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.

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.