The provincial character of fandom

In an effort to speed up play and perhaps attract new custom, MLB management has proposed new rules for extra-inning play.  For the purpose of this discussion, the rule itself is irrelevant.  What is of interest is the reaction among aficionados.  The most commonly published view seems to be that it’s a silly idea, especially as it will affect so few games.  At least one writer, though, has argued the idea is worth trying – but not in major league games.  His argument is that such games “matter,” while minor league or amateur league games do not.  He speaks of being “invested” in major league games, and describes other contests, such as the WBC tournament or the All-Star game, as “fun” or “enjoyable,” but not contests about which one “cares.”  

What, we might ask, does he mean by being invested?  What makes one set of players in one context “matter” more than players in another?  They are both, after all, playing the same game, by (largely) the same rules. It could be proposed that US major league baseball is something of a global standard-bearer and therefore its games are of greater importance than all others, but this is really nothing more than argument from tradition.  From the earliest days of baseball’s global diffusion, teams have been fielded equal to or better in talent than US teams. I assume the investment of which the writer speaks is emotional and linked, among other things, to the time spent learning about a particular team or league, and on feelings of belonging to a collective of enthusiasts from a common locale. The investment is in identity, which could theoretically be given to any team, anywhere.  The argument seems to boil down to: Don’t change my favorite league, the one that matters to me.  

Photo:  Prince Seibu Dome, Saitama, Japan.

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Article Review: Joseph, Gilbert M. "Forging The Regional Pastime: Baseball And Class In Yucatan". 1988.

Players Hacienda Yaxcopoil 1924

Joseph, Gilbert M. "Forging The Regional Pastime: Baseball And Class In Yucatan". Sport And Society In Latin America. Joseph L Arbena, ed.. 1st ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988. 29-61. Print.

This is something of a classic in the literature of Mexican baseball studies.  I’ve seen several references in my reading, most recently in Klein’s Baseball on the Border.  However, as the paper appears to have been published only once in a 1988 collection of essays on Latin American sport, it seemed I might never have a chance to read it.  Thankfully used copies are currently not that expensive and several online booksellers have it in stock.

What Joseph sets out to demonstrate is why baseball is far more popular in Yucatan than other areas of Mexico and how this happened.  The latter turns out to be clearer than the former. While there is still no undisputed account of the introduction of baseball into Mexico, there seem to have been several contact points, including the Yucatan, which lies closer to Cuba than it does to Mexico City.  Joseph remains uncertain about the lines of diffusion, but feels that Cuba was the touch-point, specifically Cuban immigrants escaping revolutionary turbulence of the latter 19th century.  He notes the game was picked up in Meridia in the 1890s by what was then a very small segment of the population, the children of urban barrio dwellers.  Concomitantly, baseball was enjoyed by the fad conscious sons of the planting class, many of whom may have learned the game while studying at US boarding schools.  But it was most certainly not played by the large majority of the Yucatan population, which consisted of rural labor strictly controlled by the planters and rarely the beneficiary of planter largess, such as leisure time or sports facilities.  Organized baseball in this early period was the province of the planter families, who had the time and resources to devote to constructing fields and viewing stands, importing equipment, and managing a league.  But when their support shriveled along with the world economy, so too did the fortunes of baseball.

Book review: Klein, Alan M. Baseball On The Border. 1997.

Klein, Alan M. Baseball On The Border. 1st ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Though published twenty years ago, this study remains intriguing and perhaps instructive in how to operate sport franchises across cultural and national divides.  It tells the story of Los Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos (The Owls of the Two Laredos), a Mexican baseball team that from the mid-1980s to early 1990s represented bordering cities in Mexico and the United States.  The team split its home schedule between a Mexican and American stadium, and as is typical of Mexican league teams, featured a number of American players on its roster.  Shortly after completing research for this book, the binational project collapsed.  Writer/researcher Alan Klein explains this failure largely in terms of structure.  Owners and managers were entirely Mexican and employed a largely conservative philosophy:  field a good team and attendance and finances would take care of themselves.  No one on the Mexican side seemed to understand the Tecolotes as a cultural phenomenon that could be sold to audiences far beyond the Laredos, “a binational phenomenon more as ideology than as fact, and it was in the distinction between the two that the relationship failed.”

As in life, so in baseball: the object is not earning money

http://www.worldbaseballclassic.com/

The writer suggests that while WBC is a great idea, it is at best a nuisance, interrupting MLB’s spring training schedule, at worst a danger to players and heavily invested owners, both of whom could suffer financial losses as a result of player injury incurred during the WBC tournament. This seems to be a far too narrow view of the potential of life, in which we look at the amazing unfolding of reality through the pinhole of finance. The writer’s argument from caution could be extended to nearly any activity of daily life, every one of which has the potential to cause bodily injury - walking down the street, driving a car, playing ball with the neighborhood kids, working out at the gym, carrying garbage to the kerb, climbing a ladder to change a lightbulb - the list is endless. I’m sure not even one professional ball player wishes to live in a cocoon during the off-season. I’m also sure most professional ball players relish the challenge of pitting themselves against the world’s best. Many will also prize the opportunity to represent their country in an international forum. Those players fortunate enough to be nominated to the roster ought to take the chance while they have it. The WBC happens only every four years and by the time it rolls around again (if it rolls around again), today’s eligible players may no longer be able. They might even be dead. Life is meant to be lived. Go live it.

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On the commodification of sport

The quaestores of modern times use health, religion, and access to sports and art just like those of the Middle Ages used salvation: to exploit people by pricing what they value too high.

Jonathan R Goodman writes in Aeon:

It was in 2012 that Major League Baseball ran an ad showing generations of parents sharing the beloved American pastime with their kids. But it was already too late: in 2012, the average price for tickets to the World Series was nearly $1,000 – compared with just $2 for the same seats in 1963. Cost for two to attend even a run-of-the mill baseball game in 2016 is nearly $80, what with $6 per beer, almost $5 for a hot dog, and $16 to park the car.

Using baseball’s cultural status to exploit fans is part of a long, dark trend: the tendency to milk the masses for what ostensibly belongs to everyone. In the Middle Ages, quaestores (pardoners) granted followers of the Catholic Church indulgences, which were believed to lessen the punishments of one’s sins. At first, indulgences were given for acts of piety and prayer but, over time, were sold by members of the Church for money. This practice became so common, and the prices so extreme, that the Protestant Reformation was, in part, galvanised by Martin Luther’s outrage at this industry of the Church.

The unaffordability of salvation continues to this day.

Full article here.

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Japanese baseball neologism

Seiya Suzuki @ The Japan Times

From today's Kyodo news feed:

TOKYO — The Hiroshima Carp hit yet another home run as “kamitteru,” a coined word that means being godlike or superhuman which was used to describe the baseball team’s feat this season, was selected as Japan’s top buzzword in 2016, the award’s organizer said Thursday.

The word highlights the Carp’s achievements, including winning their first Central League pennant in 25 years on Sept. 10 and finishing the season with a 17.5-game lead over the runner-up Yomiuri Giants.

Hiroshima manager Koichi Ogata renewed the trend of using the term in June when he described Seiya Suzuki’s performance as “kamitteru” after the outfielder hit sayonara home runs in two consecutive games against the Orix Buffaloes.

The expression, which had already been used mainly among young people for years, became even more popular after Ogata used it and the second-year manager described the entire ballclub as “kamitteru” at the end of the season.

This is the second straight year in which a top buzzword in Japan was related to baseball, with last year’s co-winner being “triple three,” used to describe a player posting at least a .300 batting average with 30 steals and 30 homers in a season, after two players achieved the feat in 2015.

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Baseball Time

Whilst verifying a fact presented in Gmelch's Inside Pitch, I ran across this 2013 article from the Wall Street Journal, in which the writer clocked three MLB games to get an idea of how time in the average three-hour-plus game is spent.

First, the conclusion:

Huge chunks of inaction that absolutely dwarf everything else that goes on in the game.

The breakdown:

• 0:17:58  Action (or, ball in play)
• 0:33:39  Time between batters
• 0:42:41  Time between innings
• 1:14:49  Time between pitches

Might you know of a similar study with a larger data set?

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