Welcome to Bases & Baskets.
Being a baseball fan and a basketball fan is the perfect alignment of schedules. Every October when baseball is winding down, basketball season begins. And by June when the NBA reaches The Finals, baseball is well past Opening Day. There are countless excellent writers and researchers all across the country and world, doing interviews, writing pieces, and creating podcasts on both sports. I am incredibly appreciative of the work that beat writers and all reporters do to cultivate relationships and learn about the inner workings of each team, the business side of the franchise, the relationships between the players, the way that the team practices and game-plans, and then understanding what actually happens in their games. They do work that I am not capable of and I love getting to read and listen to it all.
But that said, I still think that I have something to offer! What I have to offer is my time, since I am sitting in Ecuador applying to jobs and watching sports in the evening. I have lots of time to listen to podcasts and scroll through the stats websites when i’m procrastinating. And I love live games. I love seeing how each player approaches the different challenges of each game and each opponent.
In baseball, every day is different. Every pitcher throws the ball in their own way and it makes every hitter react in a very specific way, and every hit, ground ball, and pop fly moves differently on a different day. The wind, as any local TV watching Giants fan knows from the many 3D representations on the broadcasts, changes both day to day and hour to hour.
Basketball astounds me in a way that is incredibly different from the awe that baseball inspires in me. Baseball is a game of sprints, reactions, and coordination. Basketball is too, but you also spend the entirety of the game running, while baseball players get to spend just about half of it in the dugout. I didn’t get in to basketball as early as I got into baseball, so I only ever played a few seasons of organized games and I never really understood what was going on at the time. I’m still terrified of playing pick-up—as much as I love a good post-up game I really don’t want to be the one who has to defend it. But I love going to the park and chasing my own rebounds for a while, regardless of how many there might be and how bad those rebounds might get.
The point is, I love both of these sports. And I love two teams in particular, although I really would say that I am a fan of the sport almost as much as I am a fan of the teams. While I’ve been a Giants fan for my whole life, I was lucky enough to start watching basketball, and the Warriors, right before Golden State began their dynastic run of championships and finals appearances. I’ve gotten to watch some of these players for more than a decade, and a lot of them for at least five or six years. I spend a lot of time thinking about baseball and basketball, the stories, the history, the impact on the communities and broader society. Sports is a multi-billion dollar industry. The extent of investment in the operation of these businesses and their sheer size and presence in our lives is truly incredible. There are 30 teams in both the NBA and MLB. That’s thirty franchises per sport, each with countless payroll dollars (although they are closely counted) for team administration, management, staff, and players. And the teams own and operate stadiums—giant monuments to their power and presence in each of those 30 communities and their regions.
So not only do I love these sports, I’m fascinated by them. Despite all of what my rational brain screams at me about the absurd values of sports contracts and media deals, I love these games nevertheless. When those players step into their locker room and out onto the field or the hardwood, anything can happen.
It’s my plan to stick around and talk about what I’m noticing happening. I haven’t quite figured out the format yet, so I would appreciate feedback on what the most or least tolerable way of me communicating on here would be. And really, even if no one is going to read it, I’m going to write it anyways because I really love these sports and I’m going to watch those games and think about them whether I write it down or not. Wish me luck!
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