baseball

[Steelhead]

Baseball is one of the few "timeless" games. A game without a clock. In
that sense, it is something of a hierophany, a piercing of the "sacred"
into the "profane."

The word "spider" comes from the Old English spithra, meaning to spin. To
spider is to walk or move in a spinning motion, like a baseball in flight.
Lefty's (the sinister handed ones) are notorious for having more "spin" on
the ball, causing it to "curve," "drop off the table," or appear to do so.
There is a long running controversy over whether curve balls actually curve
or whether the spin merely creates an optical illusion of a curve.

Baseball is about players "on the run" toward "home." These runner's can be
"picked off" or they can "steal" bases.  Bases themselves are "safety
zones" where nothing can harm a runner.

Baseball is one of the few games (perhaps the only game) where the defense
has the ball--thus an inversion of the normative.

Baseball has cursed teams--the Black Sox, the Cubs, and my poor Red Sox. It
is haunted by legends, titans of the game, like Ruth, Gerhig, and now
Mantle.

Baseball during WWII was a refuge for the preterite, as old timers,
midgets, one-armed players, and women took the place of inductees.

Baseball is a game of probabilities, averages, records, and statistics. It
is obsessive in that way. Each player has a constantly changing numerical
biography, including ERAs, battering AVE, fielding percentage.

Fly balls form parabolas. Fly balls that transcend the park are called Home
Runs (like Enzian's rocket 00001?)

In most ballparks, the batter faces north. Home is to the south.

Major League baseball was a white-only game until after WWII and the
emergence of Jackie Robinson.

Baseball enjoys a congressional-designated exemption from the Sherman
Anti-trust Act. Thus it is a monopoly, a cartel. Team owners actually
"owned players" until Curt Flood's groundbreaking lawsuit.

The game usually ends on the "last out." Except when the Home Team scores a
winning run in the bottom of the 9th or in extra innings. Thus, baseball
usually ends in a symbolic death. But occassionally (rarely) it will end
with an improbable-violation-of-reality, a transcendence--an experience
available only to the Home Team.

Steely