Fantasy World
Once again, the nation’s pastime offers escape from unsettling times
At yet another moment when everything appears to be in a spiralling state of chassis, more than ever we yearn for respite in the familiar, the friendly and the safe.
This past week, as cities burned and families thousands of miles apart mourned, it once more fell to sports to try to represent what passes for normality in a clearly abnormal world.
Neatly slotted between the absolutely, totally non-politicized successes of Team USA at the Winter Olympics, and the quite possibly chaotic Fifa World Cup this coming summer, competitive baseball is finally back.
With twenty days to go until MLB opening day, athletes from twenty countries have begun play in the World Baseball Classic.
As Grant Bisbee wrote in his tournament preview for The Athletic:
“No moment in baseball history had ever felt quite as scripted as Shohei Ohtani striking out Mike Trout to win the 2023 World Baseball Classic. The two biggest stars in the sport matched up with two outs in the ninth inning of a one-run game, and they happened to be major-league teammates. Perfection, even though it was a little too unrealistic for Hollywood.
“A moment that perfect won’t happen again, but the fact that we’re still talking about the WBC from three years ago is proof that something is going right.”
This is the sixth tournament since 2006, with three-time winners and current champions Japan already off to an historic start, beating Chinese Taipei in a sold-out opening game in Tokyo.
But it’s the USA, led by manager Mark DeRosa, that are the early favorites. And their roster is “absurdly stacked” with MLB talent.
And as Sarah Langs reminds us, the presence of Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal, means this will be the first WBC with all four reigning MVP and Cy Young winners; although Skubal is scheduled to pitch only one game, against Great Britain at the weekend, before rejoining the Tigers’ spring training camp.
But sometimes – like in life itself – it’s not the biggest dogs that are most worth watching; and for every nation taking part, there’s a story. As it should be.
At Venezuela’s opening game yesterday in Miami, its fans were able to put the recent US “incursion” to one side. The Independent reported:
“Venezuelan baseball fans are very motivated and involved with everything that happens with the team,” said Nelson Zurita, a Venezuelan who calls Chile home but flew to Miami for the tournament. “They are aware of every transaction in the anticipation to the Classic. The country will always be focused on sports but especially baseball. ... The players do not want to mix politics with baseball, but the country is completely behind them.”
Somewhat relatedly given recent events, there was an interesting piece a couple of weeks ago by Bradford William Davis at eyeblack, on how staff at MLB teams have been protecting Latin players from immigration enforcement, amid “minimal” assistance from the league itself.
“Three team sources, each of whom have extensive experience working with young talent from across the Latin American diaspora, spoke to eyeblack about how they’re trying to ensure players and their families avoid tripping on ICE on their way to the ballpark. For some workers, what might be a difficult task on its own feels outright impossible when the league hasn’t provided clear instruction on how its players and their support staff should navigate an increasingly cruel, draconian, and racist immigration enforcement.”
One team that had a remarkable 2023 tournament and returns this year is the Czech Republic. Despite losing their opening two pool games, the team is building on its adventure last time, which has been chronicled in a new book by MLB.com writer Michael Clair, entitled “We Sacrifice Everything To Baseball”.
How about Ireland next, maybe?
The tournament culminates on March 17 in Miami, and you can follow each day’s schedule and reports on every match-up here.
You can read my Game Notes from the 2023 WBC in Phoenix (and a couple of Cubs spring training games at Mesa) here and about an interesting encounter I had with a fellow fan on that trip here.
See Also:
‘Just Let Us Be Happy’ (from January)
The World Comes To Play (from April)
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Spring In Your Step
The welcome return of Spring Training usually brings out this timeless broadcast image. The “Minor League Guy” in question wearing #91 was Oscar Taveras – at the time the Cardinals’ top hitting prospect – in the ninth inning of a 2012 spring training game.
One Reddit contributor at the time had some inside scoop on how the famous screenshot occurred.
Sadly, Taveras never lived to build on his promising early signs, losing his life in a 2014 auto accident back home in the Dominican Republic.
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Jayson Stark wrote about this year’s storylines to watch as the teams gathered and started stretching out, while one of the players to watch has definitely been Pirates youngster Konnor Griffin, who’s already doing things “unprecedented for a teenager”.
His three home runs this spring are the most by a teenager in the past 20 years. And the Buccos are going to need him, not least as they try and climb above that lifetime .500 record.
The Athletic’s MLB ‘state of the game’ fan survey followed the currently popular “2016” decade vibe. Stephen J. Nesbitt writes:
“Ten years ago, Mike Trout and Kris Bryant were Major League Baseball’s MVPs. The Chicago Cubs broke their curse. David Ortiz slugged a farewell tour around the league. Ichiro Suzuki collected his 3,000th hit stateside. Dave Roberts was a first-year manager in Los Angeles. There was no pitch clock, no shift ban, no universal DH. Intentional walks required pitching.
“The point is, a lot has changed in the past decade.”
I know which year I’d rather have.
Talking of the pitch clock, this year’s big rule change is obviously the ABS challenge system (it’s not being used in the WBC, but is in spring training).
Jordan Shusterman explains what to watch for:
“Welcome to a world in which players can argue balls and strikes — at least some of the time. In reintroducing the concept of the ABS challenge system, MLB stated its objective early and emphatically: “To provide players with an opportunity to correct missed calls in high-leverage moments in a manner that fans like.”
Finally, with a possible contentious fight over a salary cap looming at the end of the 2026 season, the MLBPA lost its chief when Tony Clark resigned and was replaced by Bruce Meyer.
Bob Nightengale writes at USA Today:
“Meyer realizes he doesn’t have the personality of his predecessor, Tony Clark. He didn’t play 15 years in the major leagues. He didn’t even play in the minors. He didn’t play in high school.
“But, man, can he ever litigate, and as long as he’s on the job, he vowed Thursday in a 30-minute interview to do everything possible for the players to get the best possible deal he can in the next collective bargaining agreement, and at the same time, help heal fractured relationships among agents and players in the game.”
See Also:
Challenging The System (from September)
Shut Out (from August)
Map, Squiggles, Action? (from August)
History Behind The Plate (from August)
Nobody’s Perfect (from June)
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Card Tricks
I thought I’d try something that I think might be fun this year, since we’re heading into the final season of the project. It’s been eating me up over the past few years that I no longer get physical tickets to mark the games I’ve seen. I know a lot of you feel the same way.
I keep scorecards now, since that’s probably the only personalised piece of the game I get to take home, but having the old tickets in a box upstairs only works when you sit down and look through them, which I don’t do enough.
So I’m going to try to do that, and post pics of some tickets from different years corresponding to, or around, the date of the column. This is the first baseball column of the year, so we’ll see how it goes. Here’s a few spring training tickets from the early 2000’s.
(That Blue Jays ticket from Dunedin bottom right is a strange one – it has an autograph, with the uniform number #24, which that year was Shannon Stewart, but that doesn’t look like his signature from some of the cards I’ve seen).
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Maz
Pittsburgh Pirates icon Bill Mazerowski, the Hall of Famer whose signature moment came when he hit a walk-off home run to win the 1960 World Series, died at the age of 89.
The AP’s obit describes the scene:
“Some 36,000 fans at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, and many more tuning in on radio and television, agonized through one of the World Series’ wildest and most emotional conclusions. The lead changed back and forth as Pittsburgh scored the first four runs, only to fall behind as the Yankees rallied in the middle innings and went ahead 7-4 in the eighth. Pittsburgh retook the lead with five runs in the bottom of the eighth, helped in part by a seeming double-play grounder that took a bad hop and struck Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek in the throat. But the Yankees came right back and tied the score at 9 in the ninth.
“The bottom of the ninth has been relived, not always by choice, by the two teams and by generations of fans. The New York pitcher was Ralph Terry, a right hander whom manager Casey Stengel had brought in during the previous inning and would later acknowledge that he had a tired arm. The right-handed hitting Mazeroski, who had grounded into a double play in his previous appearance, was up first.
“Terry started with a fastball, called high for a ball. After conferring briefly with catcher Johnny Blanchard, who reminded him to keep his pitches down, he threw what Mazeroski would call a slider that didn’t slide. Mazeroski got under it and belted it to left, the ball rising and rising as it cleared the high, ivy-covered brick wall, with Yankees left fielder Yogi Berra circling under it, then turning away in defeat. The whole city seemed to erupt, as if all had swung the bat with him, as if he were every underdog who longed to beat the hated Yankees. Mazeroski dashed around the bases, grinning and waving his cap, joined by celebrants from the stands who had rushed on to the field and followed him to home plate, where his teammates embraced him.”
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Longtime MLB umpire Bruce Froemming – who worked a record 11 no-hitters – also passed away this week, aged 86.
He called 5,163 regular season games over 37 consecutive seasons beginning in 1971.
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As always, thanks for reading. During the regular season I aim to write a baseball-related post midweek and a politics wrap at weekends. I’ll try my best to keep them separate but as you might expect, one has been way more sane than the other, especially at this confusing and crucial moment.
There’s a full States of Play archive here.
If you think you might like to take part in a simple Q&A for the project, reflecting on your memories of baseball and politics; along with where you think the country stands right now and where it might be headed, I’d love to hear from you, and you can email me at steve@statesofplayproject.com.
You can see the ones I’ve done over previous seasons here.
Here’s How It Works:
You send me a brief bio – a few paragraphs telling me who you are, what you do, why you love baseball – as well as a couple of pics of yourself, ideally at a ballgame, and in return I send you nine questions, one per inning. You take as long as you like to email your answers back, then I’ll make sure you’re happy with the final draft before it gets published.
The first two questions are always the same for every participant: what was the first ballgame you went to and what do you remember about it?; and then what was the first election you voted in and what do you think have been the most significant changes in our politics since then?
I’ll fill out the other seven questions based on your interests and what you tell me in the bio, then we can go back and forth on whatever you’d like to talk about. Sound good? I look forward to hearing from you, and hopefully see you at a ballgame.
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I love that you found that photo from the top of the Pitt Cathedral of Learning (locally known as the Tower of Ignorance), looking down on Forbes Field, which is now the Graduate School of Business. ❤️