Tuesday, April 8, 2008
John Rawls About Baseball
Sports yields to the mind a speculative allowance. John Rawls, whom those who know about such things regard as perhaps the greatest of American philosophers, put his feet up in a letter and explained why baseball rules.
… from the start, the diamond was made just the right size, the pitcher’s mound just the right distance from home plate, etc., and this makes possible the marvelous plays, such as the double play. The physical layout of the game is perfectly adjusted to the human skills it is meant to display and to call into graceful exercise. Whereas, basketball, e.g., is constantly (or was then) adjusting its rules to get them in balance.
I noticed that myself, not only in the often acrobatic double play, but also in the run of the mill play. Even a routine grounder has to be very well-played or the runner can make it safe to first — the distance between bases seems perfect for mini-dramas at every turn. This is remarkable given the advantages in speed current players have over their forebears — the geometry of the game persists, like a golden mean, in its canny match-up with human capacities.
When I was a kid I didn't have the patience to watch baseball although playing it was fun. Many memorable early experiences revolve around sports. Now, when a game is loping forward on TV, I'll glance on it, finding its presence oddly reassuring; I enjoy the slow cadences, a rhythm as much determined by the pitcher as the ump, but with cranky prompts on the part of the batter if the pitcher takes too long.
Watching the beautiful parabolic flight of a routine fly-out to center, you can miss that the center fielder was already moving at exactly the right angle to field the ball, his efforts begun at the crack of the bat, an ocean of grass away; like some inexplicable quantum entanglement.