Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

The Beauty of Early-Season Baseball

To take baseball seriously, you have to slow down.

April 18, 2014 at 12:30 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

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It's hard to believe that one-tenth of the Major League Baseball season has already slipped into the past. Fans pay almost no attention to the standings until around Memorial Day. Baseball plays the longest season of any major sport, and is, for that reason, an excellent counterpoint to the gotta-know-right-now bustle of our world. To take baseball seriously, you have to slow down.

The first weeks of the baseball season are completely ridiculous and completely delightful. There's always some surprise hitter tearing up the early pitching. (Chase Utley is supposed to be washed up. And who, exactly, is Alexei Ramirez?) The fan's imagination is teased by some truly dreadful team that wins 10 of its first 12 games, and then, just as the home city allows itself to grow excited about the prospects for October, tumbles into a slump from which it never recovers. Some preseason championship favorite will dwell in the cellar for the first month or so and never really begin to play well (get untracked, as sportswriters mysteriously call it) until July.