“Baseball is more than a game. It's like life played out on a field.”
- Juliana Hatfield/Musician
Yesterday was MLB's Opening Day. For baseball fans, it's a glorious time. A new season when hope is alive for everyone. If you're a fan of the game you appreciate its rhythms and poetry. If you're not, well…okay. Baseball has declined in popularity over the last many years, for any number of reasons. The most consistent complaint I hear is, “It's too slow.” My reply is, “Thank God. Everything doesn't have to be a video game or a 10-second TikTok clip. Relax for a minute.”
The game has changed a lot over the years. Some things for the better and some for the worse. Most of the worse things I blame on the current commissioner. I'm sure his mother loves him, but I don't. One thing that forever changed the game was free agency. I'm not arguing against it, I'm just saying that for the fan, it removes a team's cohesiveness. Players come and go as often as sunsets.
And with the constant turnover of players, one of baseball's most endearing elements has faded, the nickname. Baseball used to be filled with them. Because players stayed with one team for long periods, fans got to know them and bestowed them with monikers based on their personalities. No longer. Players, for the most part, aren't around one team long enough for fans to get to know them.
The absence of nicknames inspired me to write a song about it. In the immortal words of Calhoun Tubbs, “I wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here it goes.” And since I quoted Juliana Hatfield at the top, I'll add her here too.