Once upon a time, baseball was the national game. For some it still is. Others, I suppose, would pick football… or basketball, or even NASCAR. I doubt we have the consensus on a national pastime that existed a generation or so ago with baseball… and I happen to think that’s sad. It’s also revealing in a way that I often don’t see discussed.
As baseball aficionados have told me, one of the most difficult tasks in any sport is hitting a baseball. Ted Williams said something to the effect that failing to hit the ball seven times out of ten was a great success, and batting over .333 for a career is likely to put a player on the short list for the Hall of Fame. In fact, since 1900, the highest season batting average ever was .424, by Rogers Hornsby, and he is the only hitter during that time period to bat over .400 for three separate seasons. The last hitter to hit over .400 for a season was Bill Terry in 1930. By comparison, the worst fielding record by an outfielder playing a full season was .842, and generally the top-fielding outfielders literally miss no catches… with an average of 1.000. For what it’s worth, that suggests to me a certain parallel with life in that new initiatives [hits] fail most of the time, while it’s critical not to make mistakes [in other words, make every catch].
So why does any of this matter? Because it’s indicative of how American culture and values have changed over the past century, and I have my doubts about whether those changes have been for the better.
Baseball is a game of skill, and while one can argue, as Billy Beane has done as general manager at Oakland, that certain skills are overrated and others underrated, skills do matter. It’s also a game of timing and finesse. Even during the “steroid scandal” period, even all those overmuscled “power hitters” couldn’t manage better batting averages, no matter how far they blasted the ball. It’s also a somewhat slower game [some would call it glacially paced] compared to the increased appeal of football, basketball, and even NASCAR racing.
More important, sadly, appears to be the increased level of mayhem or violence present in those three. There have been so many career-ending injuries in football that the NFL has been forced to investigate and make some rule changes. Recent medical studies indicate that a truly significant percentage of football players have brain damage from repeated impacts. Even basketball, which was largely a non-contact sport when I played in high school all too many years ago, has become so much more violent that knee and back injuries are commonplace, and now we’re beginning to see broken bones — as witness what happened to Kevin Ware of Louisville in the current NCAA tournament. As for NASCAR, the crashes become more and more spectacular.
In short, in terms of the national spectator pastime, it appears that Americans have opted increasingly against skill and strategy, against a quest for perfection against the odds, and for speed and violence in all forms… and this emphasis is everywhere, in such seemingly unrelated societal changes as emails replacing letters, and then tweets replacing emails… sorter, faster, and with a higher percentage of vulgar/violent language. Or even in the rise of mixed martial arts, even more brutal, violent, and faster than boxing or wrestling.
These days I get more and more comments from first-time readers about my “pacing” – that it’s slow. There are other long fantasy series, but more and more of them focus on action and violence, not to mention sex. Many television shows are using technology to fractionally speed up the action, by snipping pauses, making faster cuts, etc.
So as Americans turn from baseball… what’s next? Gladiatorial contests? The Hunger Games? Or something even faster and more violent?
And what does it say about us?