Spring Fever

February has always been my second hardest month of the year. Football is generally over and baseball hasn't begun. Basketball, which I follow least, is still waiting for its interminable playoff season to begun, so that's not worth worrying about either right now. The only saving grace is that it's a short month, which means I get a couple of extra days out of my paycheck.

"Baseball is slow, and it's dull on teevee", I hear. Yes, I answer. That's the point.

Every other major sport is pretty much a different version of the same drill. You have a rectangular field with a goal on each end, an object and a clock, which dictates how long a team has to get the object into the goals. Football, basketball, soccer, hockey and the rest are fast and interesting to watch. But it's pretty much the same drill across the board.

Not baseball. The field is a game board, similar to Monopoly. The goal is to move your piece around, back to "home", as George Carlin reminded us in a truly memorable monologue. Most important, there is no clock... There's no pressure to finish up within a set time. And that's what makes baseball work more than any other sport for me.

The clock is perhaps the most evil thing ever devised. Prior to the clock, life ran in a natural rhythm. You got up with the sun; you went to bed with the moon. You worked when it was light; you stopped when it got dark. All that changed with the clock. Everyone began working the same hours, and extended the day well past the time God and Mother Nature intended. The clock runs our lives. Every device we use has a clock on it. I've stopped wearing a wristwatch because I don't need to. As I type this, the computer clock in the bottom right hand corner tells me the time. My cell phone tells me the exact time it rings. My car tells me when I start it up and when I park it. The clock is everywhere.

So it's nice to see a collective effort take place which doesn't require a clock. In theory, a baseball game could go on until the End of Days. In theory, a team down by ten runs in the ninth inning could win, as it has all the time in the world to do so. Anything is possible, because there is always time to make it happen, unlike the real world of pressure deadlines and collective schedules. This is why baseball, despite constant predictions of imminent demise, thrives and will continue to thrive. It's a throwback to a time when effort dictated time, not the other way around. When we were freer, in this regard.

Which is why television is an insidious force for baseball. Teevee wants speed and a predictable time limit for scheduling. This smacks against one of baseball's great virtues. Yet teevee can and does dictate scheduling and rules changes in other sports. It would seem to be an inevitable force in baseball.

Fortunately, baseball just doesn't do as well on teevee. It's a radio sport. It works best as a companion in the background on a lazy afternoon or night, which you read, chat, and putter in the yard or around the garage. That's another thing I really like about the sport. I can do something else and enjoy it.

Basketball doesn't work at all on the tube; you have to see it to really understand what's going on. Football isn't quite as good on the radio, but doesn't work as well either. Besides, there are so few games that watching any game becomes an event. Football is much, much better on teevee. All the down time is conveniently and efficiently used for replays and analysis which makes the game seem a lot faster than it really is in person. Baseball and radio is a perfect match. The pace allows for more detailed description, and the storytelling which is as much a part of the game as pine tar. Former San Francisco Giants broadcaster Hank Greenwald hated doing teevee broadcasts. He prefers radio, he said, "Because the pictures are better."

So February moves along, a weird void in an armchair fan's life. Fortunately, it ends with the crack of the bat and the promise of spring. And this year, as every year, every fan knows that it's the year we go to the Series. We just feel it in the air.