I’ve stumbled into being a sportsfan for the first time in my life, as a 57 year old Brit. Mostly, I’m in it for the incomprehensible commentary.
Recently moved to Canada, just in time to latch onto the Toronto Blue Jays getting narrowly beaten in the final of the World Series, and then my wife announced she’d got a Sportsnet subscription. And now I know what stacking your bases and platooning is.
But 90% of the commentary still sounds like
And here comes Bravetti to the plate, sets his flonkers, gives the wrist-crank, and delivers — oh, that’s a high floopster, drifting toward the schnozz zone, and Palumwick gets under it, tracks it back to the warnle, makes the snab! Beautiful snab by Palumwick, who’s been snabbing everything in the deep dubris tonight. Two gromps, one blurtle, and the count sits at three-and-wumble.
It’s like Debussy writing sports coverage, or Monet in his late ‘lost my glasses’ phase. The details swoosh past in an infinite scroll of pleasurable enough to keep going.
It’s setting the audience (fans? crowd? My arts background still pokes through here and there) up for a massive dopamine spike. Depending on a largely random contact between ball and bat, my alloted champions might go four ahead, or they might lose the series.
I’m pretty sure the rules were written by BF Skinner. A pitch becoming a ball or a strike is the definition of intermittent reinforcement - sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, based on no consistent criteria I can divine. Trying to figure out the rules is enough to keep me pulling the lever for more cheese.
And in the meantime, I’m going to figure out whether a floopster in the schnozz zone is a good thing or a bad thing.