How about a game of what I’ll call creative trivia? What do the paintings of Piet Mondrian, the mid-1950s sides of Miles Davis, and postseason baseball have in common? An answer: A wondrous, rare form of rhythm that can jumpstart rhythms in our own lives.
If you’re a longtime baseball watcher, you know that players now aren’t as fundamentally sound as in times past. There’s a hyper-focus on specialized skills — throwing the ball as hard as possible; getting the ball in the air so that it has the better chance of leaving the park — and across-the-board competence doesn’t have the value it once did. It’s an attitude of, “OK, so you never hit the cut-off man. You jack 40 homers and that’s what matters.”
Sloppy fundamentals won’t necessarily stop you from getting to October, but that’s where they will end your season. As a result, the game morphs back to a version of what it was before the takeover of analytics. A regular season afterthought like advancing a runner into scoring position becomes the salient, potentially saving, story of the game within the game.
It’s then that we’re treated to the magical rhythms of the sport of baseball. We don’t think of sports as possessing rhythmic qualities. Watch a hockey game, though, with the referee blowing his whistle every couple minutes, and you’ll bemoan the lack of flow. We’re talking atonal free jazz rather than the syncopated elisions of hard bop.
Good baseball is markedly rhythmic, to a greater degree than any sport. There’s a prevailing crispness. A succession of right moves is made. The ball gets to where it should be. Winning teams are decisive in their on-field choices. The route the outfielder takes to the slicing liner. The cutting down of the lead runner. The location of the backdoor change-up. The opposite field double off the pitch on the outer half of the plate.
The crowd becomes part of the rhythm, knowing where the beats have thus far fallen, and where the next beats should be. It’s a beautiful thing to watch, hear, process, and be inspired by.
We tend to regard ourselves as overwhelmed to such a degree that this state feels permanent, almost like we can’t shut off the tap. If we didn’t feel overwhelmed, we might be at a loss as to how to feel. We create greater levels of stress than that week, day, or hour warrants. Where do we start when we believe there’s that much to tend to? We delay in our attempt to determine the answer, and the mountain grows.
Lock into a rhythm, though, and it’s as if you’re helping to set yourself free. We create flow and bounce, and before we know it, the mountain is becoming smaller, and we’re not just grinding away.
Rhythm does a lot of the “carrying,” but it’s still our rhythm. Nor does rhythmic mean predictable. Look at those Mondrian paintings — you never know to what part of the canvas your eye is headed next, but you’re in rhythm. The baseball games of October are long on rubato — tweakings of the rhythm, with the basic meter remaining intact.
There beneath feet on infield dirt and outfield grass. The jazzman plays his trumpet, locked in a groove with his bandmates; the pitcher receives the ball back from the first baseman after the turning of a much needed and perfectly timed double play, and he’s ready to drive his team on.
These rhythms are joyous because they enhance the game, just as a similar rhythm can increase the joys of life, and not only because the “to-do” list has depreciated. Rhythm creates space, perspective. Clean sight lines.
Baseball is what I think of as the life sport. There are lessons to be had, allowing that you’re amenable to being present while watching a game unfold. Especially an October game.
But to let yourself get caught up in the rhythms of playoff baseball is to walk away from that game — after your team has won hopefully — with a kind of song in the head. Call it a song of baseball, but it can work as a life song, too.
We all have pitches to make, double plays to turn, fellow fielders to call off, instances when it is imperative that we put the ball in play. Play in rhythm and win—which can mean a lot of different things — when it counts the most. Whether you’re a baseball team, or someone with a keen October rooting interest in one.
Fleming is a writer.
