting the pitcher to make his delivery. He is not a menacing presence at the plate like Albert Pujols or Ryan Howard. He doesn’t instill fear into the hearts of opposing fans and pitchers alike. Maybe it is just they don’t know enough of Zimmerman, or maybe it is just that he doesn’t seem menacing. His swing is as effortless as his defense, and when he does get a hold of a ball it seems to glide through the air as if it is take a stroll through the park. His smashes off the outfield wall come on swings that just look so easy it is believed that anyone could swing a bat like that.

When Zimmerman struggles it frustrates behind belief. Everyone has seen what he can do and how easy he makes it look. Why can’t he just do it all the time? He can just flick his wrist and hit the ball 400 ft the other way. He knows the strike zone so why did he just watch strike three? It is hard to imagine someone so gifted, so natural and smooth struggling and still not looking like they are trying. It has to be a question in some people’s minds if Zimmerman would just show a little emotion and care then maybe he could be even better. Maybe the struggles would evaporate and the season would be one long hot streak. That isn’t how baseball works. There are players that grunt and groan with ever stroke. There are those with violent swings. Then there are players that it just seems to come natural to.   

Zimmerman’s quiet nature and effortless play make it hard for people to see his true greatness. Seeing him everyday makes it even hard to realize just how good he is. His type of greatness is the kind that isn’t noticed until it is gone. It is just there. It is expected, and it seems eternal in its grace. It is hard at times to truly appreciate Ryan Zimmerman. It is hard to see greatness in a quiet, serene nature encased in a player that goes about his business and makes it all seem easy.