Discovering Baseball

This past year I became very interested in a new sport. As fate would have it, this first year of real interest would coincide with one of the most impressive individual feats in that sport's history. That achievement consisted of 50 home runs and 50 “stolen bases”. I was also lucky enough to witness the first and fiftieth home runs in stadiums on opposite coasts of America.

I have watched and obsessed over sport for as long as I can remember. As with many children, sports always managed to provide me with a sense of wonder and excitement not really found in anything else except, perhaps, Jurassic Park. I can remember the real thrill when I received a signed photo of Mick McCarthy, the result of a successful period of letter-writing to the FAI. There is a photo of me posting one such letter through the door of their old HQ in Merrion Square.

This obsession with football continued into my teens and was a key motivation for learning European languages and in a sense set me on the life path that I'm on today. At that stage, I needed to be able to understand what the Spanish or Italian sports dailies were saying. Football would eventually play an even more crucial role in my decision to come to Chile for the first time, but that is a tale for another day.

In recent years, I have found that football doesn’t quite scratch that itch any more. I have gone from manically watching as many games as I can, to engaging with it much more through other media such as podcasts. I rarely miss an episode of Football Weekly  but I am quite likely to skip the weekend’s Premier League matches in favor of other pursuits. The changing face of the game, me getting older, there are probably several factors that have impacted this.

I reacquainted myself with professional golf a couple of years ago. I had once again ventured onto the course and was very much bitten by the golf bug. It was great to have a new sport to fixate on, with hours and hours of coverage and engaging storylines. Indeed, one of the reason's that I had begun to drift away from football had been the lack of storylines, the flattening of the sport has sucked away some of its magic. Unfortunately for me, professional golf was soon to be blown up by some of the same greenwashing actors that have transformed professional football.

On a golf podcast that had become part of my routine, I began to catch on to the large number of references to baseball made by the hosts. They were somewhat despondent with the state of pro golf, and had begun to reengage with baseball more seriously, even putting out some special episodes focusing on the sport. It was now coming towards the end of 2023, and I was actively looking for something else to engage with. I trusted these guys so I thought it might be something to check out. Neither the NFL nor the NBA have ever attracted my interest and I never understood the hype around Formula 1. But, MLB (baseball) had always seemed completely indecipherable. The very vocabulary of the sport was confusing. Just what is an inning anyway?

Around the same time I had read a few articles about a unicorn baseball player. A phenomenon so big that he (Shohei Ohtani) had begun to spill over into wider popular culture. I am a sucker for long form sports journalism so I lapped up these lengthy pieces about this Japanese phenomenon. I had seen some good tweets too about his prodigious talent and seemingly rubbish team the Los Angeles Angels:

The noise around this guy continued to grow as he entered free agency (out of contract, gets to choose a new team or deal) and began the decision making process regarding his next team. I knew from my reading that he did something that no-one else in the sport really did: pitched AND batted. He ended up signing for the LA Dodgers for an astronomical $700 million. The money in this sport can be striking for the uninitiated. My mind was made up, I was going to follow this guy’s trajectory and try to learn the rules of the game along the way.

Going back to the topic of the sport’s vocabulary: it is probably one of its biggest entry barriers. However, as time passes and you learn what it all means, it is actually amazing how much it influences every day English. Did you ever think about where the phrase “came out of left field” comes from? A “ballpark figure” is a bit more obvious. The language of baseball permeates throughout modern English, a hint at its prior role as “America’s pastime”.

Its stats are another level of difficulty altogether and I only came to understand how they worked over the course several months. Such is the extent of the jargon, the MLB has a glossary page on its site; not something you find at Fifa. Com.

As fate would have it, myself and my wife were invited to a wedding in Los Angeles in May 2024. A perfect opportunity to visit the ballpark. With that in mind I bought us a pair of tickets. She comes from the baseball stronghold of Venezuela (another one of my discoveries was that el béisbol es latino) and was probably a bit better versed in the games rules at that stage. In preparation, I tried to immerse myself in the sport but found it too difficult. The sheer amount of information, stats and jargon on the broadcasts and podcasts was too much. I tried to learn as much as I could but I was far from hooked.

Game day came around. It was a beautiful golden afternoon in LA. We rolled into the gargantuan Dodger Stadium car park, palm trees looming all around. Ten minutes later we were in our seats and I was out another $200 after buying a jersey and 1 (one) beer. Hot dogs were soon acquired, additional cold beers too and we settled in to enjoy the game. Our seat neighbors were a father and daughter. His Mexican grandfather had taken him to many games over the years and he was more than happy to answer my questions about balls, strikes, walks and general baseball culture. My wife managed to celebrate an opposition home run while I was in the bathroom.

The golden sun began to disappear and the lights came on. One of the things I loved was hearing the different sounds of the game up close, the cracks from the bats and the thuds of the ball shooting into the catchers glove. There was an electric moment when Ohtani sprinted in to score from second base, narrowly avoiding the tag at home (see, now I can speak baseball). That play was a real jolt to the system and I think it was the moment that I started to fall in love with the sport. Then in the seventh inning the big man did this:

His first home run as an LA Dodger since signing that $700 million contact (which incidentally is no longer even the biggest contract in baseball history).

I went away hooked and began following Dodgers in a semi religious manner. Now I could really get into the podcasts and the articles. The LA time slot usually made matches available in the late evening and another wonderful discovery was finding out that they play 162 games a year, much to the detriment of my reading and Netflix watching schedule. The LA Dodgers went on to win the World Series and Ohtani one of the best individual seasons in baseball history.

However, the baseball gods had another surprise in store for me. I was lucky enough to be in Miami when the Dodgers came to town and even more lucky to watch several of the games from a suite in the stadium. As a result, I was able to be there for Ohtani’s so called 50-50 game. He smashed his 50th home run and stole his 50th base, he also put in what some are calling the best ever individual performance in game: 6 hits, 2 doubles and 3 home runs. That is good.

Discovering baseball was an incredible experience. Everyone I have met in and around the sport has been so welcoming and so happy to share their passion. From people at the games, to other fans at the hotel and just about anyone involved with the sport. The sport itself has so much to give. You start to understand the skill level involved and just how hard it is to hit that ball. You learn to respect that split second timing that is needed for multiple facets of the game. It also delivers countless electric moments that will keep you coming back and has a genuinely interesting cast of characters who you get to know quite well over a 162 game season.

So if you are the in the US this year and you have a free evening, why not check out who is playing that night in that city and head to the ballpark. You might just make a discovery.