Is there such a thing as meaningless baseball?

You hear that a lot about some MLB teams in September. For every match-up featuring opposing wild card contenders, there's always a yawner between sub-.500 teams. TV cameras do their best not to show stands that are 50% (or more) empty, but even on television you can't keep from wondering, "Why are they bothering?"

I actually happen to think there is no such thing as meaningless baseball. And I say this as an utterly failed baseball player myself, who tried for a year as a 7th-grader to play a game for the first time that I had never played before and fell flat on my face. But my adolescent attraction to the game was more than just an attraction to the dugout. It was an attraction to the game. And to this day, there isn't much I like more than losing myself in the strategy and tactics of one of the most geometrical, symmetrical, beautiful games every invented.

The only way you can ever think that there is such a thing as meaningless baseball is if you see the fundamental importance of baseball as located in a place other than the 9 innings of an individual game itself. Now, don't get me wrong. I get into playoff races as much as the next guy. They've changed a lot: from true pennant races, to divisional races, to wild card races. But for the teams contending, September is still an exciting month.

Nevertheless, I believe the real beauty of baseball really exists between the time the first pitch is thrown and the last out is made. A former professor of mine used to say that baseball is so compelling because it is an overlapping series of chases, all of which appeal to our primal predatory instincts. The batter chases the pitch; the fielder chases the hit ball; the base runner runs around the bases while being chased by fielders. You add all of that to a game that is ideal for compiling, measuring, and comparing statistics, and it shoots for geometric harmony like an ancient Greek temple - only on more levels!

The very idea of meaningless baseball is rendered, well, meaningless, when you disregard playoff races and focus instead on what happens within the games themselves. It is as close to beauty as athletic competition can come. And there are plenty of theological and ecclesiological analogies - which will have to wait for another post.