Kozlowski: Baseball fans are not crazy

Some of my fondest memories of elementary and middle school involve baseball. Whether it was… Some of my fondest memories of elementary and middle school involve baseball. Whether it was lying on the rug at home listening to Chicago Cubs games on the radio, starting with the sports page when I read the newspaper or playing third base for my Little League team, baseball was not just a game — it was the game.

I lived, breathed and enjoyed the crack of the bat, the bellow of the umpire and the box scores.

Among my friends who played soccer and basketball exclusively, I was a weird kid. Granted, I was a weird kid to a lot of people.

However, my soccer-playing friends thought it exceptionally strange that I derived pleasure from listening to a guy on the radio say “fastball, low and away, ball two.”

It’s easy to see why.

To the uninitiated, baseball is really boring. A bunch of guys stand around on a field — stand around for minutes on end.

Occasionally, someone is able to swing a stick to hit the damn ball and send it someplace. Then, everybody on the field runs around until they simply stop — and stand around some more.

Occasionally, the stick is swung hard enough to send the ball out of the stadium, and for some reason, this is a really big deal. Then, at some vague point, the guys in the field run off it, and those off the field run on to it.

This goes on for two or three hours. Baseball fans are nuts!

Wrong. New York Yankees fans from outside New York state might be un-American, and Cubs fans might be obnoxious Yuppies. Washington Nationals or Pittsburgh Pirates fans might be masochistic, but these fans aren’t nuts for loving baseball.

The game is interesting when you understand what is going on, precisely because there is so much that can be going on.

There are 24 possible combinations of runner positions and number of outs for each batter. Each combination calls for slightly different strategy on the part of both the offense and defense, depending not only on the number of outs and where the runners are, but also what the score is, how late in the game it is, how good the individual batter is and a bunch of other variables.

Some of these situations have an obvious strategy, but many of these situations are ambiguous, and many can be very tense.

Do you bunt with a runner on first, no outs, trailing by one run in the top of the seventh inning? On defense, should the infield play in expectation of this bunt?

The long pauses in the action that annoy those used to soccer, in which the clock never stops, is part of what makes baseball enjoyable.

The pauses are what make baseball almost tailor-made for radio. It is possible to describe all of the action on the field by voice, and for an experienced listener to have a good approximation of what is going on at each moment.

Baseball on the radio makes it easy to multitask and still enjoy the game.

Because of the long pauses, baseball is great for the Monday Morning Quarterback-type because it is possible to second guess pretty much everybody involved with the game in real time.

No need to wait! You can say, “That bum needs to play deeper in the gap” and be proved right on the next pitch. Questioning the umpire’s calls is one of the most time-honored parts of the game, and it is astonishing how many baseball fans would make great umpires — just ask them.

Perhaps the best part of watching a baseball game is the ability to get into the players’ heads. You can, in effect, play the game in your mind.

Baseball also has rules — a lot of them.

There are 13 different ways for a pitcher to commit a foul known as a balk, for example. Section one of the Official Rules of Baseball is 12 pages, for another. There are 10 sections of the rules, not counting the 11th section, the index. Arguing about those rules is also a time-honored tradition.

The manager who has the greatest number of ejections in Major League history, at 131, is none other than John McGraw, who was active between 1899 and 1932. Thus, the game is particularly interesting to those of lawyerish persuasion.

Of course, there is the lingo.

The complex situations and bunches of rules mean baseball has a language all its own. An argument is called a “rhubarb.” A ball bouncing on the ground is called a “chopper.” A softly hit ball that barely falls for a hit is a “Texas Leaguer.”

This short list doesn’t even mention any of the statistics, from basic ones like RBIs and ERA to the more obscure, like total chances.

In effect, what makes baseball so enjoyable is that there is so much to enjoy, from the discussions of strategy to the tension that accompanies certain situations to the joy of loopholes to the joy of jargon.

So listen to your local baseball fan. He has a lot to tell you and can make some good observations.

Unless he likes the designated hitter rule — in which case, he’s full of it.

Write kozthought@gmail.com.