I haven’t watched baseball in years. I don’t know what teams do what or who’s who anymore. But I used to really be into baseball. 80s to mid 90s. It was big in my home. My father scouted professionally for the San Diego Padres and St. Louis Cardinals. So when I say, I grew up with the game, ya, I used to bleed for it.
Up until last season, there would be only small moments when I could catch a game. TV and Rogers Centre combined, 2-3 times per year. It’s not that I didn’t want to watch. It just left my orbit.
Nevertheless I always found baseball to be relaxing. Meditative, like comfort food. More than just physical. Remember, I practice hardcore Zazen.
So last year, as a few of you know, the game changed. On tv and in person. Clock counts, glitches between pitches, the higher ups sped up the pace of the game for viewership. To make money faster. And it makes sense as to why, but the game ain’t the same.
The rhythm is gone. Naturalness stripped away. Baseball had a flow that slowed time. It was the unsaid magic. Never spoken aloud, yet understood.
But no one knows how to relax anymore anyway. Even when we set tone for relaxation, we throw on a murder mystery. At the spa, we ask even more from our nervous system and enthusiastically jump in the coldest water possible for as long as we can muster.
When did we all become so bent?
Baseball was a day at the park. Now it’s a day at the circus with a stop clock. Blasphemy.
And as for my pops, he says nothing can be done. Money and time slots and attention deficits. This is our reality. No one seems to care anyway.
Heartbreaking.
Beyond the tragedy that is now Major League Baseball, what does this say of our culture, of our relationship with time itself? With all the gain we have achieved, maybe we should be asking, what has been lost.
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