Baseball Connections

Let me begin this next volley by stating more clearly that I think the questions Adam raised initially about the game are good and important ones. But I’m leaving aside that broader debate for now. What troubles me is the use of nfl throwback jerseys the statistical record as a kind of moral ballast for what are essentially emotional arguments. So when, in this context, I read that Sandy Koufax was a “genuinely great” player, one whose accomplishments we “can connect with,” I wonder what’s really being said. Koufax was great—really great—for six seasons. But which is the part of the Koufax record we connect with? His freakishly many strikeouts in such a short span, or his sudden departure from the game as a thirty-year-old star, before the changing conditions of the game, and of a deteriorating body, could take effect in public view? Barry Bonds, still relatively lithe at that same age, had already won three M.V.P. awards, as many as Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio and Stan Musial—as many as anyone, ever, in fact. That he then went on to win four more M.V.P. awards during what we now know as the Steroid Era could be interpreted as proof that these connections—certain connections—aren’t so hard to follow, after all. Before, after, lithe, hulking: it’s the greatness itself that’s the bridge. And I think plenty of nfl jerseys ordinary fans can also connect, however unhappily, with the competitive impulses and anxieties that drive an aging athlete to seek an artificial edge that preserves or bolsters the image of himself in his own mind.

Moving on, then, briefly, to Ty Cobb, whose unambiguous greatness has been invoked in passing, and in contrast to our supposed contemporary ambiguities. Let’s not forget that Cobb was implicated in a gambling scandal, and that he accumulated his totemic statistics (.366 lifetime average, 4191… wait, now it’s only 4189 hits, apparently; see, these things have a way of changing on us, never really have been more than what they seemed to us at a given moment in time) through those years when we know some games were being bought and sold. Asterisks, like footnotes, can be more distracting than clarifying, because they hint at a completeness to the story that a wise reader wouldn’t otherwise think to presume.

Fandom is, of course, emotional, and I’d suggest that it’s the greatness of the very best athletes that we can’t, and don’t even want to, connect with. Otherwise, why keep bringing up people like Cobb, with his multiple .400 seasons, or the Babe, who—talk about blowing up the normal progression—once hit more home runs in a season than any other entire team did. We watch them—some of cheap nfl jerseys them, anyway—to be amazed, not to be reassured. You could argue that steroids have erased the illusion of magic in these achievements, not our ability to relate to the achievements themselves.