Baseball is Better than Ever

Except at the movies...

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The major league baseball season is officially underway. Finally! Winter is long and hard here in Maine, and Opening Day is a sign that the end is near, that we will indeed survive to see green again (even if we did get another six-inch helping of slushy white stuff the other day). Opening Day is Spring in action, a time of hope and renewal when even my beloved Washington Nationals, doormats for half a decade, still have a chance to win it all.

My kids love baseball. My son bakes an Opening Day cake each year, and my middle daughter knows more baseball history than most old-timers. We read baseball books aloud, play and watch games, even plan trips around visiting new ballparks. It’s something fun that we can share, a thread that connects us not only to each other but to eras past. Historians love baseball because baseball loves its history.

Baseball attracts its share of critics – the game is too slow, the season is too long, the rules are too complicated. In our fast-paced age, fans flock to football and basketball, and few can even recall baseball’s heyday as “America Pastime.” Critics have been predicting baseball’s demise for as long as I’ve been alive. There were chronic drug scandals in the 80s, crippling labor strikes in the 90s, and stat-juicing steroids at the turn of the century.

But baseball now is better than ever: the pitchers throw harder, the batters hit farther, the fielders are absurdly good. With the international integration of the game, the talent level is consistently higher, and the greatest player in the history of the sport (Shohei Ohtani) is at the top of his game. The rule changes that went into effect last year – adding a pitch clock, enlarging the bases, and restrictions on pitching changes – have returned the game to its faster-paced roots.

Today’s ballparks are beautiful, gloriously beautiful compared to the cookie-cutter AstroTurf monstrosities of my youth. Ballpark food may be more expensive (what isn’t?) but it offers more delicious variety than the rubbery dogs of ages past (though you can’t really improve upon old-fashioned fried dough). And thanks to Betty Carnes and the no-smoking movement, you can enjoy a game without inhaling the fumes of the chain-smoker an aisle upwind.

It’s not just the players or the ballpark experience that are better — the writers are as well. With its long season and relaxed pace, baseball lends itself to storytelling and reflection. No disrespect to Roger Angell, Peter Gammons, and other legendary baseball writers, but Joe Posnanski is the Shohei Ohtani of sports writing, the best now and perhaps the best who has ever written about the game. His Baseball 100 and Why We Love Baseball are my two all-time favorite baseball books, with troves of anecdotes and insights about the people and the moments that make the game great.

But there is one place where nostalgia still wins: the movies. Today’s baseball films just can’t hold up to “Major League,” “Sandlot,” “A League of Their Own,” and other great movies from a generation ago. In honor of Opening Day, my kids and I watched my favorite baseball movie, “Bull Durham,” the 80s classic about an aging minor league catcher who must mentor a flame-throwing phenom with “a million-dollar arm and a five-cent head.” It’s raw, it’s crude, and it’s ridiculously funny. And yes, candlesticks still make a great gift.

Baseball readers, what are some of your favorite books and movies about the game?