The Major League Baseball season starts this week, bringing with it a huge dose of optimism as fans of long-downtrodden teams swear that this, finally, is going to be their year. (Right, Cubs fans?)
John Herd Thompson, a professor in Duke's Department of History, teaches "Baseball in Global Perspective," a world history course that uses baseball to explore the histories of the countries that adopted and adapted America's "national pastime."
Thompson is at work on a book about global baseball, "The Globe through the Diamond: Baseball and Nation in North America, Asia, and the Caribbean," and another about a hall of fame outfielder who coached Duke baseball in the 1970s, "Racing Home: Enos Slaughter, Jackie Robinson, and the Game the South Shaped."
With the help of Duke undergrad Joe Keefer -- who provided fact-checking -- Thompson offers up his Top 5 reasons why hope springs eternal as baseball begins again.
1. Plenty of Playoff Participants
In Major League Baseball, 10 of 30 teams will qualify for a chance to reach the World Series. A new "wild card" playoff will give the fifth-best team in both the National and American leagues a one-game shot to play into October or into (shiver) November.
2. The Cubs!
The 2012 season could be the Chicago Cubs' year to win it all. The Cubs were the first Major League team to win two World Series -- they beat the Detroit Tigers in 1907 and again in 1908. They then lost the next seven Series in which they appeared. Their most recent World Series defeat came 67 seasons ago in 1945, when the Tigers got even for 1908 by crushing the Cubs 9-3 in the decisive seventh game. But at least the Cubs have two Series wins in their (admittedly distant) past.
3. We Love Surprises
One of the eight teams that has never won a World Series might surprise us in 2012. Through the 2011 season, the CTCF (Combined Total Championship Futility) of the Colorado Rockies, the Houston Astros, the Milwaukee Brewers (formerly the Seattle Pilots), the San Diego Padres, the Seattle Mariners, the Tampa Bay Rays, the Texas Rangers (formerly the Washington Senators) and the Washington Nationals (formerly the Montreal Expos) added up to 298 years of never winning a World Series. That's almost three centuries of "wait 'til next year" for their frustrated fans.
4. It's a Global Pastime
North American Major League Baseball isn't the only ballgame on the planet: "America's pastime" has been a global game since the late 19th century. If the Minnesota Twins fall out of contention by Memorial Day, I'll still have my Japanese team to root for -- the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters of the Japanese Pacific League. Follow Nippon Professional Baseball in English in the Japan Times at http://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/baseball.html
5. Baseball is Poetic
Baseball is about more than winning. It's about renewed hope -- the hope that happens every spring. Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki captured this essence of baseball in a haiku that he composed in 1890:
Spring breeze
the grassy field makes me
want to play catch