Endless Summer

The boys of summer are about to give way to the gladiators of the gridiron, and I for one, am a bit disappointed. The Hall of Fame game kicks off the NFL preseason on Sunday. Preseason football should be as exciting as lawnmower racing (it appears on ESPN2 from time to time, seriously), but instead is treated as if it were the most-exciting thing since new Coke.

That’s not to say that I don’t love football, quite the opposite actually. There’s just something to be said for that time every year after the NBA Finals and before the start of preseason football where America’s pastime reigns supreme as the sporting nation’s sole obsession.

For all the things that football is: hip, fast-paced, and made for television, baseball is the opposite. Baseball is old-school, rarely played at a blistering pace, and doesn’t easily translate to our dominant broadcast medium.

That said, there’s always been something about baseball that draws true sports fans in, something more raw, intrinsic, and emotional than anything football has to offer: the history of the game.

Sure, football may have history as well, but your everyday football fan would have a hard time comparing (statistically or otherwise) modern-day football studs like Peyton Manning and Ladanian Tolimson to heroes of true yesteryear like Slingin’ Sammy Baugh or Red Grange.

Baseball, on the other hand is easy to compare in a generational context. Cardinal fans of today may not be able to pick Rogers Hornsby out of a lineup, but they surely could give you a bullet point listing of his achievements: .358 batting average (second all-time behind Ty Cobb), two-time Triple Crown winner (1922 and 1926), two-time MVP (1925 and 1929), and an unprecedented World Series title as a player-manager in 1926.

A major part of baseball’s history is its statistical record. Although some categories have been added over the years (saves, quality starts, etc.), baseball’s standard system of statistical measurement means that the sport’s records are followed more closely than those of its gridiron counterpart.

Does anyone really remember pacing around with pulse-pounding nerves while Peyton Manning broke Dan Marino’s two-decade old passing touchdown record in 2004? How about Ladanian’s pursuit of Walter Payton and the rushing touchdown mark in 2007?

If Pujols makes a legitimate run at baseball’s Triple Crown, on the other hand, the attention that the chase will garner in late September will be exponentially more than a comparable football record-breaking pursuit.

People remember baseball’s records, however, because they are nearly sacred. Ted Williams, even to casual fans, is known as “Greatest Hitter who Ever Lived” in large part because he is the last man to hit .400 for an entire season in 1941.

Hank Aaron’s home-run record transcended sports for the thirty years it stood (and in the minds of many purists still stands), so when Barry Bonds began to make assault on Aaron’s mark beginning in the 2000 season, federal investigators seriously looked into possibility of performance enhancing drugs playing a role in such a historic pursuit.

It’d be nearly impossible to deny that professional football in America is the dominant force in sports culture today. Peyton Manning is ten times more visible than say Albert Pujols, and that’s not by accident, football has all the flash, but baseball triumphs in terms of its substance. In an age when substance struggles against the flash that has become our society, baseball is a welcome sight. If only the boys of summer could own the sports stage through the “Fall Classic”, wouldn’t that be something?