What About Bob?

Author: Bob Wainwright

Well, I hope everyone's having a great J-term. Oh, I forgot, it's April 8. Sweet state we live in, this Vermont.
Clearly, we haven't had the most uplifting weather recently. Unless of course, you're a snowflake, in which case you've been lifted up all over the place. And if that weren't enough, normally this time of year Middlebury students are worried about choosing next year's classes through MARS. Now, it seems, we also have to worry about SARS. This doesn't make sense. Perhaps we should all go to the local bars, so long as we don't drive our cars.
Luckily, despite all this people such as myself still do have a constant source of pleasure, which is, of course, umm... hold on, let me check my notes. Oh yes, baseball. And what better break from getting hit in the back of the head by white balls of snow than watching other people hit white balls of leather and yarn great distances to the tune of $17 mil a year?
Baseball is in full swing and I am happy about it. So happy, in fact, that I currently have ESPN's GameCast on my computer so I can keep up to date with the Mets even as I write this column. Right now, for instance, I see that their all-star catcher Mike Piazza is batting with two balls and a strike.
Being a fan most of my life, I've never completely understood how a person could not fall in love with the game. Many of baseball's detractors claim it's too slow, that the action is sporadic, and even the majority of pitches, or swings for that matter, amount to very little change at all. To me, such gripes seem rather shortsighted. Oh, ball three to Piazza.
As any true baseball fan will tell you, the action never really does stop for it is the game's intricacies that are truly riveting. For instance, what was the sign the pitcher just called off? Was that guy by third scratching his butt, or is the man on first going to steal? Perhaps they're calling for a hit and run. Or would that be a cookey call at this point? Hmm. Mike just got strike two. Full count.
Baseball is a sport, in which little things can make big impacts. A left-handed hitter is up, so bring in your right-handed pitcher. Oh, but the batter is a switch hitter. The wind is blowing in. The center fielder plays a shallower outfield. Your shortstop's made five errors the last ten games but he's batting .343 over that stretch. With so much information passing through one's consciousness at a single moment how could this game ever be considered boring?
Payoff pitch to Piazza. Hmm. Foul ball.