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I've never heard Cano described better than you just did: "A sense of Zen!"
Dead on. Is there any player in the game who seems "quieter" than Cano?
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There's an old story about an art competition, with the theme of "Peace." One guy painted a meadow and small pond. Another guy painted gentle clouds in the sky. The guy who won painted a raging storm, and a cliff, and in a crag of the cliff a nest, in which a mother dove comforted her chicks.
... sudden thought. You think we should warm the hot stove with an Impressionistic Art Club korner? With the required punch line being a 2016 player stat connected to the doggerel commentary we put on it? Dr. D will start. Monet's "Soleil," let's go with point 5 below.
Always admired the impressionists' conceit that their (brush-stroked) commentary could provide more emotion than "mere photographic reproduction." It's an audacious claim, but a fun one.
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In Jeff Sullivan's Friday chat, there was this sweet little exchange:
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| 10:04 |
Tommy Lasordid: Last night’s game: a harmonic conversion of front office vision, manager game planning and player performance? Loved it!
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| 10:04 |
Jeff Sullivan: It was such a perfect game for baseball dorks
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| 10:04 |
Jeff Sullivan: Absolutely no way I could convey how awesome that was to my girlfriend or mom
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I didn't even know which game he was talking about. My wife has had about three games on so far this October, and they all seemed to fit the description.
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The broader Light Bulb that occurred ... what if you made a list of things in life, things you simply could not convey to an "outsider" in words. Usually, because there is a fabric of built-up history behind it, and/or there are simmering emotions attached, and/or there exist variations of variations of variations of it ... it's an elusive concept, isn't it?
A shy little 12-year-old came on America's Got Talent and sang opera, pulling from the depths of her soul a power we couldn't have imagined was there. Notice how it's not too hard to describe?
Things about local sports that I don't think I could convey to my wife, or even to a fellow baseball fan who simply disagreed with me:
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1) Safeco Field bestows a feeling of well-being that is far, far out of proportion to any sum of its parts. There's a beauty to a good baseball park, an elusive sense of benignity, a symmetry to the visual appeal, the colors ... there's a sense of order to the universe, and ...
Why am I trying to convey it in words? :- )
CLink for a Seahawks' game ... it's fantastical. The sense of thrill is amazing. But it conveys to me no sense of well-being.
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2) Players who have the potential to be special, like James Paxton, are "open-ended" assets that touch on our feelings of Hope. The only hope that matters to me, at my age, is a vast, open-ended hope. One championship would be fine, but somewhere in the back of my mind I'd like a 1921-1964 run for the Mariners. ...
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3) The leadership of men like Scott Servais, Edgar Martinez, Pete Carroll ... the basic reaction of most people seems to be "it's just a game." No, it's not. What was Martin Luther King's line about sweeping the street in the audience of angels?
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4) I can't convey how much I dislike "pitching to contact" or how much I like what Edwin Diaz does. It's not rational. On this particular point my preference is most definitely a matter of taste, not objective beauty. There's nothing "ethically" wrong with playing percentages. But it's hard to convey, in baseball, the joy in watching a pitcher attack a hitter.
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5) Robinson Cano's unhurried nature, his sense of Zen in a triple-deck stadium.
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6) Fill in yer own. There is a whale of a lot of beauty in our game, things so beautiful that they transcend description.
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Wasn't feeling particularly maudlin when riffing off Jeffy's comment, and am not now. But as the monks will tell you, one need not be in a hyperemotional mood to appreciate beauty in life; emotion may even interfere.
Some things in life, one does one's duty. Other things in life are like a warm inn by the side of the road, a dollop of peace on the chili-pepper stew of life, as it were. Not sure the Mariners, Inc., the old guard, deserves Safeco Field. But it seems to me that we do. ;- ) Baseball. Is. Good. It's even better shared with friends like you guys.
On my deathbed, I will not wish that I had gone to fewer baseball games. LOL.
Enjoy,
Dr. D
Comments
2
and waiting for answers to guesses of each situation of a good playoff game is far more enjoyable to me than waiting for lie detector results on Maury.
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I've long said that the great beauty in MLB baseball is that it is a magnificent ballet. Ballet, of course, is most appreciated by those that love the nuance. Football is 6 seconds of collision, seperated by 30 seconds of television commercial. It has become nearly unwatchable, even in the stadium. If it is NFL and Brady isn't playing...well maybe a Rodgers, too....then I'm not going to turn it on until about Week 14.
NBA games? My goodness, why? Post up briefly, run a screen and roll, make the defense rotate (nobody doubles at the post much any more), shoot the three after the extra pass. Does anything else get done? Even the Knicks are dropping Jackson's (and Tex Winters') Triangle Offense, which was the most entertaining thing in the game.
If Steph Curry isn't playing I'm not turning it on.
But Base--Ball (said like James Earl Jones) brings a mini-ballet at you with nearly every pitch.
Who could ever be bored with that?
5
Really cool article, Doc. I love the concept of "things that have profound meaning to someone that is impossible to convey to an outsider." Beautiful concept. Your examples tick the box for me as well. I'm going to be thinking about this all weekend, as I feel that sensation often but have never quite been able to capture it until now.
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That Sully's thought, and our examples, had a little resonance with you. As well as for the fact that you're posting again :- )
I'm not exactly sure why a baseball stadium conveys more "benignity" than a football stadium, or even whether that's just my impression. Got any thoughts on that?
Maybe it goes back to George Carlin's bit on the terminology of the two sports .... we don't play in a PARK. We will throw a LONG BOMB. to the END. ZONE. to beat the BLITZ.
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I personally think that CLink has a a different vibe from Safeco and other baseball parks because baseball doesn't absolutely require identical playing fields.
You can build a park like the Polo Grounds or Fenway or Minute Maid Park or AT&T Park and the game goes on.
Left field too short; build a big wall or make right field a football field's worth of grass.
Weird brick wall; who cares, let the ball plonk off all over the place.
"That's just the ground and the ground rules", we say.
But football, soccer, track and field, rugby and other sports require a field of a very particular specification.
The game also refuses to heed to physical constraints that aren't weather-related.
Making the field up hill might be funny, but it won't happen.
And most of those field designs are symmetrical on two axes as well.
So, once you draw a field, there are only so many ways to stuff people around that field.
Seattle's not too bad though.
At least CLink had a design standard other than population density; they wanted that place loud.
A better example might be Husky Stadium, for any number of oddities and design choices they made for it, but more likely because they put it on a beautiful plot of land.
I actually think that one of my main reasons I don't enjoy going to Japanese baseball games is the experience at the stadium.
A lot of Japanese fields are symmetrical left/right.
That invites stadiums thare are also symmetrical left/right and ultimately boring.
But Japanese people prefer symmetry because it suggests balance, equity and other peaceful energies.
To that extent, asymmetry is associated with any number of characteristics including energy, spontanaity and even evil.
Maybe we Americans prefer a little texture?
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Baseball stadiums are joyful, the content makes it so. Football and basketball are games of aggression now days, and the stadium experience reflects that. Baseball is a game of skill filled in with leisure, and the stadium experience reflects it. With a few moments of aggression sprinkled in for that flavor.
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That Dodgers-Nats finale was the epitome of baseball-watching. You endure a WHALE of a lot of fairly boring baseball over the course of a season in order to fully appreciate such a sublime game.
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Anyone ever read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?
The author goes to incredible lengths to try to define Quality. No way I could follow all of his contemplation, but I think his ultimate conclusion was that what doesn't work is simply trying to apply that description to a thing--e.g., that's a 'quality' painting or TV show or hamburger. Obviously, opinions will vary.
His idea was that 'quality' exists at the intersection of a master and his work. In other words, where quality lives is in the process of a finish carpenter shutting out the sense of time and place while hand making a dovetail joint--not in the drawer that uses that joint. (Stipulation: I could be remembering this ALL wrong.)
Anyway, this is where I imagine Edgar is when he's deeply working on someone's swing. Or where Cano is when he makes a play that no one else can.
And does this possibility really exist in any other sport? Other team sports don't allow it. There are too many people acting/reacting at the same time. But in baseball, the pitcher can achieve this kind of quality all by himself...until the point when he releases the ball. The batter or fielder can also accomplish the same thing, altbeit in a second or two at a time.
Collectively the denizens have been in a lot of basketball courts and football stadiums in our lives. But to echo Doc's observation, there's something different about a ballpark. More like a temple...or a shrine.
Maybe because subconsciously we know that 'quality' lives there?
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Sounds like a classic. Wondered, reading the title, where he'd go with that. And in your first sentence you got across the concept. Well done mate. :- )
I don't think you're probably remembering it wrong at all. The same is true of a master swordmaker. The fusion of his 'soul' with his quality produces a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts - his prayer and his visualization producing a 'feel' and intuition that takes the sword beyond where it would otherwise end up. And this experience is more resonant than either the craftsman or the crafted.
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Your last three paragraphs are truly brilliant Diderot. I've got to think...
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I think this is the most enjoyable postseason I can remember.
I think this is a big part of the reason: in 16 games, seven have been decided by one run...and another six by two or three runs. Close games put pressure on the players and managers...and it's just plain entertaining to watch them respond to the tension.
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That is what brings me back to the game...every blasted year...
The reason that the Saturday evening October 1st tilt between the Mariners and As was easily the best baseball game I've witnessed first hand other than Edgar's Double was precisely that we played from behind the whole danged game and just...kept...coming...back.
When Cruz hit the game-tying homer in the 7th, you have never heard me scream so loudly. Or anyone scream so loudly, I'd wager. That game was hope on a never-ending string...I kept pulling at the string...there kept being more setbacks and more hope and more setbacks and more hope...it's a shame we lost, but it was still a great game.
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Fills me each time I walk into a baseball stadium and look at the field, especially Safeco. Seeing the bleach-white bases on the infield and the pristine manicured infield and outfield grass set against the buzz of fans coming to the game puts me in a mindset like nothing else I do. It's fantastic and I love going to baseball games.
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MLB has Wrigley and Fenway, and Dodger Stadium, as venerable places that conjure up all kinds of good feelings in fans. The NBA doesn't have any place like that as far as I know-Boston Garden was probably the only one, and it's been gone for a while. The NFL has Lambeau Field and I believe that's it. I think that when fans' memories get attached to the stadiums themselves, not just to what happened in the stadiums, you develop a much deeper connection to the team. Wrigley and Fenway create a bridge across generations. We wouldn't care nearly as much about the Cubs and Red Sox's droughts if they had moved to concrete monoliths like the Reds, Pirates, and Phillies did.