Statistics and other nightmares

Baseball these days seems consumed with statistics, but in an odd kind of way, it always has been. The reason is that it gives the ordinary fan a way to talk about how good (or not) a player is without an entirely subjective vocabulary. Besides, it gives oldsters a way to prove that the old timers really were better than these young upstarts (they weren’t, but don’t say that too loudly).

One of the strangenesses of baseball is that the more the players change, the more the play stays the same. A century ago, a slow roller to the shortstop would catch the runner at first by a step. Now the ball is faster, the shortstop is faster, his arm is better, the runner goes like a deer; and he is still out at first by a step. Somehow, everything seems to cancel out, and we are right back where we started.

There are many things in baseball that are reflected by individual metrics, but one of the most common is anything but. Think about RBI’s (runs batted in). If one’s teammates regularly load up the bases, RBI’s aren’t that hard to come by. If they don’t, you are on your own. One-hundred RBI’s are considered the bench mark, but your team doesn’t back you up, you are faced with hitting 100 home runs to get your 100 “rib eye steaks.” Better figure on becoming a vegetarian.

That wouldn’t describe some of the old-time players. On some teams when someone hits a grand slam, the guys that were brought in by it were supposed to take the home run hitter out to dinner. What did they order? You got it — rib eye steaks. I don’t know if that is where the slang term for RBI came from or not, but a hitter on a roll wants to keep his “steak streak” going.

Millerton resident Theodore Kneeland is a retired teacher and coach.