The Pastime

The regular season ends, with a couple of tiebreaker playoffs and then whatever weirdness the wild card structure has added to the postseason series. National Affairs, back in 2010, printed an extended essay on baseball in America and the way it connects to some interesting virtues that can help improve American civic life.

It's certainly lengthy, and it asserts some points that ought to have a little more foundation. But Diana Schaub, the Loyola University Maryland political science professor who wrote it, touches on key ideas that are worth some time spent on them. Somewhat like the game she's describing, the essay is finished when it is finished, and not before, confined by a predetermined clock or measure.

Comes now the short day of winter, and with it the rule of the games that are themselves ruled by that clock. A baseball game ends, of course, but it also finishes. Football, hockey and soccer have some extended play if the score is tied, but each eventually quits playing the whole game and settles for a scoring duel. Basketball, at least, will keep playing until one team is ahead when time runs out. Bud Selig's abominable 2002 All-Star Game mandated tie aside, a baseball game is not over until it is finished, and then it's part of the record and in the past.

Some postseason fun awaits, along with the abomination that is Joe Buck calling a game, and then it will be time to wait for spring again. And thinking, of course. Until it's green below and blue above, and sixty feet, six inches separate opponents and it ain't over till it's over.