The Poetry of Home Runs

In yesterday's game, Jose Reyes hit a pair of triples. That may seem an odd sentence for a post about home runs, but they both would've been home runs in most other ballparks, and quite a few rows back in Philadelphia, and they both looked like fly balls instead of the more standard triples fare line drives. So they sparked the following two thoughts of mine about home runs, the first of which I've had before. I think that one of the things that makes home runs so cool is that the instant they're hit the game stops. From the second that the hitter makes contact with a ball that ends up being a home run, excluding inside-the-park ones (which are awesome for other reasons) and the occasional marginal weird one, there's nothing anyone can do to change anything for upwards of a minute. The ball travels through the air, out of the reach of any of the fielders, soaring into the distance; the runner or runners all proceed around the bases taking as much or as little time as they want, it really doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Time practically stops as far as the game is concerned. It's the only time that that's really true: nothing on the field matters, starting the very split second that a home-run ball is hit. Even if it looks like it just barely stayed fair, it doesn't matter, because it was always on that line even if it was a close line. The crack of the bat, and then, boom, as far as the game is concerned you might as well go to sleep for a hundred years and then discover that the umpire just threw the pitcher a new ball and the next hitter has stepped into the batter's box. One swing, and time stops, or more to the point time doesn't stop but everything else does.

The other thought is derived largely from the fact that the second pitch Jose drilled for a triple was a curveball. I'm a huge curveball fan, and I think that great curveballs look just so unhittable, but this instance of Reyes hitting a curveball gave me the following thought. The pitcher has the ball. The pitcher controls the ball, the pitcher controls the game. The pitcher then throws the ball, letting go of it but maintaining control of it, making it curve and loop and arc the way they want, if they're good. The ball flies through the air as an agent of the pitcher's will and craft. It is painting a picture the way the pitcher wants it to (hopefully). Normally, if the hitter puts the ball in play, it then becomes not entirely anyone's control. The ball still has some of the pitcher's intent in it, but also some of the hitters, and with that array of mixed intentions it goes out to be dealt with by the fielders, who give it some intent of their own. Everything becomes all jumbled. The ball starts out pure, and then becomes chaotic. But when a home run is hit, it's different. When the bat hits the ball, the ball doesn't just leave the state of being purely the pitcher's creature. It gives its allegiance wholeheartedly to the hitter. It belongs to the hitter now, it does the hitter's bidding only. And it is under no one's control except the hitters, and it never will be again (except sitting on a mantelpiece). At the instant of contact the ball switches from being a pure pitcher's object to being a pure hitter's object. There's a sort of purity and grace in a home run that way, just the way there's a certain purity and grace in a called strikeout where the ball just flies through the air for 60 feet and 6 inches doing the pitcher's bidding purely and perfectly the whole way. Obviously the chaos of the ball in play is a very large part of what makes baseball fun to watch, but I think the contrast between that and the dynamic purity of home runs makes for a really interesting part of that whole mix.

Anyway, those are just two of my way-the-hell-too-poetic thoughts about home runs for the day. Meanwhile, Jose needs to hit some actual home runs one of these days, poetry or not.