Dueling Head Shots

By Paul Gray

Our species has become so well adapted to constant, relentless change that it has lost the ability to see just how weird much of the world has truly become. New things--a male sporting a nose ring, people talking into cell phones on busy street corners between swigs of bottled water--grab our attention and then quickly fade into the wallpaper of contemporary life. That is why the Rip van Winkle story and its many variants remain so appealing. We need, occasionally, someone who's been out of the loop for 20 years to point out everything we've long stopped noticing.

And that is why baseball lovers need me.

No, I haven't just awakened from a long nap, but I've obviously been asleep at this particular switch for quite a while. Then, out of habit one recent evening, I tuned to a baseball game on television. I don't know what caused my altered perceptions, but for the first time in a long while I watched, really watched, what was being displayed on my TV screen. And eureka! I knew the thrill that Archimedes experienced in his bathtub.

Televised baseball has become a struggle between nontalking heads. The close-up today totally overshadows the close play. Those responsible for broadcasting baseball have all decided that the game is not about throwing or hitting or catching or running or offense or defense or teamwork of any ilk. TV baseball is now about facial expressions or the lack thereof.

If you don't believe me, take a look at a game on your TV. Here is what you will see: a human visage fills the screen, registered so tightly that its ears are outside the frame of your picture. Its jaw muscles are working, its eyes intent on something or someone outside, for the moment, your field of permitted vision. Sometimes a thin stream of a liquid substance you'd rather not think too much about emerges from its purposively pursed lips. If you have the sound on, you may learn that this enormous face belongs to the pitcher and then surmise that this pitcher throws right-handed, since he seems to be cocking his head over his left but unseen shoulder.

Then a jump cut to a second screen-filling face, this one wearing, barely perceptible right up there at the top of your picture, something shiny on its head. Aha! you think, that could be a batting helmet, and ergo this new face could belong to the player at the plate who, since he's inclining his head over his invisible right shoulder, may be a left-handed hitter.

Just as you're getting the hang of this backing and forthing between two disembodied heads, here comes another jump cut, and a third face looms large on your screen. This one, unlike the other two, looks jowly and weather-beaten and could use a shave. What does this face have to do with the game, if indeed a game is still going on? And then the truth dawns: you are being shown the manager of one of the two teams, sitting presumably in one of the two dugouts. You are, in short, watching the manager watch the field. His intense concentration suggests that something is going on out there. What on earth could it be?

When the pitcher decides to throw the ball, the TV directors almost always, to give them their due, show him doing so. The standard procedure is to cut to a camera stationed behind the center-field fence and equipped with a state-of-the-art telephoto lens. What you see onscreen is the pitcher's back and, thanks to the foreshortening effects of magnification, the batter apparently standing almost right beside his adversary on the mound. They could be preparing for a handshake or a manly embrace. The center-field shot also invariably reveals the presence of two other figures, the catcher and the home-plate umpire. Since they both wear protective masks that hide their features, the TV people show them as seldom as possible.

The average televised baseball game today not only looks as though it could be played on a putting green, it also displays more camera caressing of facial features than do all of Julia Roberts' movies put together. Can the appearance of team dermatologists be far behind? Will aspiring major leaguers miss the cut because they are photogenically challenged ("Kid had a great arm but lousy skin")?

Since it began broadcasting baseball in the late 1940s, television has always displayed nervousness about the game's leisurely pace and long pauses. This attitude can be summed up as "Dammit, the camera has to show something, and nothing is going on." But baseball lovers know that plenty is going on, all the time. The players on defense constantly adjust their positions according to the batter at the plate. If runners are on base, possible trajectories of action visibly manifest themselves across the acres on which baseball is played. TV cameras could capture some of this and still have time to cut to a cute kid in the stands. Why not, folks, show the game and leave facial gymnastics to the soaps?