Out of all the baseball books I was looking for, THE BASEBALL CODES made it to my local library first, so I started it before any of the other books on this jaunt. I know I mentioned earlier in the week that this was the 'dark side of baseball' tour, but let's review what baseball can't do: It can't unite a city, it can't avoid the tentacles of human greed, it can't save the world from Commies.
THE BASEBALL CODES chronicles the pettiness of Major League Baseball players across a couple of dimensions, from really spectacular fights to etiquette surrounding pitching and sliding. Professional sports looks a lot more exciting than your average cube farm, but the same clash of personalities and agenda-pushing runs rampant there, amplified by the attention every small gesture gets.
What separates acts like players throwing at other players and sign-stealing from outright misbehavior is that, to a certain degree, these behaviors are expected and welcomed, and the victims are expected not to take their grievances to the press. It's been a while since I saw the word "omerta" tossed around so much, and given that certain players in this book are willing to go on record, it's possible that this tradition is peeling away along with the worst on-field deliberate injuries. The crew of Common Sense Dancing recently opined that fighting in professional sports is "stupid and pointless," and I think that's true of some fighting; I prefer the kind that not only does not result in any injury but from the cheap seats plays out in spectacular silent-film pantomine. (Dear David Wright: NEVER CHANGE.)
Authors Turbow and Duca don't limit themselves to punishment and retaliation: One altruistic phenomenon I had not known about was the unspoken respect for players who are about to break a record or reach a career milestone, and how some of their opponents will step lightly or even help them when it's not strategically savvy to do so. This is not how I grew up playing the few sports I did, but again, it's a professional courtesy.
THE BASEBALL CODES reads more like an almanac or one of those treasured collections of related anecdotes I used to read as a kid, that were just long lists of related facts or stories... so it's better to dip into every once in a while than read straight, particularly if (like me) you want to stop and look up players mentioned in the book. This was all somewhat shocking when I started this book, before I had read about Cicotte throwing Game 1 or Jim Bouton getting his spikes nailed to the clubhouse floor. But after all that, it took on a dimension of playground justice, the type of passive-aggressiveness that takes place in every office.
Tomorrow: Odds, ends, miscellany.
3 comments:
I never played baseball serious, so some of the "codes" seem silly to me. For instance, I don't understand why, sometimes, when a batter is unintentionally hit by a pitch, the team needs to respond by hitting the other team's player with a pitch. Sometimes it is dismissed as "they don't really mean it, they're just sending a message" but why is the message delivered up-and-in, instead of at the legs? And if everyone knows you're just sending a message, instead of actually trying to hit the other team, then what's the point of sending it?
I think a more difficult question is when a pitcher is working on a no-hitter. There was a controversy a few years ago when Curt Schilling was throwing a no-hitter in a 1-0 game, and a batter bunted for a base hit. Schilling hit the next batter on that team, and, after the game, broadcasters were complaining about how it was against the code to bunt for a base hit to break up a no-hitter, how either you get a "real" hit or else you don't get a hit at all. I disagreed, because I felt that throwing a no hitter means you don't allow any hits of any kind, not just that you dont' allow any spectacular hits. Furthermore, it was a 1-0 game, and so the losing team needed to get on base by any means necessasary in order to try to tie or win the game. With a runner on first, a double would tie the game, and a home run would win it. I could more easily understand the comaplaints if Arizona had been up 7-0, and the bunt was meaningless, but the "codes" just seemed ridiculous when they interfered with a team trying to win a close game.
that should have said "seriously"
Was Schilling pitching against a rookie on the Padres? That story was definitely in this book. (Schilling makes several appearances, none of which make you particularly want to buy him a beer later.) Part of the explanation in this case was that the rookie ignored advice against bunting or that he didn't usually bunt, so it wasn't okay for him to bunt this one special time... a little hair-splitty.
I think it just boils down to tradition, and how hard people kick against changing a tradition even when it either makes no sense or its meaning has been completely forgotten. In some of the interviews Turbow and Duca did, there's a whiff of clubhouse rule -- "Well, I didn't really want to hit the guy, wasn't even my fight in the first place, but everyone said I had to." For me at least, this retaliation sticks out more in baseball because players don't have to hit each other in the course of the game (unlike football or hockey).
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