Coding and Baseball

I’ve spend much of this week writing code for a fairly significant update to some software my team rolled out in May. Much of it was refactoring (from about 4,000 lines of Groovy script down to about 900), some of it was making things more efficient, and a lot of it was to make the code more supportable as time goes on. There were also a lot of important enhancements and bug fixes. Each day began with me sitting in front of code, disappearing into the code, and emerging only reluctantly to the world when my brain was too tired to continue.

Those of you who write code for a living know what this feels like. On Friday night, for instance, as I write this, I was completely spent. As much as I wanted to continue reading the (thus far) fantastic book by Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100, I needed a break from reading. It was all I could do to pull myself back to the computer to write this. The family went out and I wanted to go with them, but I wasn’t feeling social. That happens sometimes after spending a week in code.

So what’s a fellow to do?

I think I found a pretty good solution: I discovered that The Show ’21 is finally available for the Xbox One. And I started playing it. I played my first game as the Los Angeles Dodgers facing Tampa Bay. And despite it being my first game, and despite the fact that my hand-eye-coordination could use some work, I played a full 9 innings and beat Tampa 6-5. It was blissful.

Either you are a baseball fan or you aren’t. I’ve rarely met someone in between. People sometimes wonder what’s so great about the sport. You hear all kinds of arguments from baseball fans (of which I am one), but the best line I’ve ever heard is simple: baseball is there to be enjoyed. And I enjoyed it tonight, even though it was in a video game. I love the dynamics of the game, the skills required not just on the athletic side, but on the mental side as well. I love the instincts that develop: flipping that grounder to second because you know without looking that there is already a running on first. I love the chess match between pitcher and hitter, each trying to outguess the other. And of course, I love the history.

It’s been many decades since I last thought that playing in the majors could be a reality (I think I might have been ten). But playing The Show tonight after spending my week coding made it feel like I was playing in the majors. It made me feel good, and that’s just about the best think a video game can do.

I played one game already, but it’s a beautiful evening for baseball. As Ernie Banks would say, “Let’s play two.”