100 Things I Love About Baseball (Pt. 2)

If you haven't read Part 1, you can check it out here.

There’s a lot in baseball that is bad, often—as a Mets fan, I'm something of an expert—and there’s a lot in the rest of the world that is bad, too. Sometimes the bad amounts to a hiccup in travel plans; sometimes the bad is profound tragedy and abhorrent evil. We can’t hand-wave it away by wishing it were otherwise, and we can’t shut off our senses to it and become numb. It’s always incumbent upon us to fight it somehow.

No matter what darkness you may be fighting off, it’s good to hold the world in your gaze and reflect on what you love. The things you love are what keep you going. They're there to remind you that there's some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.

50. Players who stand up for what’s right, both on and off the field.

49. In every game, there's a chance that something will happen. Maybe someone breaks a record. Maybe someone gets ejected. Maybe there's a ten-minute delay because a fire alarm malfunctioned, or someone hits a home run that knocks out part of the scoreboard, or someone making their debut walks it off in extra innings... or all of those things happen in one game. Odds are, something does happen, even if it's the kind of tiny little achievement that would only come up in the hardest of trivia questions.

Every game contains that possibility, small or big, and that's what makes baseball worth watching.

48. Good Vibes Only.

47. The theatricality of closer entrances. It's really unnecessary to have a whole light show coordinated to their dramatic music of choice—Matt Brash isn't even the Mariners' primary closer, and they set off actual fire for him—which is why it's so fun that we do it anyways.

46. Weird, quirky ballparks. You can keep your symmetrical, modern, picture-perfect stadium; I'll take the Green Monster and the winds of Wrigley any day.

45. The fans of the 1962 Mets, who saw quite literally the worst team in the history of baseball and kept showing up and cheering for them anyways.

44. I love the shining star that is Julio Rodríguez. It's impossible not to be captivated by his ebullience, the joy and passion that infuses every part of his vibrant personality. He loves the city of Seattle so loudly, in a way reminiscent of Ichiro (who, of course, shares my sentiments about Julio's effervescence); he loves his hometown of Loma de Cabrera even more, and his investment in the community stands head and shoulders above the philanthropy efforts of most players. He's gorgeous, he's funny, he's a massive anime fan. He's also a perennial MVP candidate who saw doubts about his abilities and simply decided to become a center fielder—one of the best in the league, at that. He's arguably the greatest five-tool player in baseball, and he's only 25.

43. A season long enough to take you from the first blooms of spring to the first leaf-fall of autumn, with a game nearly every day in between.

42. Jackie.

41. Tom Terrific, the namesake of this blog.

40. People will tell you the game is slow, for good or ill, but I don't feel that way. There are so many moving parts to the game that it sometimes makes me a little dizzy—you've got hitting, fielding, pitching, baserunning, and even the mind games between everyone on the field. The grand strategy and momentary minutiae are as complex as anything. Trying to learn about all of it and then follow along at every step truly stretches your mind, and I love the burn.

39. Pursuant to the above: baseball is a hell of a complicated game. That means you don't have to do everything the exact same way to be "good" at it, and the sport is better for it. If every player just batted .270 with a handful of stolen bases and home runs, or threw the same arsenal of pitches, we'd never watch more than an inning. Where would be the fun in that?

38. The fact that Tom Seaver’s record-high percentage of Hall of Fame votes stood for 24 years before it was broken by Ken Griffey Jr.

37. The fact that Ken Griffey Jr. was born 41 days after Tom Seaver started Game 1 of the 1969 World Series.

36. I mentioned walk-off home runs before, and I stand by their inclusion, but I have to tell you a secret: they aren't my favorite kind of home run. The best kind of home run is what I call the "answer-back" home run, and it comes around only in a particular set of unfavorable circumstances—namely, when the away team hits a home run in the top of the inning (particularly in the first) and the home team then gets the opportunity to hit one of their own.

There are few things more satisfying than the abashed silence of opposing fans amidst the roar of a vindicated crowd. Take this moment from the Subway Series, for example:

I made the trip to New York for this game, and the collective screams and cheers of all the Mets fans in the stadium were the loudest I've ever heard. If you can believe it, the Yankees fans in my section were talking a lot of shit in that first inning. They were pretty quiet after that.

35. J.P. Crawford officiating Ryan Bliss's wedding.

34. Toni Stone, Mamie Johnson, and Connie Morgan, the only three women known to have played in the Negro Leagues. On top of the immense misogyny enforced by the AAGPBL, it was also segregated; Black women had virtually no opportunities to play professional baseball until the Indianapolis Clowns were willing to sign them in the 50s, and it would be decades before any were given a chance again.

These women were doubly excluded from the field, and yet their love for the game persevered. You want to talk about loving baseball? They might have done it better than anyone.

33. Vicious, intergenerational, culture-defining rivalries.

32. On a related note: it's probably bad that one of the first baseball moments I fell in love with was a fight. But what can I say? Something about the 2022 Mariners-Angels brawl just spoke to me. It's riveting cinema, and Jesse Winker is the star.

31. Dave Winfield, his incredible athletic prowess, and his efforts to make the world a better place.

30. We're lucky that baseball has great uniforms. Not all of them are particularly nice or interesting, but plenty are! City Connects are, for the most part, pretty great, and Negro Leagues throwbacks are among the best designs to grace the field. (The Mariners obviously know this, too, since they're adding a Seattle Steelheads uniform to what is already the best uniform rotation in baseball.)

29. Satchel Paige, the most incredible pitcher to ever do it.

28. Randy Arozarena stepping out of the box during his plate appearances, which probably peaked in this at-bat:

27. When players treat major-league ball like the performance it is. The expanse between two foul lines is not some secluded enclave, walled off from the rest of the world; it's still part of the stage, and the audience looks on accordingly. Theatricality is a storied tradition, with masters of the art—Paige, Henderson, Jackson, and Junior, to name a few—and, though perhaps something of a rarity today, it lives on in the spectacle of players like Fernando Tatís Jr. and Pete Crow-Armstrong.

Baseball is at its best when it's played with style. After all, you can't call it "The Show" and then not put one on.

26. Watching surefire Hall of Famers continue building their legacy. Do you know how lucky I am to have Francisco Lindor playing for my team?

25. The collective countdown to spring training is like the new year, but better. There's no frantic checking of the clock or worrying about a kiss (can you imagine?)—the tension is stretched out over days and weeks and months instead. Everyone is in on it, from the casual fans to the programmers at Baseball Savant. Even the grass waits with bated breath.

24. Junior.

23. That Macklemore, of all people, being an ardent Seattle sports fan, has a truly beautiful song about his childhood and the Mariners in memory of Dave Niehaus.

22. We all know by now that Juan Soto is indisputably a great player and a generational talent. There's his eye for the strike zone, his hitting power, his newfound base-stealing prowess, blah blah blah—but who cares? Well, I do care, but I care just as much about the fact that he is simply very funny. His face when he disagrees with an umpire’s call, his first-inning sacrifice bunt that baffled commentators and viewers alike, his irrepressible fondness for the bullpen—where even the opposing team loves him back—all make him nothing short of delightful to watch.

21. "Centerfield" by John Fogerty.

20. Players getting picked up on hot mics accidentally, like Matt Olson last year:

19. From day one, I've made it clear that Ken Burns' Baseball greatly influenced my feelings on the game. If there's one contributor who stands out among the rest, it would have to be Buck O'Neil, whose legacy has continued to shape my relationship to baseball long after the documentary stopped playing.

18. Random minor leaguers becoming your team's biggest heroes for the duration of a spring training game or two.

17. I think it's impossible to be a baseball fan and not love a good curse. Small-scale superstition you can take or leave; it's bad for the brain, anyways, to start thinking anything you do will affect the game. But a proper curse, the kind you can only wait to see broken—who does it better than baseball? The Curse of the Bambino is pretty standard fare, sure, but then you get into the real good stuff, like the Curse of the Colonel or the Brewers reverse curse. I mean, where else are you gonna get a reverse curse?

For my part, I'm wholly convinced that the Mets are still doing time for the Midnight Massacre. 2027 will be the 50th anniversary, as well as 41 years since our last World Series win; that seems like the perfect time to bring a championship back to Queens. (The fact that not winning also means no potential White House visit does soften the blow of continued losses, though.)

16. It's far from Annie Savoy's first guest appearance on my blog, but I can't leave out her Church of Baseball (and its World Series tenets).

15. Dugout cameras capturing all the silly little moments between teammates.

14. Larry Doby, whose struggles and successes as the second Black man in Major League Baseball are too often forgotten.

13. Despite—well, at least partly because of—all the controversy, I am fascinated by the living legend of Alex Rodriguez. The legacy he continues to tinker with is a riveting concoction of equal parts personality, talent, and the messy intersection between the two (a sentiment with which Julio seems to agree). I'll set my possibly-unpopular opinions on the Hall of Fame aside for now—I still think that without Scott Boras, we'd be able to put any doubts about him being the greatest shortstop in MLB history well and truly to rest.

12. Josh Naylor, the angel of Seattle.

11. Would it surprise you to know that, romantic that I am, I love it when players prove everyone's expectations wrong?

Take Jacob deGrom, for example. In 2013, he was ranked as the Mets' 12th-best prospect by MLB. He didn't even crack the league-wide top 100. Fans who followed our farm system thought he would be an "8th inning guy" or, at best, a "back-end of the rotation starter". Now, I don't want to get too wild, but I think it's fair to say he turned out a little better than that.

Tarik Skubal was a 9th-round draft pick with only a single Division I college offer. Mike Piazza, rather famously, almost wasn't drafted at all. Even Aaron Judge barely made the Yankees' top ten prospects in 2014. There's plenty of reasons why prospect evaluations often frustrate me, but it's a lot of fun to look back on old ones and laugh.

10. Turkey Stearnes, easily one of history's most talented players, whose exceptional achievements were forgotten by the baseball establishment and ignored by a Hall of Fame that refused to honor him until after his death.

9. The beautiful structure of the inning.

8. Getting lost for hours looking at stats on Baseball Reference and FanGraphs and Savant and anywhere else you can think of.

7. Baseball is, and always has been, a family heirloom. It was handed down to me by my father, and to him by his father. Even my mother, Phillies fan though she is, passed on some of her love to me. This tradition takes place all over the world, as it has for generations; it will continue for generations more.

6. Even in the tragic losses, there’s something deeply compelling.

5. Sometimes, the heroes win.

4. Believe me, if I were so inclined, I could easily have built this list solely out of names. In leaving space for other things, I left out many individuals who have contributed greatly to my love of the game—Bullet Rogan, Roberto Clemente, Effa Manley, Curt Flood, Ted Williams, Roger Maris... and the list goes on. This space, then, is for all of them; let the record show they left an impression on me as valuable as any other.

3. ...But before I fully abandon my series of acknowledgements:

I've written about a lot of players here, and you may have noticed that, whenever possible, I gave them the list position corresponding to their jersey number. This becomes something of a problem when you really, really want to devote ample space to two players who happen to share the same number.

"Greatest of all time" is a hefty title. When we talk about who should receive it, I think you cannot properly do so pre-1947. How can I take Babe Ruth's numbers seriously when we know that some of the most skilled players of all time were barred from MLB? And you simply can't consider people whose careers are still underway; we may have more technology recording their accomplishments than ever, but they still have to prove their greatness over time. The vaunted label is therefore something of a misnomer—it's hard enough to compare players across even recent eras, and we can never definitively say who would have come out on top had MLB always been integrated.

My GOAT exists within the context of baseball after 1947, though conditions for Black players and many others were still far from equitable. This, however, is itself a factor in my determination. For decades, any such player who succeeded on the field constantly faced greater challenges, both systemic and individual, than anyone today would ever have to. To become indisputably one of the best on both sides of the ball by any metric under those circumstances seems virtually impossible.

In my mind, there really is no debate to be had: Major League Baseball has never had a greater player—and likely never will—than Willie Mays.

2. And finally, I cannot possibly go without mentioning Josh Gibson, who may well have been the greatest player in any era of the game.

1. The history of baseball is a long and fractured one. It's not so much a tapestry as it is a mosaic, where each and every game is a tile.

Look, come closer: run your hands over the surface and feel the ups and downs, the smoothness of the pieces and the grooves in between. Notice the unevenness in size, the inconsistent quality; they fit together all the same.

Now step back and take in the bigger pattern, the impossibility of its scope. Trace, if you can, the fissures in the mortar, where things have barely held together. Pick out the dullest spots and the most vibrant hues. The picture shifts, lenticular; blink, and you'll see something new. Take note of how it changes under your gaze.

At its edges, the canvas is still blank. The mural is far from finished. Tomorrow, another handful of records will grace its borders and become part of the design. We're lucky to get to watch it happen.

So what are you waiting for? Come on, hurry up—we're going to be late! It would be a shame to miss the first pitch.