By Edwin Cooney
I define an “imponderable” as an outcome or a situation that can be possible, but only probable in its effect. Example:
Even if Aaron Judge hits 72 home runs this year (10 more than in 2022), there's no certainty as to what effect that will have on the Yankees' success in 2023!
Some imponderables to consider: what effect the new pitching and batting clocks, the larger bases, and the abolishment of the defensive fielding shifts will have on the game! I'm told that two of last Thursday's games lasted 1 hour and 14 minutes. They were Detroit at Tampa Bay and the other was Cleveland at Seattle. The game at Yankee Stadium lasted 2 hours and 30 minutes. Sports writers, broadcasters, and fans all have their opinions but only time will tell us if anticipated results will be as good or as bad as feared or advocated by baseball purists and adventurists!
As for opening day at Yankee Stadium, it was loaded with several imponderables in addition to those mentioned above. Logan Webb, the Giants starting pitcher, was one of the leading Giants trying to convince Aaron Judge to sign with them. (The Giants were Judge's favorite team as a youngster.) Had that occurred, Judge would have come to bat at Yankee Stadium as a Giant, perhaps hitting a home run against Gerrit Cole. (I knew that the Giants would be opening the 2023 season at Yankee Stadium and this was an imponderable I feared until Judge's return to the Yankees was confirmed last December.)
Another set of imponderables in Thursday's game: Logan Webb, who doesn't give up many home runs, gave up only 11 all last year compared to Gerrit Cole's 30. On Thursday, he gave up two: one to Aaron Judge and the other to Gleyber Torres. Still another was the fact that Webb struck out 12 Yankees while Cole struck out only 11 Giants. Cole pitched a shutout during his six innings of work. Still, for young Logan Webb, his pitching performance was remarkable.
Over the decades, baseball fathers have sought to adjust social and technical aspects to meet the demands of current and anticipated fans of the future. Thus we passed from the “dead ball” era to the “lively ball” era of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the 1920s. Next, baseball broke its color barrier thereby introducing Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, and so many valuable others in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. Then, in the 1970s, there came free agency. Now, in 2023, comes quickness and efficiency to meet the demands of fans who will live and love baseball beyond our time.
The beauty of all sports, which was first demonstrated in baseball during the late 19th century, is that passion doesn't have to breed either contempt or hatred. To be a fan is to (at least temporarily) live in Peter Pan's Never Never Land. Not long ago in one of these musings, I observed that one especially imponderable is the almost universal belief by fans that their team really and truly belongs to them — hence “my” Yankees and “your” Red Sox, an illusion we insistently deny but privately and emotionally depend on.
For the time being, the surest antidote to those imponderables is the immediate assignment: just plain go figure!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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