"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."
-Rogers Hornsby, major league baseball player from 1915 to 1937.
In the winter there should be snow. This is a fact, in Colorado no respectable winter would drift through January with 50 degree tempatures and only occasional rain and thunderstorms to break the monotony. Without snow, January is merely a prelude to spring, which leads my mind to crisp green fields and pristine white bases placed symetrically 90 feet apart.
I did not grow up a baseball fan. Perhaps because Colorado did not have a major league baseball team until after I moved away, perhaps because my father was a football fan deep in his soul. In my twenties I was introduced and immediately hated the game. Slow, boring, complicated. Baseball was to football like watching a sink drip was to standing at the ocean shore.
Obviously, I've since changed my mind. Slowly I learned the intricacies of the game, the difference between a curve ball and a slider, the heart-stopping excitement of a runner making the turn to third on a line drive. Pedestrian baseball fans, those at a game more for the beer and hot dogs than the game, over-rate the home run ball, overlook the quiet thrill of a pitcher's duel.
This winter, I read Moneyball by Michael Lewis. I could go on and on, rising my fists in disgust towards the owners of my beloved and pathetic Cubs. I could sing the praises of Billy Beene, his willingness to buck the old system and look for something more scientific in the approach to selecting players. I could, but I won't. Instead I'll offer this, learn the game. Buy Baseball for Idiots and sit through your nephew's little league games. Buy scorecards and keep score, learning the measure of an out and a walk. Study it like a philosophy and a science. I promise, if you understand it you'll be hooked. Then, when you make that fall choose a team worthy of your love, choose the Oakland Athletics. I wish someone had told me too.
I did not grow up a baseball fan. Perhaps because Colorado did not have a major league baseball team until after I moved away, perhaps because my father was a football fan deep in his soul. In my twenties I was introduced and immediately hated the game. Slow, boring, complicated. Baseball was to football like watching a sink drip was to standing at the ocean shore.
Obviously, I've since changed my mind. Slowly I learned the intricacies of the game, the difference between a curve ball and a slider, the heart-stopping excitement of a runner making the turn to third on a line drive. Pedestrian baseball fans, those at a game more for the beer and hot dogs than the game, over-rate the home run ball, overlook the quiet thrill of a pitcher's duel.
This winter, I read Moneyball by Michael Lewis. I could go on and on, rising my fists in disgust towards the owners of my beloved and pathetic Cubs. I could sing the praises of Billy Beene, his willingness to buck the old system and look for something more scientific in the approach to selecting players. I could, but I won't. Instead I'll offer this, learn the game. Buy Baseball for Idiots and sit through your nephew's little league games. Buy scorecards and keep score, learning the measure of an out and a walk. Study it like a philosophy and a science. I promise, if you understand it you'll be hooked. Then, when you make that fall choose a team worthy of your love, choose the Oakland Athletics. I wish someone had told me too.
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