Let’s go, batter up
Spring and summer are time for baseball. It has been called “America’s pastime” for a reason. It is a look back to that riparian Eden of myth where we can play a game between the white lines that is bound by no definite amount of time. Only those nine innings can bookend the pursuit of perfection at bat and in the field. There is perhaps a great innocence of youth that we all long to reclaim, when things were simpler. When we didn’t need to think about extra cash via – yes - a payday loan. Roger Angell, who for my money is the greatest baseball writer who ever lived, said it well about the sport:
It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look — I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring — caring deeply and passionately, really caring — which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete — the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball — seems a small price to pay for such a gift.
The 2009 NCAA Baseball Super Regionals
The 2009 MLB season is in full swing, and the Los Angeles Dodgers appear to be the class of the game thus far. But let’s take a brief look at a couple of the 2009 NCAA Baseball Super Regionals games to see just how crazy the game can be. Courtesy of the AP:
- Texas takes it in 25
How long did this game take to complete? Try seven hours and three minutes! That’s the beauty of the game… no time clock! It sets its own pace. But I must admit, all of those innings of hitless, no-run ball (Texas reliever Austin Wood pitched a whopping 13 innings, 12 1/3 or those no-hit) can be an endurance test for all but the most fanatic fans of good pitching. Texas prevailed in this overtime matchup, handing a hard-fought 3-2 defeat to the Eagles of Boston College. Fans in the home stadium in Austin walked away with the sweet taste of victory after this monster, the longest game in NCAA history.
- Florida State pounds Ohio State
A tiny handful of players have pounded out seven hits in a Major League game. Now, there’s one in the college ranks, as Florida State’s Stephen Cardullo set an NCAA tournament game record with seven hits. His three doubles paced a Florida State attack that included an NCAA-record 15 doubles. Just how badly did the Seminoles defeat Ohio State? Try 37-6! The Seminoles advance after pounding out an NCAA-record 37 runs, 38 hits and 66 total bases. Mercy rule, anyone?
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