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George Carlin, RIP: “The Object Is to Go Home”

Before the de-evolution, he nailed the salient distinctions between baseball and football with such aplomb that none can possibly transcend it.

George Carlin, who died of heart failure Sunday night, after bringing himself to a hospital complaining of chest pains, was once an effective, genuinely edgy wit and mimic who could murder the fooleries of popular culture without sweat or condescension.

Then came the aftermath of his last genuinely witty exercise, A Place for My Stuff. And, the wit who’d reduced himself to a grouse less interested in exposing than in becoming one of the fooleries he once vapourised.

But Carlin should be remembered for far more than the seven words you now can’t live without saying on television (or, in his case, on stage, about every third word or phrase), it seems often enough. He’d disassembled the inanities of the top 40 long enough before the advent of album-oriented radio; he’d fractured the local yokel report long before the Eyewitness News style made it laughable in earnestness; he’d deconstructed the New York of his boyhood without quite leaving it to beg for mercy that he might happily have granted.

And, then, one night, he isolated why baseball is superior to football (and any other sport, really), the sole regret having been that he did it before Casey Stengel, who would have understood, could have lived to hear it.

Here it is, in his memory:

Baseball is different from any other sport. Very different. For instance, in most sports you score points or goals; in baseball, you score runs.

In most sports, the ball, or object, is put into play by the offencive team; in baseball, the defencive team puts the ball in play, and only the defence is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball, if an offencive player touches the ball intentionally, he’s out; sometimes unintentionally, he’s out.

Also–in football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball, you score with the ball, and in baseball the ball prevents you from scoring.

In most sports, the team is run by a coach. In baseball, the team is run by a manager. And, only in baseball does the manager or coach wear the same clothing the players do. If you’d ever seen John Madden in his Oakland Raiders uniform, you’d know the reason for this custom.

Now, I’ve mentioned football. Baseball and football are the two most popular spectator sports in this country. And, as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something about ourselves and our values. I enjoy comparing baseball to football.

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game. Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park–the baseball park. Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything’s dying.

In football, you wear a helmet. In baseball, you wear a cap.

Football is concerned with downs—what down is it? Baseball is concerned with ups—who’s up? Are you up? I’m not up, he’s up!

In football, you receive a penalty. In baseball, you make an error.

In football, the specialist comes in to kick. In baseball, the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.

Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting, and unnecessary roughness. Baseball has the sacrifice.

Football is played in any kind of weather—rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog. In baseball, if it rains, we don’t go out to play.

Baseball has the seventh-inning stretch. Football has the two-minute warning.

Baseball has no time limit. We don’t when it’s going to end—might have extra innings. Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we’ve got to go to sudden death.

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there’s kind of a picnic feeling. Emotions may run high or low, but there’s not too much unpleasantness. In football, during the game, in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you’re capable of taking the life of another human being.

And, finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:

In football, the object is for the quarterback—also known as the field general—to be on target with his aerial bombardment, riddling the defence by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy’s defencive line.

In baseball, the object is to go home, and be safe—”I hope I’ll be safe at home!”

Very well. One or two of his observations have been compromised slightly by the forward step of baseball, its government, and no few of its fans. Technological struggle? The debate over instant replay. “Not too much unpleasantness in the stands?” Yankee v. Red Sox/Cub v. White Sox/Dodger v. Giant fans. During certain games in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston, you’re pretty sure that, once or twice at least, you or someone you love just might be capable of taking someone else’s life.

And, if you don’t think baseball has occasional hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting, and unnecessary roughness, you sure haven’t seen the Tampa Bay Rays in a bench-clearing brawl lately.

And what’s with this near-continuous yapping about game length to the point where enough baseball fans, so it might seem, only wish the game was rigidly timed to end even upon penalty of sudden death?

May the angels forgive Carlin his disbelief in their Master—and, forgive every one of his witless, carping HBO specials—enough to speed him a gentle escort to the Elysian Fields, safe at home, if only on grounds that he earned it by coming the closest of any humourist to throwing “Who’s on First” out at the plate, on one hop.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 3:02 am and is filed under Baseball Wit, Catbird, George Carlin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.