Anyone who can watch the SEC or NFL networks without blinking might argue with anyone who says baseball remains the national pastime.
Baseball started to lose its grip on the public long before the Super Bowl became America's biggest one-day sporting event, football's equivalent of Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade for Christmas shopping.
Although the admired subject of one of George Carlin's best comedy routines, baseball is by nature slow and deliberate while football moves at a brisker pace, at least when the referees don't become flag happy. With both teams passing all over the lot, a college-football game in particular can last up to four hours. Unless it's the Yankees vs. the Red Sox or the Cardinals playing anybody (all those pitching changes), most baseball games end somewhat sooner. Yet, baseball is considered more sedate.
One problem baseball has never solved is that it is better seen in person -- or heard -- than on TV.
Baseball plays best on radio with the listener visualizing the pitcher toeing the rubber, the runner leading off first, the batter looking to the third-base coach for a sign. Baseball on radio is only as good as the broadcaster, and when it is really good it is wonderful indeed. Baseball is Mel Allen crying "How about that?" after a Mickey Mantle home run or Marty Brennaman recapping "This one belongs to the Reds!" Baseball is a station ID on KMOX, St. Louis, "home of the first-place Cardinals."
Too many things are happening in and around baseball, especially when the ball is in play, to make it a truly enjoyable TV experience. ABC almost destroyed baseball on TV when Keith Jackson, the voice of college football, and Howard Cosell, a baseball detractor until his network acquired broadcast rights to the sport, called October classics in the 1970s. Some think he is best appreciated with the mute button on, but Joe Buck, Fox Sports' baseball voice, appreciates the sport and, in my mind, along with Tim McCarver formed an announcing team to rate with Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek, Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese, Joe Garagiola and anybody.
Baseball on TV is Jack Buck, Joe's dad, saying "I don't believe what I just saw" after gimpy Kirk Gibson stroked a home run in the 1988 World Series. Baseball on TV is the Bucks making the same call after a World Series Game 6 walk-off homer 20 years apart, Jack for Kirby Puckett of the Twins and Joe for David Freese of the Cardinals. What more does a viewer need to know than "we'll see you tomorrow night."
The word "upset" is rarely used in context with baseball, and then is often used wrongly. The New York Mets' 1969 world championship seems less implausible in retrospect, as if any team with Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman as starting pitchers and Nolan Ryan in the bullpen should be an underdog. The New York Yankees' 1998 squad, 125-game winners counting postseason, came as close to upset proof as any team of my lifetime.
"Upset" better describes the reaction of Cubs fans after the Steve Bartman fiasco in Game 6 of the 1993 National League Championship Series. Or the late Joaquin Andujar's blow-up in the Cardinals' Game 7 capitulation to the Royals in the 1985 World Series.
But for unpredictability, baseball ranks No. 1, something reaffirmed last fall when two wild-card winners, San Francisco and Kansas City, staged a seven-game World Series. Lefty Madison Bumgarner, known mostly for buying every vowel Vanna White offered, invited comparisons with Sandy Koufax after pitching the Giants to the world championship and was named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year.
This is written after the Houston Astros beat the Yankees (humbled them, really, though the score was only 3-0) in the AL wild-card game. The Cubs, who last won the World Series (1908) when it was William Howard Taft vs. William Jennings Bryan on election day (Taft won), beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the NL wild-card game. The Cubs-Cardinals NL division series, starting today in St. Louis, is something new to one of baseball's greatest rivalries. The Cubs' Jake Arrieta looks like this year's Bumgarner, although working from the right side.
Football season is in full swing, hockey season is just under way and pro basketball will be with us soon. But as we are likely to discover before the last pitch is thrown this season, baseball can be what a dying Babe Ruth said it was -- "the only real sport, I think."
Sports on 10/09/2015