Understanding Baseball

   I remember reading "Understanding Media" in one of my earlier college courses a few years ago. The basic premise of the book is that technology is an extension of the body. For example: a hammer is an extension of the hand, the wheel an extension of the legs, and so on. In examining the effects of TV and what qualities it is able to display, it noted that these effects would be inhibitory to the popularity of baseball.
   Football, on the other hand, works much better; in fact it is the most popular sport in the country, and maybe its with a little help from TV. To paraphrase the book's idea: football is a game always in motion, there is no better medium to showcase this than television. As it can be shown, baseball is sort of a relic of a past culture, one that society today embodies less of.
   In my experiences, the major problem with baseball was that it was too slow. This comes from baseball's historical roots because the game was invented around the time of the Industrial Revolution. As the book's author Marshall McLuhan implies the creation of innings reflects how back then time was segmented. This attention to details of time is quite burdensome by today's standards. Even how one goes about bases is a step-by-step process.
   In order for baseball to maintain popularity, how must it sell itself? It's somewhat ironic to think about what baseball represents... history. More than any other sport, baseball will use its long sense of tradition as a point of relating to its audience. Its a generational game that connects fathers and sons. Its sort of an oral story passed from ancestor to next of kin; legends since Babe Ruth to Jackie Robinson to Hank Aaron to nowadays Albert Pujols. But its interesting to note that this nostalgic look into the past also hints at the dated mechanics of the game that some fans find off-putting.
   There are also other images that have become somewhat of a burden that seems to steal from the "glory" of the old days. There is now a sense of the ludicrous when assessing how much top baseball talent gets paid. Players such as Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols are not only getting paid in millions, but in hundreds of millions.When one realizes that these contracts last seven years or more, by the time they reach their fifth year these players will be in there mid-thirties, an age where there is a precipitous decline in performance, thus making these deals an outrageous decadence. We can also lightly touch upon the steroids scandal that recently erupted and examine the arguments dissenters of MLB's current drug policy make: that the organizations stop illegal drug use with "a wink and a nod."
   I believe that nostalgia is a very strong hand for baseball, but another equally valid way of identifying itself would be to highlight how tense the game can be. In baseball, it can be a struggle against fate. Whereas basketball, hockey, and football are physical sports where players have much control of their final outcome; baseball is about the quirks, the little strokes of luck that can screw a team over. This is evidenced by Game Six of last year's World Series with David Freese's game-winning home run which followed his previous game-tying at bat triple. The other sports can take action and knock the ball way from the opposition, but with baseball once the ball flies out of the park, no one can intervene, its never coming back. So much can ride on one single moment.

   Major League Baseball, I think, is going in the right direction in promoting a durable image. Tradition can change over time, but with a focus on "epicness," their can be a solid future foundation albeit in a bit of a silly way.