TAMPA — What better preparation for watching the biggest
football game of the year Sunday evening than to watch an
inconsequential baseball game Sunday afternoon.
No disrespect to the Spartans of the University of Tampa,
or to the Fighting Falcons of Bentley College (of Waltham, Mass. —
I hadn’t heard of it either). The game certainly wasn’t
inconsequential to their players, coaches, and fans. And it wasn’t
inconsequential to me, because it was the first of many baseball
games I’ll watch this spring, summer, and fall (it is
spring in Florida now). With some colleges already playing hard
ball, and Major League players reporting to training camps in
Florida and Arizona this month, the gladiator sport will soon yield
to the more subtle pleasures and the more relaxing rhythms of the
Grand Old Game.
Fewer than a hundred souls turned out in Tampa on a sunny,
82-degree “winter” day to watch the Spartans go 3-0 on the brand
new season. A few more turned out in Indianapolis for the game
there. In the press box at UT were four students, the university’s
sports information director, and one old coot just glad baseball is
back. There were a few more media types in Indianapolis.
The football game, at the clunkily-named Lucas Oil
Stadium, was a pretty good one, even though it was punctuated by
the usual over-long, over-produced, and tasteless half-time
featuring yet another past-it pop star. This one ending with a
harrumphing, politically correct banality as “world peace” was
spelled out in big letters just before resumption of a game in
which the participants try to knock each other’s brains out. “World
peace” — good grief! What does the NFL think this is, the Miss
America contest?
At least some of the bad taste left by the nonsensical
half time spectacle was washed away by Clint Eastwood’s short, “Get
out there and block and tackle, America” message.
The ads were perhaps not as out of control as they’ve been
in years past. At least there were no gas-passing animals. But
there was a woman who delivers a felonious head butt to her husband
in order to commandeer a tin of Greek yogurt. (Imagine the
fertilizer storm from feminist groups if the husband had butted the
wife.) Budweiser put up a manic ad that featured what was probably
only 30 seconds of rap but seemed like 30 minutes. And it’s not
entirely clear how those polar bears fumbling around with bottles
of Coke to Beethoven will make people buy Cokes. Presumably the
folks paying the gaudy amounts for the air time know the
connection. The beer-fetching dog was fun to watch (though it
doesn’t change the fact that Bud-Lite tastes like beer-flavored
water).
This NFL season had its moments, not the least being the
Packers’ run at perfection and the uplifting Tim Tebow Show in
Denver. The Giants took the final game fair and square. And you’ve
no idea how hard it is for this Southerner with a perfect life-time
record of never pulling for New York team to say this. And thus NFL
players begin off-season healing from those tens of thousands of
collisions they’ve endured since last summer’s training camps for
our amusement. (If the baseball off-season where aficionados
speculate on what the next season will bring is called the Hot
Stove League, do football fans have an Air-Conditioner League?) So
with a nod to hockey and the NBA, the thoughts of many of us now
turn to baseball.
No need to go through all of George Carlin’s great routine
on the difference between football and baseball. But it’s goodbye
to bombs and blitzes and forearm shivers in arctic weather, and
hello to good at-bats, hitting behind the runner, throwing from the
stretch, and running home in 80 degrees (OK, maybe not even 70 in
those first few home games in Fenway and Wrigley).
The Super Bowl reminds us all why football careers are
shorter than baseball careers, as wide-body after wide-body was
carried off the field of battle with injuries. The day’s two games
also demonstrated for me yet again that while a small cohort
understand the infield fly rule, no one on Earth or the closer
planets knows what pass interference is.
Oh yeah, you may not have found any mention of it in your
morning sport page, but after beating Bentley 7-0 and 8-0 on Friday
and Saturday, it took the Spartans single runs in the bottom of the
8th and the 9th to take care of Bentley 2-1 on Sunday. It will be a
long flight back to Massachusetts for the Bentley boys, what with
only one unearned run in three games to show for their weekend. But
they’re young and resilient. They’ll bounce back. And they have
lots of games left this season, which no team in the NFL can say
today.
