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Gifts for all occasions in the Galleria! The "What is the Deal?" Deal-of-the-Week: Please donate to the Salvation Army for hurricane relief. October 23, 2005 An American Experience: Baseball By Jan A. Larson "The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time." - Terrence Mann, Field of Dreams If you have ever thought or uttered the words, "I don't like baseball" then please, save some time and quit reading now. You will not appreciate what I am trying to say in this article. Thank you. For those of you still with me, I can only say what you already know. Baseball is the greatest game ever invented. Baseball is a game that may be played by people of all ages and all levels of ability. It may be played on fields of all shapes and sizes and with any number of players. All that is needed is a ball, a bat and something to mark the bases. Although baseball is a team game, no one feels more alone than the first time he or she puts on a uniform and steps into the batter's box. I don't recall ever feeling as nervous as riding in the back seat of the car on the way to a little league game or as excited as standing on first base after hitting a ball and seeing it sink onto the outfield grass. Some of my best childhood memories are of the times that my brother and I would hit baseballs over the fence across the road from our family farm with our dog helping us find the lost balls in the tall grass and of my father hitting fly balls to us on hot summer evenings. One cannot have a worry or care with a baseball glove or a bat in your hands. My first recollections of major league baseball were the Saturday "Game of the Week" broadcasts with Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese in sixties. I remember "ol' Diz" talking about some guy named Mickey Mantle a lot. When the Kansas City Royals joined the American League in 1969, I spent many a summer evening listening to Royals' broadcasts on a crackling AM radio. I could also pick up games from St. Louis, Minnesota and Chicago at various times. I listened to a double-header between the Royals and White Sox on the afternoon of July 20, 1969. I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon that night. My father took our family to my first professional game, a minor league game in Omaha, for my birthday in 1970. Former major leaguer Buddy Bell hit a home run in that game. I recall thinking that "Buddy Bell" sounded kind of like "Mickey Mantle." I finally got the opportunity to attend a major league game six years later. A friend and I drove to Kansas City (despite my mother's trepidation) for a late summer weekend of baseball before we returned to college. In the second of those three games, we witnessed something that as best as my research can determine, has only occurred eight times during my lifetime - a "walk off" steal of home. In 1985, some friends and I started a summer tradition of traveling to a different major league city to sightsee and take in some games. I've visited 37 major league ballparks to date and plan to visit all of them before I'm done. Many people travel around the country watching baseball. Few will travel the country to see football stadiums or basketball arenas. Football stadiums and basketball arenas all look alike. Each baseball park has a character all its own. What separates baseball from other sports is the simplicity on the surface and the complexity of the details. I experienced this first hand a couple of years ago when I went to a little league game involving a friend's son. My friend was working for a multi-national corporation at the time and had invited a couple of visiting Chinese colleagues to attend the game. Neither of them had ever seen a baseball game before. I sat next to one of them and did my best to explain the rules. I started with "three strikes and you're out." That's an easy one to explain. It's a strike if the batter swings and misses OR if the batter fouls off the pitch EXCEPT if there are already two strikes. Three outs per inning? Another easy explanation. There is the strikeout of course, but an out can also be made if a fly ball is caught OR if a ground ball is fielded and thrown to first base before the runner gets there OR if a runner is tagged by a fielder with the ball if he is off the base. There are a lot of "excepts" and "ors" in baseball. The clock governs football, basketball and hockey. Baseball is over when it is over, no matter how long it takes. Baseball doesn't happen quickly but a game can change in a flash. Some things happen often (the Yankees in the playoffs for 11 consecutive seasons). Some things happen rarely (the Cubs last won the World Series in 1908). There are statistics for everything in baseball because there are so many things that can be counted. Every player has statistics, batting, pitching and fielding. Statistics tie one generation of players to another. One of my favorite websites is baseball-reference.com, which contains the stats for every player that has ever played in the major leagues. Over the years my life has taken me to Kansas City, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston where I followed the Royals, Rangers and Astros, respectively. This season, after 44 years of trying, the Astros have finally reached the World Series. They are meeting the Chicago White Sox, participating in the World Series for the first time since 1959. Never before have both World Series teams and their fans waited so long for their day in the sun. Baseball is a game that spans players, places and generations. Tuesday night I'll be attending my first World Series game - far away and a long time removed from those summer evenings catching fly balls. I only wish my father could be there with me. -- Send feedback to the author. The "What is the Deal?" column will appears weekly on the Pie of Knowledge website. Guest submissions are welcome and encouraged. To submit an article to "What is the Deal?" click here. To subscribe to the "What is the Deal?" mailing list and receive early notification when a new column is available, click here. The Pie of Knowledge will never, ever divulge email addresses to any third party for any reason unless so ordered by a court of law. Contributions to the Pie of Knowledge are greatly appreciated. 
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