INDIAN fans have traditionally not ventured out beyond sports close to home. When it comes to an eclectic appetite, we tend to focus on the staples that include tennis, football, occasionally basketball, and of course, cricket. Formula 1 is now likely to generate a broader base of fans, and there will be interest in the London Olympics next year. But, we have traditionally veered away from any interest in American football and especially baseball. One can understand why baseball as a sport has not really popularized itself in India, due to its step-sister rulebook when compared to cricket. However, baseball on occasion can galvanize a sports fan like no other sport in the world.
Despite the fact that the recently concluded collective bargaining negotiations appear to have saved baseball for the fans in the U.S., this barely caused a ripple among the Indian sports fans. There’s no one to blame for that, and baseball can often be a difficult sport to wrap one’s time around, especially if one hasn’t grown up playing either baseball or softball. Most years, that would be alright. This year unfortunately, what most if not all Indian sports fans probably missed out on, was one of the greatest seasons of all time for professional sports that recently concluded in the U.S. for Major League Baseball (“MLB”) Baseball is a sport that clashes directly with cricket, hurting the sensitivities of ardent fans of the gentlemen’s sport. On the flip side, most baseball fans would likely not have heard a whole lot about the rules of the game when it comes to cricket, and at least until recently, felt it was a quirky sport played in England and other nations suffering from a colonial hangover. Cricket, it was felt, was a sport that would not trouble or intrigue lovers of the great American pastime- baseball. There is now a growing awareness of cricket in North America, but there is still limited understanding of baseball in India. And that, at least this year, was an unfortunate miss on the part of the growing Indian sports fan-base.
MLB is a troubled league in many ways, and has faced difficulties ranging from game-fixing, betting, dwindling revenues, labor disputes, and above all else, steroids and asterisked performance milestones for its athletes. It is also plagued by the big market conundrum, where the major cities’ teams attract the largest viewership, merchandising, and brand recognition, often at the cost of the smaller market teams. Fortunately or unfortunately, the office of the Commissioner recognized this, and the league follows a payroll policy with no salary cap. Therefore, there are huge discrepancies between the smaller market teams’ annual salary budgets for players, and those of the flagship teams such as the New York Yankees, the New York Mets, the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago White Sox, and the Chicago Cubs. With loaded rosters of position batters, designated hitters, and a pitching staff that can routinely take down the opposition, one would expect the so-called ‘big boys’ to make the playoffs, and lift the World Series title more often than not. And, when the Yankees can spend nearly USD 200 million annually on salaries, one would expect them to have a proportional qualitative advantage over a smaller-market team such as the Oakland A’s, the Milwaukee Brewers, or the Tampa Bay Devil Rays who usually have rosters containing players that cost them a ninth or a tenth of the mighty Yanks or Red Sox.
This year was different. It was a season that saw a blend of frantic, frenetic, and foolhardy, all in the space of the last 60 days of the season. It was a season of epic collapse, where the Boston Red Sox threw away every opportunity they had of taking it to the next level- an unenviable choke that the city is likely still coping with. The Yankees, despite their power-packed lineup and heavily skewed payroll advantage flattered only to falter. The Texas Rangers, a team many felt would be the favorite to win it all after the near-miss in 2010, nearly did it. It took a thrill-a-minute game six of the World Series to shatter Texas’s grasp on the trophy, one where the team was within a single out with a multi-run advantage through most of the game. It was stellar, it was compelling, it was storybook, and it was a fairytale. It was a story of blunders and collapses. It was of grit, guts, glory and grizzled veterans. It was of saying good-night to the might, and of urban legends becoming real-life heroes.
The St. Louis Cardinals, no strangers to success, but the longest of shots to succeed this season, emerged victorious and became World Series champions in the most unlikely of ways. Left for dead with 20 games remaining in the regular season, it took the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves in the American League and National League respectively to collapse in a manner befitting a house of cards filled with chokers. They kept fighting, never gave up, and eventually overcame the last obstacle in game 7 of the World Series, after nearly losing it all in game 6. It was stunning, and it was epic, and it was must-watch television. The months of September and October 2011 were the perfect public relations exercise for the sports of baseball and for professional sports leagues across the world. The joy of the fans, the exuberance of the players, and the despair of the almost-winners couldn’t be scripted.
It was the perfect season to be initiated into the sport of baseball for the casual viewer. It’s just that no one was watching. And the sad part is that there may never be another season like this one, and most of us won’t even realize what we missed: sport at its glorious, gut-wrenching best.
