Cohen: In baseball, the star is the game itself — even if it is changing
To understand this ritual of national life, you don’t have to watch the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park or the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, storied and sacred as they are. They recall a little of how the game was played more than a century ago: on grassy surfaces to smaller crowds in cosy ballparks .As a contest, baseball is at its best in the major leagues. This is where the masters pitch, field, hit and run. This is why some are paid more than a poor nation’s GDP.
Home is Hadlock Field, once a high-school ballpark. It sits organically in the neighbourhood as if it were always there, amid modest homes on hilly streets. It seats some 7,300. Slugger the Sea Dog is the team’s tireless mascot. He’s the first minor-league mascot to enter the Mascot Hall of Fame. Save the date: Slugger will be formally inducted in Whiting, Indiana, on Aug. 12.
Traditionalists love that about baseball. It is not subject to the dictates of the buzzer, the siren or the whistle like hockey, football and basketball. Baseball has always been free of that, but now, apparently, not free enough. The big innovation is the pitch clock, limiting the time between pitches. When this was introduced in 2022 in the minors, it cut game running times by 26 minutes. This is now considered the salvation of the sport for which confident Cassandras were writing requiems. “How Baseball Saved Itself” declares the cover of The Atlantic, with classic American understatement.Article content
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