Rooting for Perfection, not my Team

Somewhere in the sixth inning of Phil Humber’s perfect game at Safeco yesterday, I started rooting for Humber and the perfect game and not my Mariners. Not that the Mariners are much to root for these days, but I felt a twinge of guilt, then it passed as I watched the most exciting and demanding event at Safeco in a decade.

Why would I root for a team against my team?

Well, I did not exactly root for the White Sox. I rooted for the pitching of a perfect game. A perfect game—no one gets on base and the pitcher faces only 27 batters—often requires a miracle or two in the field, but Humber supported by incredible pitch calling from A. J. Pierzynski pitched a masterpiece. Indirection, off-speed, confusion and dominating expectations lead to a 96-pitch game. He simply pitched a great game without the classic great pitch arsenal we associate with perfect game pitchers.

I know I am supposed to root for my home time and have invested 26 wonderful if futile years following the Mariners in games and on obscure blog sites as well as infecting my children. I even wore my hat during the game (On empirical evidence I may have to stop wearing my hate since the Mariner’s have lost all seven games I wore it, but that is another story).

Why root for your home team—I root for my home team out of loyalty and identification with them. It affirms my affiliation with the northwest and the place I live and where my children were raised. I root for them because winning makes me feel good and casts a glow around the community of seven people who still follow the Mariners. I root for them because I have grown to have a respect and affection for some of the player such as Ichiro and Felix Hernandez and, God help me, Brendan Ryan. The Mariner’s are woven into my family’s sense of continuity. It gives us a focal point of conversation and common emotional loyalty even in rough patches, “how about them Mariner’s?” when we may feel like killing each other.

So rooting for a home team possesses strong emotional and ethical roots. Why did I find myself edging towards rooting for Phil Humber and his unlikely quest for a perfect game?

A sense of excitement grows inside you when you watch a game like this. All the announcers mention it around the 6^th inning, “no walks, no runners, no runs, 18 up, 18 down.” I know common wisdom says don’t talk about it, but Dave Sims brought it up front and center and enriched the game and my watching by it.

Baseball humbles people. Most batters and pitchers fail more than succeed even when a team wins. A perfect game defies the inexorable humbling. Each pitch starts to matter more. Each batter has more responsibility and pressure to end the quest. No team wants to be “no hit” or “perfect pitched;” these are not badges of honor in baseball.

Good baseball plays out with a focused intensity that rises with each pitch. A perfect game or no hitter just magnifies it all. So much can go wrong, but watching such a game draws you in either hoping your team breaks the cycle or hoping the pitcher gains baseball immortality by adding to the list of 20 perfect games in 120 years.

Now if the game mattered to the Mariners, the ethical stakes might keep my straying respect and excitement from migrating to Humber and Pierzynski’s game calling which really was magnificent. A lot of “ifs” could keep my support squarely with the Mariners. If a playoff place had been on the line; if the team was locked in a pennant race; if they were in playoffs; if they even had a chance of being a playoff team, when each victory really does matter in September.

No stakes for my team—but these are my Mariners. Playoffs lie several space-time continua away, and they are hitting 232 this year. High stakes does not come to mind when rooting for them. So rooting for them in this position becomes a negative, I want them to avoid humiliation. But these are negative reasons that can motivate players, but the draw of history and perfection really pull much more positively.

History unfolding before me—wanting to be part of an historical moment can catch a person up in the moment. It feels a bit selfish but also noble to be there and be a part of something special. Sports is full of games of the century, we have several a season in college baseball, but perfect games in baseball are really really hard and rare and complicated—so hard that some pitchers have pitched nine innings of perfect ball and literally lost the game in the 10^th inning. Being a minor character witnessing history that is enshrined is pretty cool and slowly stole my allegiance.

Another aspect drew me to hope that Humber succeeded especially in the eighth and ninth inning—respect for the game.

Respect for game and athletes—Sport is hard work and winning involves skill, practice and luck. Humber and the White Sox were winning this one on skill and practice, not luck. This game was a pitcher/catcher in perfect sync with amazing results. I respect most sports I watch and respect each game’s complexities and unique challenges and beauties. Seeing a perfect game unfold, unless you miss the steroid inflated home run 90’s, the perfect game reduces baseball to its essence—you catch the ball, you throw the ball and you hit the ball in the immortal words of Bull Durham.

It might seem boring to have no one on base and no runs being scored—it does happen all the time to the Mariners—but to watch it unfold each second and each pitch with each one a possible quest ender, that focuses a fan and player’s attention upon the core activity.

I can also respect the athletes on the quest. Professional sports offers so many games and baseball more than double anyone else. It can become drudgery even for committed professionals. Good professionals keep bringing it and can up their game when the moment requires. The quests are season long for playoffs, total wins, batting averages etc. But here the quest reduces to one game, nine innings, one pitch at a time, one play at a time. This is the game stripped to its core. The players must rise to the occasion as it reduces the season to a magnificent nine-inning quest.

Every sport has perfect moments—a great catch, a great pass, and an amazing stop. Baseball itself has perfect moments such as a perfect catch, perfect pass, perfect hit or perfect stop. A coach and team can experience a play unfold just like it is drawn up in its Platonic perfection. The skill and artistry and demands of the situation combine for an exquisite never to be repeated moment that any sport can deliver at any time. This moment of perfect achievement keeps us going back to watch the same games over and over.

But only baseball permits a perfect game, not just a moment. Here the form of perfection breaks through the permeable layers separating our world from other worlds of form and beauty. Every perfect moment breaks that barrier and reveals the mystery and possibility of our lives and makes us glad to be humans.

Only baseball extends that ecstatic moment to an entire game.

The Beauties of Athletics

I am frequently asked why athletics belongs in a university. I often explain the moral worth of athletics as an expression of human excellence of athletics. But I believe another justification exists and it accounts for one reason why athletics is watched and admired by so many persons. Athletics exhibits and embodies beauty.

As an academic and closet Platonist, I reflect on the beauty of athletics and sports with ancient Greek sensibilities. The discus thrower statue here on the blog distills that ideal. Great and even bad athletics can exhibit precision of form, line and function that brings pleasure to the eye and resonates harmony and admiration for many of us who watch and play sport. Different cultures might admire different aspects of the beauty of sport such as the Egyptian gymnasts here on the blog or the ancient Mayan stone etchings of beautiful athletes playing for the gods and the winners will be sacrificed as a gift to the gods.

Recently I was reminded that sports and athletic competition reveal another aspect of beauty that my emphasis upon the Greek ideal missed. I asked my class in Intercollegiate Leadership to identify the three most beautiful moments in individual sport and in team sports. The class met in groups to discuss this, and I assumed they would come up with Platonic moments fusing form and function, power and grace, like a perfectly executed double play (my candidate) or the serene power of a fully extended eight or a perfect jump shot. Not to be.

When the class started their presentations, I knew immediately I had lost control of it, and that my students were teaching me. One group spoke of the unity of feeling and commitment for a team when the team lost!! They talked about the beauty and memory of that feeling of total emotional support and feeling that they all shared.

Another group talked about the occurrence in 2008 year at an NCAA softball game. A senior at Western Oregon University hit her first ever home run ever and while rounding first base, he knee gave out. She collapses in pain and could not even crawl back to touch first base.  A senior member of the Central Michigan team came over and with a a fellow teammate lifted her up. Together they carried her around the bases making sure she touched each base and got credited with her home run. Central lost the game, but it did not matter.

Another group found the video of Jesse Owens winning 4 gold medals the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Hitler's Aryan superiority Olympics. They spoke not of the power and grace of his wins, but of the courage and symbolism that a black male from America could disprove the Aryan racist theories before the world and on the home grounds of Nazism. Even the German spectators applauded the magnificence of Owen’s accomplishments.

I could go on, but my class taught me that the beauties of sport transcend my obsession with the Greek statue approach. The beauties lie deep in the moral community of commitment and shared joy and pain of a team dedicated to a goal. The beauties reside in the ability of athletic competition to evoke true sportsmanship in its players. They can compete fiercely, but respect the game and each other. Rather then cheat or demean each other, in the midst of the heat of competition, players can respect and recognize and support other's achievement, joy and pain. Finally the reminded me that the narrative power of sport and its symbolism create stories that become myth, that embody valor and value that lie at the core of the best of our humanity.