Sport

LOVE LIKE A TIDAL WAVE:

The Green Fields of the Mind (A. Bartlett Giamatti,)

The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide. Rice is up. Rice whom Aaron had said was the only one he’d seen with the ability to break his records. Rice the best clutch hitter on the club, with the best slugging percentage in the league. Rice, so quick and strong he once checked his swing halfway through and snapped the bat in two. Rice the Hammer of God sent to scourge the Yankees, the sound was overwhelming, fathers pounded their sons on the back, cars pulled off the road, households froze, New England exulted in its blessedness, and roared its thanks for all good things, for Rice and for a summer stretching halfway through October. Briles threw, Rice swung, and it was over. One pitch, a fly to center, and it stopped. Summer died in New England and like rain sliding off a roof, the crowd slipped out of Fenway, quickly, with only a steady murmur of concern for the drive ahead remaining of the roar. Mutability had turned the seasons and translated hope to memory once again. And, once again, she had used baseball, our best invention to stay change, to bring change on.

That is why it breaks my heart, that game–not because in New York they could win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to the Yankees of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

ALL IN THE WRISTS:

The Alabama Boy Makes Good: Hank Aaron, Legend of the Negro World ( Gerald Early, October 31, 2025, Common Reader)

I went to Connie Mack Stadium, Shibe Park to the older generation, fairly often as a kid, not to see the Phillies but to see the opposing team, especially the Dodgers (to see Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitch), the Pirates (to see outfielder Roberto Clemente), the Giants (to see Willie Mays and the majestic Juan Marichal), and the Braves (to see Aaron but also to see pitcher Warren Spahn and Eddie Matthews). I saw Aaron hit a home run at a game I attended. I will never forget how hard he hit the ball, and how effortless and graceful his swing. Oh, those magical wrists of his! I imitated that swing for a while when I played youth baseball. It made my wrists and forearms ache. That did not dissuade me. I finally stopped when one of the coaches I would hit better if I stopped doing a poor imitation of Aaron. My hands were big, so he would yell at me to just use my hands to hit, not my wrists. “Don’t lead with your wrists,” he would shout, “Just let your wrists follow your hands.” He was right. When I stopped imitating Aaron, I did hit better. I guess Aaron’s way of hitting worked for Aaron and probably nobody else, certainly not for star-struck kids of small talent like me. That is the way it is with great hitters, sui generis.

One probable cause of Aaron’s nearly unique wrist strength must have been the fact that he hit cross-handed (right below left) when he was a young player. (try taking a swing that way and you’ll get the picture)

OUR TEACHERS WERE GASLIGHTING US:

When Baseball Threw Physics a Curve (Brad Bolman, 10.22.25, Pioneer Works)

In October 1877, the Cincinnati Enquirer hosted a debate between two physics professors in Ohio over a broiling national controversy: Was there such a thing as a curveball?

Pitchers claimed they were throwing them, batters claimed they were missing them, and fans claimed they were seeing them, but a chorus of doubters argued that the “curved ball” was a physical and scientific impossibility. On one side of the Enquirer debate was Orange Nash Stoddard, a distinguished science professor at Wooster University, lovingly nicknamed the “Little Wizard” by students. On the other was Robert White McFarland, a mathematician and civil engineer at Ohio Agricultural, which we now know as Ohio State. Stoddard’s position: “There is no such thing.” McFarland’s: “There is a curve.”

At the end of the nineteenth century, baseball was rapidly professionalizing and growing in popularity. For many, its geometric diamond arrangement and the spectacular physics of bat and ball made it a truly scientific sport. In turn, fans, players, commentators, and even natural scientists used baseball to test theories about the natural world. How far could a hit ball travel? Could a thrown ball really curve? Although debates over the curve are known to fans and sports historians alike, they are usually understood in a narrative of progress: an old misperception of physics that inevitably gave way to scientific truth. But the curveball debate was more than that. It was an argument about the contours of our shared reality. Could baseballs really bend along their path, or was it all a collective delusion?