A Better Post

I’m heading home this weekend for a wedding. My best friend’s wedding. I’ve known this guy since I was eating cheeseburgers without the burger. We grew up together, looked at our first dirty magazines together and basically did all those things that this blog (and my lawyer) probably won’t let me discuss in length. I am very excited for this occasion. 

          So I wasn’t surprised when he asked me to be his best man. Now, I normally don’t think of myself as the best at anything, let alone being a man, but I figured I had to accept the honor. And that means I have to give the speech. The one that every best man has to give, where he, usually under the influence of a few drinks, or sedatives, whichever comes first, mistily recants the many adventures that the he and the groom, and sometimes the bride, shared on their journey to this occasion. So yes, I haven’t written a thing.

          Instead, I’ve been hung up on this term “best.” People really love to throw it around. You have to try this cheese, it’s the best. That new DVD player, it’s the best. Whatever college basketball team you favor, they’re the best. I think the term is starting to lose its meaning. Are the Oscars the only thing where one entity remaining where one can be labeled as superior to all of its competition? I hope not, because I never manage to ever see the film that wins Best Picture, unless it has gratuitous violence or nudity.

          The word best comes up a lot in baseball. Probably more than is healthy or necessary. Does it matter who the best player is of all-time? Is it even possible to judge that? So many changes, from the physical nature of the players and the ballparks to the rapid expansion of franchises, have redefined the game along too many generational points to allow for simple comparison across all eras.

          I think this is especially true for pitchers. There is no way to judge which pitcher is the best of all time. At least this author thinks so. Too many innovations have changed this aspect of the game. The deadball. Batting helmets. The spitball. The lowered mound. The DH. Harder Bats. Steroids. I feel that while hitting has changed and evolved as well, I don’t see the dramatic changes in hitting than I do from their opponent 60 feet, six inches away.

Growing up, I always thought of Cy Young, Christy  Matthewson and Walter Johnson as the best and I never saw them play a second. Even my father and his father never saw them pitch, and yet the oral tradition of baseball that my dad passed onto me told me they were the best. They are the bedrock of baseball pitching, but does that mean they’d be the best today?

Where is this piece going? I am not quite sure myself. Must be the nerves of realizing I haven’t thought much about the speech because I’ve been too wrapped up in being labeled the best. But thinking about baseball, as pitchers and catchers report in just a few days to embark on the ritual that is a new season, has me thinking we’ll never really know who the best really is.

And we shouldn’t want to. We shouldn’t want to know who the best is because that would suffocate the imaginations of countless baseball fans yet to be. Otherwise baseball fans will forever be mired in an exhaustive debate that can never truly be settled. Now that would be a better idea.