THERE are, at last count, 43,792 different and compelling reasons why baseball is the greatest game ever invented, a list that is all but impossible to put on paper because every few minutes, another reason is added to the list . . .
. . . such as just now, when we have identified reason No. 43,793: “Because in no other sport will someone like Jay Bruce exist in complete anonymity one week, and in the next cause bitter acrimony in thousands of fantasy leagues across the world as former friends try to beat each other to the waiver wire to add him to their teams.”
Anyway. The point I was making was . . .
. . . whoops, we have No. 43,794: “Because in no other sport can a single player – in this case, Jose Reyes – go from hero to zero to hero to zero in more rapid-fire fashion than in baseball, where on one day he can look like he just picked up the game a few seconds before taking the field and the next he can look like he invented the game.”
For the purposes of brevity, and also to finally make my point, I’m going to turn that particular news wire off for the time being and focus on the one reason that’s especially relevant and especially fascinating in New York City in June of 2008, specifically on a day in June of 2008, such as today, when a certain native Nebraskan will be taking the mound at Yankee Stadium for his second career start.
Because the issue is quite plain:
Only in baseball can we ever have the kind of wild, explosive, passionate and emotional debate that we have been having in the city across the last few weeks and months, the kind we’re going to have, most likely, for as long as it is that Joba Chamberlain throws baseballs for a living for the New York Yankees. Only in baseball can that conversation even exist.
Think about it:
In football, you will never, ever hear two people have the following discussion: “Where do you think they should use Eli? I say quarterback.”
“Quarterback? Are you kidding? Everyone has a quarterback. What the Giants need to do is to make him a long snapper.”
In basketball you will never, ever, hear two people have the following discussion: “Where do you think they should play Eddy Curry? I say center.”
“Center? What planet do you live on? Everyone has a center who’s big and tall and defensively indifferent. What the Knicks need to do is make him a 3-point specialist off the bench.”
In other sports, you are what you are. Goalies don’t become left wings on a whim. World-class sprinters don’t decide on a whim to start running marathons. Even in the individual sports, you are what you are: a serve-and-volley attack artist, a groundstroke grinder, a scrambling short-game specialist, a big-hitting grip-it-and-rip-it monster.
In baseball? These things not only exist – they are consuming.
Sometimes, they result in good ideas: By the time Cal Ripken finally moved to third base, for instance, his range at shortstop was the approximate area of a telephone booth. And someone, somewhere, had the brainstorm to suggest a position switch for Babe Ruth.
Sometimes, they are fiascos: The Mets, remember, once decided that Kaz Matsui was their shortstop of the future and turned Reyes into a second baseman. Watching Mike Piazza play the same position Keith Hernandez once manned was like Joey Ramone having a go at the Sinatra songbook. And let’s not forget the day Billy Martin ordered Mike Pagliarulo to take a few swings right-handed.
Point is: This stuff only happens in baseball because it only could happen in baseball, at least to this extent. And so you have Joba, boy wonder, with an arm to make scouts weep and a dilemma to make Yankees fans shriek. Bullpen or rotation? Do you groom him to be the next Whitey Ford, staff ace for a generation, or the next Mariano Rivera, bullpen stopper for the ages?
He is a prodigy, owning prodigious talent, and he somehow sits at a crossroads. Where else do you get this? At age 22, nobody suggested to Tiger Woods that he take up speed skating. At age 22, nobody told Martin Brodeur he should be a defenseman. At age 22, nobody told Michael Strahan he could be more useful as a cornerback.
And yet . . . here we are. Here we are. Only in baseball, kids. Only in baseball.
(Mike Vaccaro’s e-mail address is michael.vaccaro@nypost.com. His book, “1941: The Greatest Year in Sports” will be released in paperback by Broadway Books this Tuesday, and he will be signing copies at Bookends in Ridgewood, N.J., on Saturday.)