I never thought about this until just this second, but the first book I ever tried to write was about colonizing the moon. And the second book I ever tried to write was about baseball. Outer space and baseball were on my mind all along. Kinda crazy, since it took me another 10 years or so before I figured that out.
Anyway, neither of those were ever published. They both pretty much sucked. The moon story rambled on without any plot in sight, and the baseball book read like an instruction manual. But the concept in the baseball book was interesting enough. It just wasn’t worthy of hundreds of pages of contemplation.
The idea was that the flow of time in baseball is different from every other sport. There are sports with clocks running down (like soccer and basketball and football), where the scoring and the clock are separate things. And there are sports where the scoring is the clock itself. These ones are like races. For example, running and golf are sports where the players are trying to cross the finish line in as few ticks of the clock or strokes of the club as possible. And tennis and volleyball are races to win 3 sets.
But baseball is different. At the fundamental heart of baseball you have strikes and balls. If a pitcher throws only strikes*, then strikes lead to outs and outs lead to innings and innings lead to games. And if a pitcher throws only balls, then balls lead to walks and walks lead to runs and runs lead to victory. One determines your location in the game and season, and one determines your location in the score and standings. Interestingly, if one of these elements (the ball/baserunner or the strike/out) were missing, you’d never see the end of a game.
The end result is an epic battle between time and eternity. The defense is trying to move time along, pitch by pitch, out by out, game by game. The offense is trying to suspend the flow of time altogether. Ultimately it’s a quest for immortality over death, a mini version of life itself, played out on a baseball diamond.
Now I remember why I thought this was so cool.
* This example starts with a batter here who doesn’t swing the bat. I can get into the swings and all that later if anyone besides me thinks this is remotely interesting…
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Very cool train of thought. I’m with you…keep on going!
Thanks Wayne!
Totally appreciate the feedback. Glad you dug the time and baseball stuff. I’ll keep that train rolling, but only in small occasional doses I think, lest this blog collapses under the weight of too much thinking…