Brian Micklethwait on his Culture Blog said, “Critics who explain why TV shows are so good are the most dangerous kind, because they stop you ever enjoying it again.”

My baseball audience can imagine the question this way:

Critics who explain why baseball teams are so good are the most dangerous kind, because they stop you ever enjoying baseball again.

In either case, I think this is wrong.

Judging from the hostile reaction to Moneyball, it’s a common fear: that if you explain the mechanics of an art form, the enjoyment you get from it will cease. But this fear is based on a faulty understanding about how the brain stores knowledge.

The brain has two different systems of data storage:

• declarative memory, a conscious form of memory where facts are stored, and
• nondeclarative memory, a subconscious form of memory for pattern recognition, motor skills and habits.

I have proposed that our judgments of any kind of art, whether it’s a TV show or a baseball game, come only from the subconscious system.

Decisions arising from the subconscious system are instant and automatic. Our conscious decisions are slow, rational and deliberate. But we don’t need to deliberate very hard to decide whether we like a TV show or not. It just happens. Our judgments about art match the characteristics of the subconscious system better.

As you observe a TV show, or a baseball game, your subconscious system notices all kinds of patterns. The patterns you’ve seen many times, you learn to ignore. Those are clichés. If you see something unusual, though, you need to create a new memory for this new pattern. We like it when that happens.

On the other hand, when a critic explains a pattern to you, a different kind of memory is created. The critic is not giving you an actual pattern, but a fact about a pattern. An actual pattern would be a nondeclarative memory, stored in your subconscious. But the fact is a declarative memory. It’s conscious.

My hypothesis claims that you don’t use your conscious memories when you make your judgments, only your subconscious ones. If I’m right, knowing a fact about the artwork should not have any bearing on whether you like an artwork or not.

I know an awful lot of people who understand the facts about baseball inside and out. They know all the statistical probabilities for any given situation. But knowing these facts does not reduce their enjoyment of the game. That’s because the facts reside in a brain subsystem separate from the source of their enjoyment.

Facts are facts and patterns are patterns and never the twain shall meet.

Suppose you’re an indigenous reindeer herder on the frozen tundras of Kamchatka. You live in yurtas, like this one:

Every few days, as the reindeer graze the land barren, you pack up your home and move to another place, and rebuild your camp. You’re never settled, always changing. This has been your life for as long as you can remember.

Now suppose that suddenly, someone swooped you up and flew you off to a luxurious mansion on a warm tropical island, and said OK, now you live here, and you’ll never have to move again.

What would you do? Perhaps you’d be happy about the easier lifestyle. More likely, though, you’d be in total shock.

Well, as an A’s fan, that’s pretty much how I feel today after the A’s signed Eric Chavez.

A’s fans are nomadic. We settle down for a while with some players, let them graze awhile, and then move on to something else. Reggie, Catfish, Rickey, Canseco, McGwire, Giambi, Tejada…our players always leave. The team itself has moved twice, and is always threatening to move again. We’re used to it. We know we’re just a whistle stop on a journey to some other place, and everyone else is just passing through.

So now I’m sitting here, trying to think about Eric Chavez sticking around for six or seven more years, and well, I can’t do it. It’s beyond my ken, completely incomprehensible. But give me some time. I think that maybe, eventually, I could get used to this.

Some people take baseball far too seriously, and criticize anything and everything. It reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt’s quote:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

So when a Baseball Primer thread turned critical of young blogger Aaron Gleeman, I felt the need to respond:

To those who say a baseball blogger’s heft
is insufficient: Go jump in a lake.
May the ice cold water shock you awake
to learn that baseball is best left bereft
of gravitas. Though passion immerses
us all, this is not the crucifixion.
The aim is not Shakespearean diction.
It’s just a blog. A guy who converses
about a topic he enjoys. Enjoys!
A word that’s been forgotten here by some,
who feel the need to beat a bitter drum
and show superiority with noise.
Remember when you feel an angry urge,
that baseball is light verse, it’s not a dirge.

You go, Aaron.

Astros
With Clemens’ and Pettitte’s new faces
The Astros are tossing all aces,
While their hitters’ abilities,
Despite some senilities,
Puts plenty of runners on bases.

Cubs
If you trust that my dreams can foresee,
A wild card contender they’ll be.
Why not in first?
Perhaps they are cursed,
Despite adding Hawkins and Lee.

Cardinals
Pujols is worth an ovation.
I also profess admiration
For Woody and Morris,
The thing I abhor is
The rest of the Cardinal rotation.

Reds
I like what the Reds have been doing,
The youngsters that they’ve been pursuing.
Though Wagner, Kearns, Dunn
Will end up outwon,
They’ll still be a team that’s worth viewing.

Brewers
The Sexson trade leaves me unsure:
Is their whole brand new infield a cure?
It matters little;
Their pitching’s too brittle.
Just wait ’til those farmhands mature!

Pirates
Pittsburgh’s a passionate city.
Being stuck with this team is a pity.
There’s no way to waffle:
This team will be awful,
But at least their home ballpark is pretty.

Padres
It came to me once in a dream:
The Padres will have a good team.
I will trust this strange vision;
They will win the division
Or I’ll pinch myself, sit up and scream.

Giants
Maybe Alfonzo will hit,
While possibly Durham and Schmidt
Along with Robb Nen
Will be healthy and then
They won’t just be Bonds and that’s it.

Dodgers
This team is on loan, not invested,
But at least it has been dePodested.
From L.A. to the farms
They’ve been crawling with arms
But with bats they have been uninfested.

Diamondbacks
They used to just Schill ’em and Rand ’em.
But now they have broken the tandem
Of Johnson and Curt.
I know both were hurt,
But these moves, I do not understand ’em.

Rockies
While Walker, Wilson, Burnitz
And Helton will each get his hits,
Chacon will get saves,
And Jennings earn raves
But the rest of this team is the pits.

Will Carroll’s question about why we blog (“What’s in it for me?”), sent me into deep thought over the weekend. Then, I happened to come across a whole list of old SNL Deep Thoughts on Eve Tushnet’s site. I think the answer to Will’s question is this one:

Perhaps, if I am very lucky, the feeble efforts of my lifetime will someday be noticed, and maybe, in some small way, they will be acknowledged as the greatest works of genius ever created by Man.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. And I encourage you to come back to my site, because Tushnet also posts:

Before a mad scientist goes mad, there’s probably a time when he’s only partially mad. And this is the time when he’s going to throw his best parties.

Speaking of parties, there’s a new one starting up today called Hardball Times. Sounds like fun.

The five of you who read my mad scientist essay about our two brain systems will recognize that 99.9% of the baseball blogs out there are trying to talk to our logical System 2 Android Brains. Half of our brains are being neglected by the baseball blogosphere! So when a blog makes the attempt to talk to our System 1 Animal Brain, it should be encouraged.

That’s why I encourage you to go check out Mariner Musings, where Peter White has a whole series of haiku about Mariner players.

I took a quick trip down to spring training last weekend. I used some poetic license, and assembled a Spring Training Scrapbook of my trip.

Atop my photos, I pasted some screen-captured clippings from other baseball blogs. If you’re been reading a lot of baseball blogs lately, you might recognize some of the text I used.

Requires Flash, 244kb.

OGIC points out a good story in the New Yorker about Igor Larionov going to see Miracle, the film about the 1980 US hockey team. Larionov was just a youngster then, and he just missed out on making that Soviet team. His memories were not quite as happy as the film’s.

My memories of the 1980 Olympics were a bit different, as well. In 1979, my parents divorced and I moved with my mother to Sweden, after spending my first thirteen years in California. It was my first real winter, and I guess my young body wasn’t prepared for it. Just days before the 1980 Winter Olympics started, I caught pneumonia.

If you’re going to be bedridden for two weeks in the middle of winter in Sweden, you couldn’t pick a better time than during the Olympics. Sweden only had two TV channels back then, both government-run. They usually only broadcast from about 6pm-11pm, and most of their programming was horrendously boring stuff like pottery making and polka music. But during the Olympics, they broadcast nearly every event live and in its entirety. I watched it all.

The TV commentators were rooting for all the Swedes, and I got caught up rooting for them, too, especially after Thomas Wassberg won the 15km cross-country gold medal. He passed the finish line just 0.01 second ahead of a Finn, Juha Mieto. I had never imagined cross-country skiing could be exciting, but that was an amazing race to watch. The commentators went absolutely nuts. They showed the finish over and over again for days. In the smallest fraction of a second, Wassberg became a hero for life in his homeland.

Swedes have a small-town attitude towards their country, a refreshing humility about their little place in the big world. They don’t really expect to win. They don’t expect anyone else to pay any attention to them. Victories of any sort are always a surprise. Losses are not scandals, just the expected outcome for such a small group of people. But there is one big exception to this: ice hockey.

When the Swedes and Americans tied in the first hockey game of the tournament, the commentators were extremely disappointed, even upset. The Swedes were expected to win, and the tie with this lesser team would hurt their chances at a medal. Although the outcome suited my background, I empathized with the Swedes’ disappointment. Little did anyone suspect that this would be the only game USA wouldn’t win.

In 1980, there was also another exception to Sweden’s typically low expectations: Ingemar Stenmark.

Now, I’ve seen Michael Jordan. I’ve seen Barry Bonds. I’ve seen Wayne Gretzky. But to this day, Ingemar Stenmark is the most dominant athlete I’ve ever seen.

Most Americans would probably guess that Björn Borg is Sweden’s biggest sports hero. After all, he won Wimbledon five times in a row. Stenmark and Borg were both born in 1956, so I was lucky enough to live in Sweden during both their peaks. Borg was big, of course, but Stenmark was bigger.

Stenmark completely dominated slalom and giant slalom skiing. In his career, he ended up winning 86 World Cup races. Alberto Tomba is second, and he trails Stenmark by a whopping 36 wins. But the number of victories only tells part of the story.

Stenmark was so good, he didn’t really even try during his first run. Basically, all he did was make sure he didn’t fall down. In the second run, he would go all out. If he finished in the top 10 after the first run, you could be pretty sure he would either win the race or fall down trying. I remember one time he decided to go all out for both runs of a giant slalom race. He won by almost four seconds.

Whenever Stenmark skied, the entire country of Sweden would stop. I remember being out the town market one day during a World Cup race, and one of the vendors had a TV. When Stenmark’s turn came, everybody in on the square stopped what they were doing, and huddled around this one TV set to watch his run.

Because Stenmark was so dominant, I think Swedes felt more worried about a fall than excited about him winning Olympic gold. So when Stenmark ended up winning gold in both slalom and giant slalom (coming from behind each time, of course), they didn’t really explode with joy and surprise like they did about Wassberg. The prevailing emotions were pride and relief.

When the final round of the hockey tournament arrived, my illness was over. I watched the Finland-Sweden matchup, which was another tie. But I missed the USA-USSR game, because it didn’t start until 2AM Sweden time, and I had to get up early for a morning basketball practice. Besides, I didn’t want to see the Americans get clobbered, anyway.

When I got to the practice, my teammates were talking about the Sweden-Finland match. I was tying my shoes. Then someone asked about the USA-USSR game. One teammate said, “USA won.”

I looked up, surprised.

“No way,” said another teammate.

“They did.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No, USA won, 4-3.”

Nobody could believe it. Then they all turned and looked at me, the American. I looked back with a “hey, I’m cool” smile, and resumed tying my shoes.

Even at that point, the medals were not assured. Sweden still could win gold, if Finland beat the Americans, and Sweden beat the Soviets.

But that wasn’t going to happen. USA was a team of destiny. Sweden had the unfortunate fate of being the next team the Soviets played after the Miracle on Ice game. The Soviets absolutely clobbered Sweden, 9-2, to take the silver. Sweden settled for the bronze. From the Swedish point of view, the results were acceptable, but not great.

When I hear stories about Al Michaels call, part of me wishes I had been in America to be immersed in the pure joy and surprise of gold, instead of the mild satisfaction of bronze. But then I would have missed a similar joy and surprise when Wassberg won, and would not have experienced the total dominance of Ingemar Stenmark. I guess I’ll just have to follow Larionov’s lead, and go see the movie.

a man had never been to Yankee Stadium

one morning he grabs his bat
exits his home
and starts walking
in a straight line towards the Bronx

he stops at nothing
and anything that stops him
he smashes with the bat

fence…smash
tree…smash
house…smash
office building…smash
mountain…smash

a trail of destruction
in a straight line towards the Bronx

that will not stop
until the fences curve
and the trees begin to move
and the buildings learn to change speed
and the mountains find a better location

It’s the first baseball broadcast of the spring. The veterans play a few innings, then step aside to let the youngsters have a turn.

“James Loney is just 19 years old,” says the TV announcer.

“19 years old!” says my daughter, looking up from her dolls. She had been ignoring the game until now.

My daughter is 3. She is impressed by 19. It still sounds like a kid’s age to her, but it’s older. Older means being-allowed-to-do-things. Older also means bigger, and bigger means being-able-to-do-things. James Loney is able to do things.

“Wow, 19 years old!” she repeats.

Back when I was 19, I–
  Oh, geez. I’m twice as old as Loney, aren’t I?
Another new milestone: you know you’re getting old when–

Loney swings. His follow-through reminds me of David Justice. Justice and I are the same age. Justice retired from playing over a year ago.

Sigh. Sometimes, older means not-being-able-to-do-things.

Later, my daughter maneuvers into her booster seat for supper. As she’s settling in, she sings from the D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song:

“Leo Durocher, Leo Durocher,
Starts to wiggle and to twitch.”

She has no idea who or what a Leo Durocher is, other than something that wiggles and twitches. Heck, I don’t really know, either. He was before my time, too.

But her little song makes me smile. Baseball is back, and the generations have resumed their conversations with each other. Suddenly, the world seems like a whole lot less lonely place to live.

And why he left your court, the gods themselves,

Wotting no more than I, are ignorant.

–William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act III, scene II

Wotting. To wot. Chaucer used the word hundreds of times, Shakespeare used it 31 times. Now the word has vanished from the English language.

“To wot” meant “to know”, but there was once a distinction between the two. Why wot left our tongue, the gods themselves, wotting no more than I, are ignorant.

Swedish has two related words, “veta” and “kunna”, which retain the distinction. “Veta” means “to know that“, while “kunna” means “to know how“. If you’re describing a fact, you use “veta”. If you’re describing a skill, you use “kunna”. Knowing that Josh Beckett is a pitcher and knowing how to pitch are two different kinds of knowledge.

I have spent hours working on an essay trying to describe a particular distinction in the brain. This morning I realized the distinction is perfectly summarized by the difference between “veta” and “kunna”. In English, it’s a struggle to differentiate these two types of knowledge. A Swede will get it right away.

I know the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which claims that people are limited in their thinking by the features of their native language, is out of fashion. But from my experience, some ideas just more naturally come to mind in one language than another.

Just for fun, here are some other Swedish language features which lack a direct English counterpart:

• Dörrarna stängs. If you ride the Stockholm subway, you’ll hear this phrase. It means “The doors are being closed.” Somehow in English, there’s a feeling that “…by the driver” is being left out of the sentence. In Swedish, you can use a transitive verb and an object without implying a missing subject.

  I often wonder if this influences our culture, that we so eager to find blame for everything that goes wrong because we can’t use transitive verbs without implying that there’s some act of willpower behind it. A car was totalled, the driver was injured…by whom? Sometimes, humbug just happens, and there is no subject for the verb.

• Jobbigt. This is a great adjective. It means “a lot of hard work.” Did you do your homework? No, it was too jobbigt.
• Tro, tycka, tänka. These verbs all translate as “to think”, but they are three different kinds of thinking.

  “Tro” is a belief about facts, whose truth is independent of your belief. “I think the Marlins won the World Series last year.” Even if I think the Tigers won last year, the fact still remains that the Marlins won.

  “Tycka” is a belief or opinion whose truth depends on your belief. “I think your hat is lovely.” If I don’t think the hat is lovely, the hat is not lovely.

  “Tänka” is a thought process. “I think about baseball every day.”

  In English, the line between fact and opinion feels fuzzy. In Swedish, it’s clear. When I hear English speakers confusing opinion with fact, I end up wishing we had this distinction in English.

• Kissenödig. Another great adjective. It means “in need of peeing”. I’m kissenödig, where’s the bathroom?
• Lagom. This adjective is everything you need to know about Swedish culture. It means “just the right amount”, or “not too much, not too little.” In America, the ideal state of being is the richest person with the biggest house. In Sweden, the ideal is to be lagom. You want to be lagom rich with a lagom home. Even if you are the best, like Björn Borg or Ingemar Stenmark or Peter Forsberg, you still are expected to act as if you’re only lagom successful.

Well, I tycker that this entry is lagom long. It’s getting jobbigt to write more. I’m kissenödig. Dörrarna stängs.

Names! We’ve got names!
And for all the steroid claims,
Let us go and cast our blame!
They’ve been blemishing our game!
They brought baseball so much shame!
Let us burn them down in flame!
Let’s take Sheffield and take Bonds
And go throw them into ponds
To see if they will drown!
Or maybe run them out of town
And then hunt them west and east,
Like a scary, vicious beast
Or an evil undead zombie!
Let us hound this vile Giambi!
Let us villify Velarde
Who would imitate Joe Hardy
To secure a higher level
And sell his soul off to the devil.
Santiago and Benard
Should be made to suffer hard
All feathered and all tarred
Their careers forever marred
For the image that they scarred,
For their blatant disregard
Of baseball’s hallowed yards,
Let us torch their baseball cards
‘Til all that’s left is charred,
Just charcoal, dust and ash.
Throw these people in the trash,
And then–

And then?

We’ll be positively sure
That baseball will be pure.
Forever.

Blissful–
This will
never

occur
again.

So I’ve been working on my essay about aesthetics, and it’s taking longer than I expected, and I suddenly realize I’m writing the word “so” about twice a paragraph. So I guess we all have our personal language tics. So I guess I’m no Peter Gabriel.

So I finished last in the Primey balloting for best baseball weblog. I’m not surprised. My finishing first would be akin to a cartoon winning the Best Picture Oscar. The award for sites like mine is simply to be nominated. So congratulations to the winners.

So speaking of cartoons, I made one while my brain got stuck on the aesthetics essay. It’s a fanimutation with a baseball twist. It’s actually a “translation” of a Swedish fanimutationish flash video called “Ansiktsburk”, which in turn is a “translation” into Swedish of a Lebanese pop song from the early 1980’s.

So if you have Flash 6.0 or greater, you can view my cartoon, “Fur Hat” (300kb).

Of players who aren’t in conformance
of rules that prohibit performance-
enhancement and doping,
I really am hoping
they’re caught and it leads to reformance.

I have a confession to make. I’m actually starting to enjoy some of the spam I get now. As spam gets closer and closer to real human writing to fool the spam filters, it’s starting to fool me, too. I’ve already written one poem using spam as a model.

Here’s the text content of a spam email I got today. It sounds like a poorly translated confessional poem:

That could well be the answer. I’m cold, you said, staring at the continuation we had to feel through yesterday. (Things were looking worse.) I’d thought it was sad to hate the forest the way she’d done.

A house full of condiments and no food. He wanted to know more. What is the answer? (I’m loving the way you walk with me so quietly, contentedly.)

I can never describe the walk back to my truck. Love what you do and do what you love And for ten minutes, he was a hero. It was time…

(I’m loving the way you walk with me so quietly, contentedly.) Can you tell me the answer? she asked. I’m evil. The same thing we do every night, he replied. A house full of condiments and no food.

This cracked me up. Which leads me to a question: would spam be any less evil if it actually contained messages with some artistic merit?

Hmm…I wonder if I could sell my Random Diamond Note Generator technology to a spammer? Imagine getting spam like this:

Many fans are betting that the Phillies will shift Jimmy Rollins to another position, perhaps second base, but that could change if Marlon Byrd consolidates his debt more quickly than expected, or if Todd Pratt, who, after receiving new medication, can finally learn to hit a changeup, which he is practicing to do off of satellite TV images of Eric Milton and Billy Wagner throwing batting practice.

On second thought, never mind…

today my
thoughts won’t
crystallize

Winter sport snowing complaining
Temper too short frozen raining
Bone blood the days
Report ears a phrase
Pitchers and catchers spring training.

incoherence
fractured ice on a melting stream

Ice: my true nature
is wet. Water: I long for
evaporation.

the air is full of himself

Miscellaneous jibber-jabber:

I’ve now got a beta version of the 2004 Fantasy Draft Simulator available. I’ll take a break from it for awhile to work on presenting my art theory, and then I’ll finish it off in another week or so.

I’ve added more Humbug Soup. The latest one, #4, is entitled What the Dodgers have with DePodesta.

There’s a nice discussion about baseball songs over at Baseball Primer. My two daughters (ages 6 and 3) have a strong opinion on this. They both agree that “Move Over Babe (Here Comes Henry)” is by far the best baseball song ever. “D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song” places a distant second. Hmm…I better go make sure my theory about art can explain this…

[UPDATE:] My wife thinks my six-year-old likes “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?” second best, and that my three-year-old prefers “I Love Mickey”. I guess I was probably projecting my own preference on them. Well, at least I was right about “Move Over Babe”. The music is from a CD called Baseball’s Greatest Hits. My kids love to listen to it. I highly recommended the CD for baseball fans, especially those with kids. But you might have to burn a copy without the Tommy Lasorda bleepfest, unless you want to try to explain it to them.

I’m going to try a little experiment. I’m going to translate some poems, not just into English, but into Baseball. I suspect the result will be an exercise in corniness and cliché, but that’s never stopped me before.

This translation is of a poem by the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. It’s called “En värld är varje människa” (Every person is a world). After learning that Alex Rodriguez will be a New York Yankee, it seems appropriate, somehow.

Every person is a team, with a roster
full of egos in silent rebellion.
Each player is a prisoner
inside a thousand possible battles
against a thousand possible enemies, and these battles
though incomplete, truly exist,
as real as I am. And the stars
and superstars who rule these possibilities
are themselves trapped
inside some larger entity whose ego and soul
they understand as little as we understand
theirs. Their losses and victories
paint the colors of our emotions.

The clear evening sky sparkles.
Beyond the horizon, a mighty steamship passes by.
We’re unaware of it until the swell hits the shore,
first one, then another, and many more,
the waves crashing and rumbling until everything settles down
as it was before. And yet, everything is different.

A strange anxiety casts a shadow on us,
telling us that a voyage has begun,
that a possibility has been unleashed.

Do baseball statistics need better marketing? I don’t know. Do foul poles need better engineering? Does infield dirt need better tech support?

Bah! I hate February.

Months and months of winter. Indoors, confinement. Outdoors, concealment, under layers of jackets and ski hats and scarves. Long dark nights. Clouds, rain, snow and cold.

Every year from mid-February through early March, I suffer the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. My emotions bubble to the surface, ready to pop at the slightest touch. I get extremely irritable. I get angry for almost no reason. Setbacks make me depressed. Sometimes I even have panic attacks.

The same brain chemistry that makes you sleepy at night and alert in daylight causes SAD. A long winter with little sunlight builds up a light deficit in my brain. In February, the debt becomes due. My mind goes into a haze.

It’s not so bad here in America. In Sweden, where I’ve spent three winters of my life, the symptoms are far worse. That far north, the sun only spends a few hours each day in the sky. It peeks up over the horizon and drops right back down again. It provides no warmth. It’s just a little yellow dot off in the distance.

In the fogs of February, the sun is an abstraction. Joy is an abstraction. We can talk about them, but they are not real to me. The only thing that seems clear is that full control of your thoughts and feelings is an illusion.

The most religious experience I’ve ever had was after my first winter in Sweden. One day in late March, I walked outside. The temperature was probably about 10 degrees C (50 degrees F). The snow was melting all around. I looked up, and was stunned. I could actually feel the warmth of the sun on my face.

A true miracle.

At some point during the long Swedish winter, I had ceased to believe in the sun. I had become a solar atheist. But with a single, real sensation, I was born again. For several minutes, I just stood there, absorbing the warm rays like a dry sponge sucks up water. Hallelujah!

Back in the USA, it’s baseball that February transforms into abstraction. There are no games, no trades, no real baseball experiences. Baseball talk just feels hollow, without substance. You can try to touch it, but like fog, you can’t grab it. It’s not there. Everything seems absurd, like so much infield dirt tech support.

But in March, the first game I hear on the radio from spring training is my salvation. The rhythm of the broadcast, the sounds of the ballpark, the unfolding drama of the game: my senses bathe in the return of real baseball. When I feel baseball again, I feel my true self returning with it.

So it’s mid-February now. Today, we are babysitting my wife’s eight-year-old nephew and five-month-old niece, in addition to our own two girls, ages 6 and 3. My wife is taking care of the baby; I’m trying to handle the other three kids.

The nephew is always hungry. No sooner do you feed him one thing, than he’s asking what’s next. Usually, I find it amusing. Today, I find it annoying.

My wife put on a John Denver CD to sing to the baby. I start making lunch. The baby starts crying. I am reminded how absolutely impossible it is to ignore a crying baby. Nature’s perfect annoyance. My wife gives her a bottle. Things quiet down again, for the moment.

So John Denver sings. I cook. And a strange sensation comes over me. I am being profoundly moved by the music. A deep, emotional reaction. To John Denver.

That just ain’t right.

At that moment, I realized that my February blues had set in.

The baby starts crying again. Bottle won’t help this time. Can’t figure out what’s wrong. My three-year-old picks this moment to become jealous of the attention her mother is giving someone else’s baby, and starts a temper tantrum. “I want to throw all the food in the world on the floor! I want to break every window everywhere!”

I want to do something, anything, to make them stop crying.

The baby suddenly reveals what’s wrong. She also reveals she is ready for a larger diaper size. End temper tantrum: three year olds find messy diapers fascinating. Relief.

The stereo switches CDs: Carole King, Tapestry. I finish cooking lunch, and put it on the table for the kids. I go back to the kitchen, sit down, put my head in my hands, and breathe a deep heavy sigh. Three weeks to go.

Carole King sings:

Snow is cold, and rain is wet.
Chills my soul right to the marrow.

I won’t be happy till I see you alone again.
Till I’m home again and feeling right.

I wanna be home again and feeling right.

Nephew cleans off his plate and asks for more. He impatiently tries to con the girls into giving him some of their food. The girls respond by trying to annoy him. They start bickering.

I have a strong urge to put a stop to it. Instead, I put a stop to myself. I don’t need to control everything that’s going on. I can’t control everything. Control is an illusion. At some point, insisting on it is counterproductive. Let it go. Let the kids play.

Oh, and the original question: do baseball statistics need better marketing? My opinion: there are only 30 people in the world, one for each team, who need good baseball statistics. To the rest of us, statistics are an illusion: a trick that somehow we can control the fates of our favorite teams. We can’t.

The illusion is nice, but at some point, you’re better off just stepping back and taking a deep breath. Let the kids play.

Though nothing could really prepare us
For stunning news making-aware us
That all lefty mashers
Are in-the-pan flashers,
In Oakland, they really don’t Karros.