Baseball a metaphor for life

One week into my long-anticipated flirtation with satellite-serviced high-definition wide-screen television, my advice to those unfortunates who have yet to make the move is this: If you thought watching major league baseball’s daily spitathon on your outmoded analog television set was cruel and unusual punishment, wait until you are confronted with the spectacle in big-picture high-def.

Just don’t make the mistake of trying to eat anything while you are watching, as I did on Tuesday night, when the Tampa Bay Rays disappointed Red Sox Nation by brutally pounding the Sox in game four of the American League Championship Series.

It was bad enough watching my old television as these multimillionaire man-boys of summer spit nonstop through each three-hour game. On Tuesday night, the wide-screen image was so vivid I began to wonder if I might have to get out the mop to swab down the living room floor before the seventh-inning stretch arrived. This high-definition stuff is everything it’s advertised to be.

At my house, the Tampa Bay starting pitcher was the night’s consensus champion expectorater, although the up-close and personal shots of the dugouts of both teams a-spitting and a-scratching showed he had stiff competition for the title. Anyone who could watch that routine and not avert his gaze in revulsion each time the camera panned in for a detailed shot of the action likely would not cringe were he to visit a sausage factory to witness the sausage-making process.

I suppose there are those who might have a clue as to what sort of mob psychology provokes these people to begin spitting the minute they don a baseball uniform, but I am not among them. I do wonder, though, whether the ballplayers continue the routine after they have left the playing field, and if so, how that might be working out for them.

You don’t see many professional golfers spitting before they take a whack at the ball. Bowlers, downhill skiers, basketball, football, tennis players, race car drivers all seem to be able to function spit-free. Why can’t baseball players?

And another thing …

The genius who invented today’s major league trousers should be hunted down and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The pajamalike pantaloons bring to mind the old song, “Sam, You Made The Pants Too Long,” Milton Berle’s takeoff on composer Victor Young’s “Lord, You Made The Night Too Long.” (Given the fact that many of these late-starting playoff games have run into the early morning hours, both titles seem applicable to any discussion concerning baseball.)

The elongated trousers serve to encourage the slobs among major leaguers to compete to see who among them can most resemble an unmade bed. As they walk around on the bottoms of their pantlegs, caps sometimes pulled down over their ears and tilted toward Sawyer’s, the obligatory 4 pounds of gold chain dangling from their necks, you have what your late grandmother would likely have called “a sight.” If baseball has a dress code, its enforcers should be cited for malfeasance.

But all of that is minor stuff. Despite its dubious fashion statements, its extracurricular spitting and scratching and its late-night marathons, baseball remains mankind’s greatest game. Just ask any Red Sox fan who stayed up past midnight Thursday to watch the Sox come from seven runs down in the seventh inning to pull out a heart-thumping 8-7 win over Tampa Bay with two men out in the bottom of the ninth inning to send the playoff series back to Florida for tonight’s sixth game.

Those fans who resisted the urge to head for bed after the score went to 7-zip, Tampa Bay, were rewarded for their suspicion that the Red Sox had the Rays right where they wanted them.

A couple of key hits here and there, and suddenly the Sox were alive to fight another day.

There is a cautionary tale here for supporters of Barack Obama, who seems like the sure winner of next month’s presidential election, and it is this: Yogi Berra had it right. In politics and life in general, as in baseball, the game is not over until it’s over.

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may reach him by e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.