When I picked up my friend Sarah on a recent Sunday afternoon, she said my timing was perfect because the Seattle Mariners game had just ended.
“Oh, do they usually play on Sundays?” I asked.
She stared at me.
“They play five times a week,” she said. “Next week they’ll play six.”
Speechless, it was my turn to stare.
You may think conversations about politics and religion are divisive, but try telling a good friend that you hate the sport she adores. Actually, we have this same discussion every spring because Sarah knows I don’t like it – she just has difficulty accepting my antipathy.
To wit, the following day, she texted me a link to Mariners tickets and asked me to attend a game with her.
I declined due to a lack of interest. And time.
In 2021, the average nine-inning Major League Baseball game was 3 hours and 10 minutes. That’s bad enough, but each team plays 162 regular-season games. Let’s say we round a game to 3 hours, and you (and Sarah) watch every one of your team’s regular-season games. That’s 486 hours or a little over 20 days of your life! And we aren’t counting postseason games because doing that much math isn’t good for me.
This year, MLB added a pitch clock, and that’s supposed to speed up the games. They may go faster, but there are still way too many of them.
In addition to the time aspect, there’s the danger. I love football, which Sarah loathes, but I pointed out to her that no spectator has been concussed by a stray football in the stands, while hundreds of people each year get popped in the noggin by fly balls at baseball games.
She said that’s why they bring mitts. She said that like it’s actually possible for me to catch a ball with or without a mitt.
Undeterred, Sarah posted a link on my Facebook so that I could read about “the most literary sport in the history of sports.”
I skimmed it. Apparently, there are a lot of novels about baseball. I did know this because my friend, Beth Bollinger, penned one of them, “Until the End of the Ninth,” a lovely book about the 1946 Spokane Indians team.
Additionally, the article listed some baseball lingo that has leaked into our language.
For example, you can strike out on a date, or make it to second base. You can touch base with clients, or knock a column out of the park, and maybe you can even make it to the big leagues.
The article didn’t mention movies, but I’ve enjoyed several films featuring the sport – “The Sandlot,” “Moneyball” and “Field of Dreams” come to mind. Plus, I can watch a movie about it in half the time it takes to watch an actual game.
Having failed to convert me through literary persuasion, Sarah resorted to texting me photos of herself and her husband at a baseball game, her son in a Little League uniform, and finally pictures of Mariners games on her TV.
I countered with an adorable photo of our son Zachary during his lone season in Little League. Turns out the kid only wanted to play for the unlimited sunflower seeds and didn’t realize he would be playing two games a week. In his first at-bat, he got nailed in the leg by an errant pitch. We told him he still had to honor his commitment to the team.
“You guys are trying to get me killed!” he said.
Just because I don’t care for Major League Baseball doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a Spokane Indians game once every few years – especially on fireworks night.
So, even though Sarah thinks I’m an awful person for not sharing her passion for the Mariners, I still believe football fans and baseball lovers can get along. After all, diversity is what makes America great, and having dissimilar friends is educational. For example, while writing this column, I finally understood why baseball is called America’s national pastime.
It’s because so much time passes while you’re watching it.
Cindy Hval 