The Magic of Baseball

There are illusions created by baseball. They allow the imagination to travel endless journeys, painting pictures of fantasy as it goes along. This is the part of the magic of baseball. But it has not survived for over a hundred years on illusion alone. Although today’s fans have never seen Christy Matthewson pitch, they can say with conviction that he was great-not only because of stories which drift down through the ages telling of his greatness, but because of the greatness he left behind. This is the proof of his acclaim. Yet the records are not merely black and white figures on a piece of paper. They also tell of his speed, control, and endurance and inspire a colorful dialogue wherever baseball is played. The dialogue can be heated and often emotional, and may even throw the reality out of proportion. But these men are saved from the realm of myth by the same records which bring them to that threshold. This, too, is the magic.

 

            The design of baseball and its strategies require a fan patience not demanded by other sports. Although events can suddenly happen on a baseball field, the excitement is nurturing, the slow and necessary aging process of a game and a season.

 

 

          The magic of baseball is the ninth inning-the last fragment of the game- in which the conflict is finally resolved. As it is with the final inning, so it is with the season. Baseball is the pennant race-the full schedule, play upon play, game after game, in which fulfillment is reached. A single game is an isolated event. The strategies become lost, the perspective distorted. The magic of baseball is the reward after waiting and watching is over. For most it’s the intangible reward of an uncaptured image, a memory, or the full roar of 50,000 throats sending a runner home.

 

 

 

*Part of this entry stems from a passage in the 1969 Baseball Encyclopedia