Jeffrey C. Long

I should park the car and blog when I’m driving between Filer and my hometown. I get thousands of ideas to write while I’m driving, but they all vanish like vapor when I finally get settled back in.

One of the things I did to pass the time on this most recent (9 hour) trip was to listen to a Seattle Mariners game against the Oakland A’s. I recently subscribed to the Mariner’s radio broadcast over the internet which allows me to listen to either live games, or archived games. So, I used a program that allows me to digitally record streaming audio and recorded a game to listen to on the drive home. It kept my mind occupied during the deadman’s highway that I like to call Oregon.

I played baseball when I was in grade school. But I wasn’t very good and I never learned the in’s and out’s of the game. In fitting with the cultural theme of this blog, I’m enjoying the discovery of the rich culture of baseball.

Probably the most significant cultural aspect of baseball is the fascination with statistics. My brother-in-law said that there are statistics for everything, including mediocrity. “With that hit, Joe Baseball is now #734 for RBI’s in the history of the major league.” I actually had to go to wikipedia and look up “baseball statistics” to get a feel for what all of these numbers mean. I’m a math guy, so it’s a lot of fun.

Another cultural aspect that is common to all sports is being a spectator in the arena of the greatness of human athletics. (I labored over that sentence and that was the best I could come up. Let me try and flesh it out). There is something stirring about watching people perform at the outer edge of human abilities. Yesterday on Baseball Tonight on ESPN I watched a Triple Play. Amazing! And a veteran outfielder leapt headlong into the air to make a catch, without apparent concern for his well-being. But also a 20-year-old newcomer to the major leagues is struggling to handle the heat of the pro’s.

Each of these people are performing at the outer edge of their abilities, pushing themselves to accomplish the most that their bodies and minds will give them. Of course we can step back and see the game as something as silly as hitting a ball with a stick of wood and trying to catch it with a piece of leather wrapped around your hand. But sports are always a metaphor. They are an arena for the performance of human abilities. So is art. So is drama. We get to witness the greatness of humanity.