IN LEHMAN'S TERMS: Baseball Offers Timeless Appeal

When I tell people that baseball is my favorite sport, I am oftentimes met with a mixture of confusion and impatience.

Generally, those who disagree cite the deliberate pacing or the sexless antics or the eternal schedule as the sources of their discontent with the national pastime. These folks tend to prefer the ceaseless flow of soccer, the constant scoring of basketball, or the explosiveness of football to baseball and its subtler charms.

In the way of counter-argument, I present the idyllic settings of ballparks, the tactical nuance that goes into every strategic decision, and the unmatched tension of a ninth-inning nail-biter.

Sadly, all of these elements were absent from Harvard’s Sunday doubleheader with Columbia. The vista beyond the fences of O’Donnell Field is nothing to marvel at. With a cruel gust blowing in off the Charles, it was cold and I was underdressed. The seemingly interminable noon-time twinbill didn’t end until almost 5:30. And the Crimson sapped the drama out of the affair by leaping out to monster early leads in both games against the toothless Lions, who played all afternoon like they had their cups on backwards.

Still, I managed to enjoy myself. How? I’m not so sure. But something in two different sequences during game one reminded me of baseball’s ineffable appeal.

* * *

The first play was no joking matter. A kid got hurt. Columbia starting second baseman Kyle Roberts injured his knee when, on a ground ball to shortstop with runners on first and second and nobody out in the second inning, Matt Kramer slid hard into the base to break up the possible double play. It worked, too: the fielder made no throw and Harvard went on to plate four in the frame, building an insurmountable 7-0 advantage.

Kramer had no visible malicious intent on the slide. He didn’t stray from the baseline or lash out with his cleats. As Kramer put it, it was “just a hard play.”

Nevertheless, Lions skipper Brett Boretti stormed onto the field and conducted a lengthy tete a tete with the umps. In point of fact, he was contending that Kramer popped up on his slide, leading to the leg damage. In essence, he was sticking up for his fallen player.

So when Kramer came up in the fifth inning, for the second time since the incident, the Columbia reliever buzzed two pitches by Kramer’s head (one over, one behind) and ball four almost hit him on the knee. The retaliatory brush-back fastballs, that age-old assertion of pride and indomitableness, simply occurred to Kramer as standard practice.

“That’s just part of the game,” he said. “If someone did that to our team, we’d probably do the same thing. It’s just hard baseball.”

The second episode transpired in the third inning, by which point the Crimson was enjoying a 12-0 lead. After getting plunked with two outs, senior right fielder Lance Salsgiver, running on his own, swiped second base to move into scoring position. It seemed from the stands like a case of bad sportsmanship, of trying to run up the score, and sure enough, Salsgiver was immediately pulled from the game, getting an earful from Walsh as he trotted off, and benched for game two.

“I don’t know much about the cardinal rules of the game,” Harvard coach Joe Walsh said. “But I do know that’s my rules. When you have a senior that’s stealing bags up 12...that’s not the way we were brought up to play the game.”

According to Walsh, though, when Josh Klimkiewicz stole second in a similar spot in game two—up 8-1 in the fourth inning—it did not violate the informal regulation. Walsh said he employs, in the college game with its aluminum bats and ever-present threat of instant offense, an eight-run threshold, other coaches wait until nine.

“It’s also the type of ballgame, the way it’s going,” Walsh said. “That’s how baseball is. There’s some things you can do and take exception to.”

In other words, it’s a gut judgment, dependent on the situation, but firmly rooted in the customs and courtesies of the sport.

* * *

While still mulling the direction of this column, I happened upon Rick Reilly’s piece in this week’s issue of Sports Illustrated. Aptly enough, Reilly chose to write about the unwritten rules of sports. Several of the dicta that he goes on to enumerate, including one about stealing when owning a late lead in a baseball game, struck me as extremely pertinent. Then I reached the end of the article, which bore the following disclaimer: “Rick Reilly is on vacation this week. This column first appeared in the Jan. 16, 1995, issue.”

Over a decade old, I marveled, but not in the least bit outdated. That’s because there’s a certain timelessness to sports, baseball especially (the designated hitter is its only major innovation in the past century), that I cherish.

The takeout slides brings us back to the days of Ty Cobb; the chin music evokes Bob Gibson. The game continues to possess its hallowed habits and ancient mysteries, unscripted, handed down orally, through the generations.

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.