Baseball is a strange game. Of all the sports, it may be the one wherein the essence of surprise is most pronounced, in two ways:
The constant, which is the pitcher's persistent need to keep the hitter guessing, setting up the "out pitch". Of course sometimes the pitcher's best is so unhittable on a given day that it's not so surprising at all as he just keeps making hitters look bad. But the point is that the element of surprise, in not letting that hitter have too good a clue as to what's coming, or where, is an underlying important aspect to a pitcher's success.
The dynamic, which is epitomized by the home run. In a game that is notoriously slower, more meticulated than others, the act of "parking one" is unmatched for sheer sudden impact. And no matter how good the hitter, it has to be the most surprising single action to occur regularly in sports.
Why this relates to Mr. Olbermann, other than the obvious being that he was a sportscaster and is a fan of the game, after the fold...
First, a little background. [I related this story elsewhere here on Kos, but it's relevant here so it bears retelling.]
When I was about 9 years old, my third grade class in Cincinnati took a field trip to see a film on American History that was entitled "Let Freedom Ring". Upon the conclusion of the film, with the victory of the American colonies having been dramatically portrayed, the theater lights went up and our class filed out... all but one - me. I couldn't move, because I was overwhelmed with tears, moved so deeply by the story told in that film.
Just before moving to Cincinnati is when the framed snaphot in the image above was taken. It shows a kid living a dream life for an 8 year old: hanging around minor league baseball parks in Daytona Beach as his mom works for a professional scout. The player depicted is Pete Rose. He holds the record for most hits in the history of the game, and he spent the vast majority of his career playing for the Cincinnati reds.
We were pretty poor, and got even poorer when mom left the baseball job to be closer to her family and roots in Cincinnati and Kentucky. But I had a collection of real Louisville Sluggers that had names like Biff Pocoroba burned into them. They had been broken in a game, patched back together and put in a box and mailed as an occasional gift to me from my mom's boss, Bill Steinecke.
So, the scene is this: an American kid living one particular slice of the American Dream.
Then in 1980 Ronald Reagan sold the American people a dishonest "feel-good" story about how America had no need to follow to President Carter's wise advice about changing how we live to better prepare for our nation's future, particularly in regards to oil and our approach to energy consumption. I sat in confounded sadness and watched it on tv, as I had Vietnam, Watergate, and the Patty Hearst events.
Then in 1981, Baseball players went on strike during the season and Summer wasn't the same. My grandfather died later that year and we moved from Cincinnati to the hills of Eastern Kentucky, where basketball, a game I knew and cared nothing about, was King.
In hindsight, I could make the case that I spent the next 25 years recovering from the period of transition/upheaval described here. I became an artist, and in that I made it my life's work to question, but on perhaps a more profound level than might otherwise too easily be put off with sly political rhetoric framed in grandfatherly wit.
As that questioning continued over time, eventually I had to shed a rather large degree of my naïvetè, maybe more than most. It's sobering when one pays attention to the details of what's going on in the world beyond one's own corner of it.
In 2000, all shreds of any such naïvetè were lost for good. Again I sat and watched in confounded sadness at the tv: as corrupt political machination proved not a thing of the darker American past such as is mentioned in history books, but a living pernicious thing so potent that it could render our democracy a fallacy.
After that, for me, what followed in these last 7+ years has somehow seemed not as shocking. I mean, if we're willing to let what happened in that election go, then what the hell can we expect?
I didn't stop paying attention, nor giving a damn. But I did detach, somewhere deep inside. I just sort of swallowed hard and exhaled and said something along the lines of: ok, the apathy has given the game over to the bastards. Sure, there are good people, and good in most, but the everyman American just has gotten to the point that it's going to take major catastrophic events that make 9/11 look like nothing to ever have a shot at bringing us around to having the courage or will to put forth the effort required to resemble anything close to that great image most Americans tend to have of America.
Then of course there's the Obama campaign. And yes, Barack deserves great credit for harnessing the frustration, remorse, guilt, shock, anger and all the best that existed in a lot of people and coaxing it to the surface. I have said before that we stand at a crossroad hyperspace right now, with a chance to go back to the future - 1968 to 2008 - and see how life can be when we dare try to be better.
But this diary isn't about Barack.
It's about that element of surprise. About how sometimes you see a ballplayer come along who doesn't carry all the hype of a super-prospect, and no one sees it coming, who then proceeds to rise to the occasion and perform at the highest level and firmly esconce himself in the annals of the game. That's Olbermann. He was a great sportscaster, who turned that everyman rapport to larger topics, with great aplomb and fervor.
What he's done, to me, is show that that "average American" out there can be moved to really give a damn more than the evidence was showing the last many years. And it's refreshing, and has been no less than a surprise, a shock even, to see this guy Olbermann out there doing his thing, and inspiring others in the process.
And yeah ok, that guy Obama ain't bad either.
Update FYI: It seems a few commenters reading this diary might have gotten the impression that some or much of the "background" as I described it is biographical info about KO. It's not. It's biographical info about myself that I shared with the intent that it would help illustrate how KO has reached varied types of people and resuscitated Hope for many. I also hoped it would help frame how surprised and impressed I was by KO doing what he does - and succeeding at it so well - and by what that success implies: that the "average" American who is drawn to watch him is more a part of a wave than a solitary voice. A wave that KO deserves accolades for helping build. Sorry for any confusion.