Gil Renard: Don't get greedy, son. Don't get greedy. What we need now is a sacrifice. A winning team has to know how to manufacture runs. Coop taught me that. He used to say the most beautiful play in the game is a sacrifice fly, and you know why?
Richie Renard: 'Cause you give yourself up for the team?
Gil Renard: And it doesn't even count against your average. That's why baseball's better than life - it's fair.
But no sport better embodies the history (and present) of this country better than baseball. Baseball has developed along with the country. Football and basketball didn't gain notoriety until pretty much after America had established itself as the true world power in the forties and fifties. Baseball's rise to popularity began during Reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War. Since then, it has changed with the times and reflected the state of American society.
Shoeless Joe and the White Sox scandal of 1919 came as the country was propelled into the capitalistic prosperity of the 1920s. During WWII, baseball went on a hiatus as the players, along with the rest of the country, refocused their efforts on war. And then, most recently, as all of the nation (and the world) deals with the issues of steroids and PEDs in sports, baseball is at the forefront.
Whereas most sports are representative of a story: an epic give and take that contains an introduction, a rising action, a climax and a resolution, baseball is more of a poem. Each pitch, each play, each inning has it's own separate and significant meaning. Don't believe me? Read this.
Whereas most sports are representative of a story: an epic give and take that contains an introduction, a rising action, a climax and a resolution, baseball is more of a poem. Each pitch, each play, each inning has it's own separate and significant meaning. Don't believe me? Read this.
Football fanatics will say it is the strategy and war-like mentality of football that makes it the most popular sport in America. Now, a football game is definitely deep in strategy and makes for a very compelling battle, no sport mirrors the ebb and flow of war like baseball. Baseball is a 162-game season. That is a war consisting of 162 battles. A team will not win them all. Actually, they will undoubtedly lose many of them. Some will be one sided, some will not. Some will cost key players due to injuries. Sometimes players must sit in order to survive to fight another day. Managers are much more like Generals than their football counterparts. There aren't specific plays, just nine players that must be counted on to know their part and where to be when the ball is play. There is no speaker in the pitchers hat, only cryptic hand signals that can advise the soldiers on the field.
For the past ten years it has seemed to many that baseball has sunk to a new low. A new, dark time has emerged for the sport. Every few days a new star is found to have taken steroids or HGH. Let's not beat around the bush here, these players are cheaters. Many (maybe even most) have done so, but that doesn't make it right. All baseball fans out there only can hope that years from now things will be straight again and we can look back on this time and be glad that the game emerged better and more pure.
For the past ten years it has seemed to many that baseball has sunk to a new low. A new, dark time has emerged for the sport. Every few days a new star is found to have taken steroids or HGH. Let's not beat around the bush here, these players are cheaters. Many (maybe even most) have done so, but that doesn't make it right. All baseball fans out there only can hope that years from now things will be straight again and we can look back on this time and be glad that the game emerged better and more pure.
