Baseball is not a team sport. Few people really understand this. Yes, 25 people (more when you include coaches, replacements, trainers, etc) have to interact with each other for eight months every year, but that doesn’t make it a “team” sport. Not only is baseball not a team sport, but it’s not even a sport of continuous action but rather distinct, isolated events. If soccer is an example of an analog sport, baseball is its digital equivalent.
In basketball, a defense is only as strong as its weakest player. When a player gets beat, it’s up to his teammates to rotate over and help him out. A pointguard needs to be completely in tune with the players he’s trying to get the ball to. They need to think with one collective conscious. In football, if a receiver and quarterback sense a blitz, they will both independently (yet collectively) change the receiver’s route. Taking a great receiver and placing him with an equally great quarterback will not automatically lead to great results. It is only through “teamwork” and cohesiveness that they will become a strong unit together.
Baseball is not like that. When a player comes up to bat, he is alone. There isn’t a zone defense, or westcoast offense, but rather only a pitcher, a defense, and a ball. And perhaps an equally isolated teammate on a basepath or two. The only players who exhibit any type of “teamwork” in the traditional sense are the pitcher and catcher, and perhaps the two middle infielders in terms of turning double plays.
Say what you will about “team chemistry”, but it’s hard to believe that it really exists in a sport where the idea of “team” is as fragile as it is in baseball. A baseball team is a glorified company and the rules of chemistry are no different than if they worked in an office instead of a diamond.
The believers in team chemistry (and you know who you are) will argue that a work environment that lacks “chemistry” will suffer just as a team would. This is an overly simplistic analysis. If I worked at a job that actually had a team oriented goal and where I actually had to work with other people, perhaps I could buy that. But how many people actually have such jobs? Being annoyed by the person in the cubicle next to you is not an example of suffering from poor chemistry. I have worked in environments where I absolutely cannot stand my coworkers. However, once I turn my head and attention towards the work in front of me, it becomes only about the work. I might despise my peers, or be annoyed by the incompetence of people who work above me [not direct supervisors per se, but rather the people I have to deal with in order to get my job done], but at the end of the day, my work is my own. And, maybe I’m just more professional than other people (or perhaps I just lack certain human emotions), but I just don’t comprehend how a lack of “chemistry” could alter my ability to perform an isolated event.
It’s unfortunate that simple minds need nice simple “stories” to explain random events. The Yankees went 1-3 this week, and we need some type of “story” to explain why. Perhaps the fact that their offense consists of “paid mercenaries” explains the fact that Abreu’s line drive in game 2 wound up hitting the top of the wall for a single instead of going over for a home run. Perhaps Arod’s surliness is the reason that Captain Intangibles wasn’t able to inject him full of mystique and aura. Or maybe when two very good teams play each other four times, the better team can lose three times.
