Last season, I took in a college baseball game. I sat close to the field in sunshine and the first inning was sublime. Michigan’s freshman catcher picked off a runner at first with a one-hop peg and nailed a base-stealer with a bullet to the shortstop’s glove. Even the clank of aluminum bats didn’t dull my pleasure, and I fell deep into the memory of Ebbets field, where, I’d watched Jackie, Gil, Duke, Pee Wee, and Roy mow down the national league.
But oh the incessant, polite applause. Applause is for ballerinas and sopranos; baseball demands yelling, cheering, booing. Yet, the crowd applauded such quotidian events as called strikes, routine fly-outs, and even a fielder’s choice, which may be the oddest, because, after all, it was an out for the home team. The fans clapped their hands several times each inning, sometimes in mid-batting turn.
When a Michigan player scored (which happened a lot in this 10-5 win) the bench emptied out to congratulate him even if he had only gotten on base with a walk, while the fellow whose mighty double brought him home waited on second base (This is not quite as silly as basketball players high-fiving and butt-patting a team-mate who just missed a free throw, but still …).
There seems to be a universal itch to congratulate that is scratched at the least excuse. Theater audiences no longer wait for the final curtain to burst forth; clapping has metastasized to the end of each act, even to scene changes. Often, the “turn off your cell phone” announcer gets an ovation as if he had just found a better way to deliver Hamlet’s soliloquy.
Why this need to demonstrate approval? Is it the search of the lonely for a connection, spectators yearning to be part of the action, or just another obnoxious fad, like the misuse of “beg the question” or emphasizing prepositions?
I don’t know. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to applaud a scene change or a called strike. If you’re sitting next to me at a game, you’ll have to put up with some old-fashioned yelling, when it’s called for — and silence when it’s not.
