My beef with baseball

I've never been able to get much into baseball. It always seemed like such a tease. Why bother to watch a game that has a 1-in-162 chance of meaning anything at all at the end of the season? How do you get worked up for an outcome that has at most a negligible impact on your team's odds of winning a pennant? Why is it even sad when you lose? Baseball's played in series. It's as if the structure of the sport says to losing teams, "Not to worry, we'll give ya best of three."

For eleven months out of the year, my relationship with Major League Baseball consists of my Dad updating me on how many games the Rays are ahead of or behind the Yankees whenever I call home. I always roll my eyes and say, "That's nice, Dad. Only a hundred and fifty-three games to go until that number matters." I find it extraordinarily hard to get excited about anything that seems to have so little riding on it, especially because of how much time I spend watching college football. For us, "every given Saturday" isn't just a platitude. It's reality. It's life.

Every given football matchup matters, because any one loss, no matter how strong the opponent, can be enough to keep a team out of the national championship. For non-AQ teams, even going undefeated isn't necessarily enough. And it's not just the national championship that's on the line each week. One loss can disqualify a team from its conference title game or a BCS bowl altogether. That means the pressure's on every week, and it makes watching every game an event unto itself. Every snap, every pass, every rush and every kick means more when every game means everything.

Not so in baseball.

Yet, I know that's not the only thing wrong with the game in my opinion. It's a huge part of it, no doubt, but alone it's not enough to turn an otherwise exciting sport into a lifeless one. I know that's true because I watch hockey avidly despite the absurd length of its season. In fact, I almost enjoy the lower stakes. They allow for wild, unexpected swings in fortune like the one the Capitals underwent last year. Anything is possible when there's an 82-game season to be played; there's no resting on your laurels when any team could make a run for it at any given moment.

So what's the rest of my problem with baseball?

It's just boring. I mean, really. It just is. The pace of the game is slow. Minutes pass during which literally nothing happens. There isn't even a clock, for crying out loud -- talk about a metaphor for a total lack of urgency! Whereas in hockey or soccer or basketball there's a continual vying for possession, baseball is handcuffed by politeness, each team --hell, each player -- patiently waiting its turn for an exclusive, unencumbered chance to try to score.

What I will give baseball is this, however: it goes from utterly meaningless to thoroughly meaningful in a matter of seconds when the regular season ends. Though I couldn't care less about games 1 through 162, the playoffs matter quite a lot. It's those last few precious games that an entire season rides on, and because of that, the whole dynamic of the sport can be transformed. The moments between pitches go from empty, yawn-inducing wastes of time that could better be spent thinking about football to moments buzzing with tension and possibility -- not the calm before the storm, but the wait before a kiss.

So yes, in those years when the Rays have managed to make the playoffs, I have taken an interest. I've felt mildly bad about embodying the definition of bandwagon fanhood in the process, but hey. My time is valuable, and regular-season baseball simply isn't that important.

Except this year, because this year things got exciting two games early.

I started to feel uneasy Wednesday morning, when I checked in with ESPN and saw something the Rays did the night before described as "the most important triple play in major league history." I started to wonder if my strategy of waiting till the postseason to start thinking about paying attention might end up being a mistake.

It was. Because what happened on Wednesday night was unprecedented. I honestly couldn't tell you the odds of that particular string of events unfolding. But the fan/pundit reaction immediately afterward and continuing through the next day told me all I needed to know about the magnitude of what had happened. They seemed to be experiencing what I felt after Boise State-Oklahoma in 2007, or upon the realization we were going to get a matchup between mighty Butler and even mightier VCU in last year's Final Four. It was like the comeback against Brazil by the U.S. women's national soccer team I wrote about earlier this summer. It was all of that and more. And although I couldn't tell you the odds that were defied when the Braves, the Red Sox and the New York Yankees all collapsed in spectacular fashion within minutes of each other (the Yanks having squandered a 7-0 advantage in the ninth inning alone, the Sox having squandered a probability of winning of more than 95 percent, and the Braves having squandered a 10.5-game lead in just a month), Nate Silver can -- and he says the chances were about one in 278 million.

Holy mackerel.

I think the lesson I'm taking away from all of this is that I've been underestimating the game of baseball. I was sure it couldn't capture my imagination, and it did. I was sure it didn't have the capacity to be exciting, and it was. Major League Baseball proved me wrong. It made me feel like a kid again, when I can remember sneaking downstairs past my bedtime to watch the end of the '96 World Series, and being heartbroken by the result (I don't know why I liked the Braves so much, but I know I've never forgiven the Yankees).

Anyway, I'm not sure whether this experience is going to have any permanent ramifications on my desire to watch regular-season baseball down the line. But you can bet your bat I'll have one eye on the scores of the Rays games this weekend.

I'll probably think twice next time before off-handedly dismissing baseball fans for their silly pastime, too.